Perhaps our weather is the main ingredient in our education as well as in our conversation. Could it not be that the origin of the Englishman's phlegm is a childhood of last-minute cancellations through rain of long-awaited treats, inuring him for ever to disappointment? In any event the great English painters of weather did not have to submit to the weather's domination. They recorded it with closer fidelity than any painters before or since, but they were free to put it where they wanted it.

LRB 29 August 1991 | PDF Download