William Shakespeare - The Last Watch 2019 - Waldemar Januszczak TV - Star Trek: Deep Space Nine TV - Timeshift TV - David Hasselhoff - J B Priestley - Mae West - Sylvia Plath - Robert Bridges - Robert Burns - James W Watson - John Mason Neale - Christina Rossetti - Wallace Stevens - James Joyce - Andrew Marr TV - Horizon - Ellie Goulding - Ice Cube - Vladimir Nabokov - esias - Irving Berlin - The Big Snow of '47 TV -
The white cold virgin snow upon my heart
Abates the ardour of my liver. William Shakespeare, The Tempest IV i 55-56, Ferdinand
Winter is coming, yeah. I am the snowman, OK, leave it with me. Game of Thrones: The Last Watch, Del Reid, head of snow for Game of Thrones, Sky Atlantic 2019
The snow picture became an Impressionist’s speciality. Waldemar Januszczak, The Impressionists: Painting and Revolution II: The Great Outdoors, BBC 2011
It’s snowing on the promenade. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine s1e16: If Wishes Were Horses, Odo to Sisko
1947: The heaviest snowfall that the country had experienced since records began. The snow ground everything to a halt. Timeshift: Killer Storms and Cruel Winters, BBC 2014
I grew up in Chicago, and there was always snow. In Los Angeles there never was, so we would always import snow! David Hasselhoff
The first fall of snow is not only an event, but it is a magical event. You go to bed in one kind of world and wake up to find yourself in another quite different, and if this is not enchantment, then where is it to be found. J B Priestley, Apes and Angels, 1928
I used to be Snow White, but I drifted. Mae West
Well, I know now. I know a little more how much a simple thing like a snowfall can mean to a person. Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
When men were all asleep the snow came flying,
In large white flakes falling on the city brown,
Stealthily and perpetually settling and loosely lying,
Hushing the latest traffic of the drowsy town. Robert Bridges, London Snow
But pleasures are like poppies spread –
You seize the flow’r, its bloom is shed;
Or like the snow falls in the river –
A moment white – then melts forever. Robert Burns, Tam o’ Shanter
O the snow, the beautiful snow,
Filling the sky and earth below;
Over the house-tops, over the street,
Over the heads of the people you meet,
Dancing, flirting, skimming along. James W Watson, Beautiful Snow
Good King Wenceslas looked out,
On the feast of Stephen;
When the snow lay round about,
Deep and crisp and even. John Mason Neale, Good King Wenceslas
In the bleak midwinter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter,
Long ago. Christina Rossetti, In the Bleak Midwinter, 1875
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glotter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and nothing that is. Wallace Stevens, The Snow Man 1921
A few taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly on the Bog of Allen and, further westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead. James Joyce, Dubliners: The Dead
The Little Ice Age: there were huge snowfalls in Spain and Portugal. Andrew Marr’s History of the World V: Age of Plunder, BBC 2012
Avalanches are unstoppable forces of nature that kill hundreds of people every year. Even in Britain, around 30 people have lost their lives to avalanches since the year 2000. Yet we know surprisingly little about them. We can’t predict when or where they’ll strike. Horizon: Avalanche: Making a Deadly Snowstorm, BBC 2018
We desperately need to find new ways of predicting where avalanches will strike. ibid.
Christmas in LA is weird. There’s no snow. It’s not even cold. Ellie Goulding
I remember wishing there was snow in LA. And how jealous we used to get of those Christmas specials with kids playing in the snow. Ice Cube
Genius is an African who dreams up snow. Vladimir Nabokov
I’m dreaming of a white Christmas,
Along the lines I use my nose,
Where the crystals glisten,
And children are forbidden
Drunk Bells-sodden in the snow. esias
cf.
I’m dreaming of a white Christmas,
Just like the ones I used to know,
Where the tree-tops glisten
And children listen
To hear sleigh bells in the snow. Irving Berlin (Israel Baline) 1888-1989, White Christmas 1942 from Holiday Inn
Just 17 months after the end of the Second World War Britain faced a new peril. This time the military weren’t dropping bombs but bread. Equivalent to five ‘Beasts from the East’ one after the other it lasted seven long weeks. Temperatures below minus 21 degrees Celsius it caused cold queues. The Big Snow of ’47, Channel 5 2023