Adam Gopnik has a brilliant take on many things — food, architecture, psychoanalysis, you name it. Here he tackles winter. It’s excellent. “Gray skies and December lights are my idea of secret joy,” he says. He makes the point that people started liking winter at around the same time they started believing in God a bit less. In 1747, Dr Johnson didn’t like it; by 1783, William Cowper could write of “fireside enjoyments”. By then, we could look at the beauty of winter without feeling too cold. Funny how we remember Scott and Shackleton, who fled warmth, but not Franz San Galli, who invented the radiator.
