If April showers are keeping you indoors, English literature from Shakespeare to Hilary Mantel provides a vivid idea of what you’re missing – with no need to get wet
For the last decade or so I’ve been devouring writing old and new about the British countryside – but recently it struck me how few of the books I love feature good old-fashioned rain. Given the fact that precipitation is something of a national obsession, it seemed remiss that the country we see through the eyes of our psychogeographers and botanists, our naturalists, travel writers and landscape historians, is largely a fair-weather one. So I set out to remedy that, in a small way, by going on a series of deliberately rainy expeditions and writing a book of my own about them.
In contrast to our non-fiction, though, you don’t have to look far in novels, plays and poetry to find a bit of familiar British weather. In fact, rain patters and drums and trickles its way from Chaucer and Shakespeare to Austen, Alice Oswald and beyond. Here, in no particular order, are 10 great rainy moments set on these weather-beaten isles:
Related: Quiz: rain in literature
Related: 'I let the country flow under my wheels …'
Friday Morning. – A drisling Rain. Heavy masses of shapeless Vapour upon the mountains [O the perpetual Forms of Borrodale!] yet it is no unbroken Tale of dull Sadness – slanting Pillars travel across the Lake, at long Intervals – the vaporous mass whitens, in large Stains of Light / on the Lakeward ride of that huge arm chair, of Lowdore, fell a gleam of softest light, that brought out the rich hues of the late Autumn… the Birds are singing in the tender Rain as if it were the Rain of April, & the decaying Foliage were Flowers & Blossoms.
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