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Forecast: A Diary of the Lost Seasons
Joe Shute has traveled all over Britain discovering how our seasons are changing, causing havoc with nature and affecting our lives.
The changing seasons have shaped all of our lives, but what happens when the weather changes beyond recognition?
Joe Shute has spent years unpicking Britain's long-standing love affair with the weather. He has pored over the literature, art and music our weather systems have inspired and trawled through centuries of established folklore to discover the curious customs and rituals we have created in response to the seasons. But in recent years Shute has discovered a curious thing: the British seasons are changing far faster and far more profoundly than we realise. Daffodils in December, frogspawn in November and summers so hot wildfires rampage across the northern moors.
Shute has travelled all over Britain discovering how our seasons are warping, causing havoc with nature and affecting all our lives. He has trudged through the severe devastation caused by increasingly frequent flooding and visited the Northamptonshire village once dependent on hard frosts for its slate quarrying industry now forced to invest in industrial freezers due to our ever-warming winters. Even the very language we use to describe the weather, he has discovered, is changing in the modern age.
This book aims to bridge the void between our cultural expectation of the seasons and what they are actually doing. To follow the march of the seasons up and down the country and document how their changing patterns affect the natural world and all of our lives. And to discover what happens to centuries of folklore, identity and memory when the very thing they subsist on is changing for good.
The changing seasons have shaped all of our lives, but what happens when the weather changes beyond recognition?
Joe Shute has spent years unpicking Britain's long-standing love affair with the weather. He has pored over the literature, art and music our weather systems have inspired and trawled through centuries of established folklore to discover the curious customs and rituals we have created in response to the seasons. But in recent years Shute has discovered a curious thing: the British seasons are changing far faster and far more profoundly than we realise. Daffodils in December, frogspawn in November and summers so hot wildfires rampage across the northern moors.
Shute has travelled all over Britain discovering how our seasons are warping, causing havoc with nature and affecting all our lives. He has trudged through the severe devastation caused by increasingly frequent flooding and visited the Northamptonshire village once dependent on hard frosts for its slate quarrying industry now forced to invest in industrial freezers due to our ever-warming winters. Even the very language we use to describe the weather, he has discovered, is changing in the modern age.
This book aims to bridge the void between our cultural expectation of the seasons and what they are actually doing. To follow the march of the seasons up and down the country and document how their changing patterns affect the natural world and all of our lives. And to discover what happens to centuries of folklore, identity and memory when the very thing they subsist on is changing for good.
- GenresNatureNonfiction
272 pages, Hardcover
First published June 24, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
August 21, 2021
(4.5) It’s been a subplot in much of the UK nature writing I’ve read recently: the feeling that something is awry with the seasons. Here’s a whole book about how the environmental crisis is provoking haywire weather, and what it means for us and for the many species whose habits are being disrupted. Shute writes a weather column for the Telegraph, and in recent years has reported on alarming fires and flooding. He probes how the seasons are bound up with memories, conceding the danger of giving in to nostalgia for a gloried past that may never have existed. However, he provides hard evidence in the form of long-term observations such as temperature data and photo archives that reveal that natural events like leaf fall and bud break are now occurring weeks later/earlier than they used to. He also meets farmers, searches for cuckoos and wildflowers, and recalls journalistic assignments.
The book deftly recreates its many scenes and conversations, and inserts statistics naturally. It also delicately weaves in a storyline about infertility: he and his wife long for a child and have tried for years to conceive, but just as the seasons are out of kilter, there seems to be something off with their bodies such that what comes so easily for others will not for them. A male perspective on infertility is rare – I can only remember encountering it before in Native by Patrick Laurie – and these passages are really touching. The tone is of a piece with the rest of the book: thoughtful and gently melancholy, but never hopeless (alas, I found The Eternal Season by Stephen Rutt, on a rather similar topic, simply depressing).
Forecast is wide-ranging and so relevant – the topics it covers kept coming up and I would say to my husband, “oh yes, that’s in Joe Shute’s book.” (For example, he writes about the Ladybird What to Look For series and we happened upon an exhibit of its artwork at Mottisfont Abbey.) I can see how some might think it crams in too much or veers too much between threads, but I would say that for the most part Shute handles his material admirably. I loved his writing so will catch up on his first book soon, and look forward to whatever he publishes next.
Favourite quotes:
“for as long as humans have existed on this earth we have sought to explain our lives by the passing seasons – the waymarks heralding the passage of each year. And now, within our own lifetimes, those very signs are falling beyond the reach of memory.”
“So many records are these days being broken that perhaps it is time to rewrite the record books, and accept the aberration has become the norm.”
“as the seasons themselves grow homogenised and our climate changes, so the very words we once used precisely to describe the weather and its effects upon us are drifting silently into oblivion.”
The book deftly recreates its many scenes and conversations, and inserts statistics naturally. It also delicately weaves in a storyline about infertility: he and his wife long for a child and have tried for years to conceive, but just as the seasons are out of kilter, there seems to be something off with their bodies such that what comes so easily for others will not for them. A male perspective on infertility is rare – I can only remember encountering it before in Native by Patrick Laurie – and these passages are really touching. The tone is of a piece with the rest of the book: thoughtful and gently melancholy, but never hopeless (alas, I found The Eternal Season by Stephen Rutt, on a rather similar topic, simply depressing).
Forecast is wide-ranging and so relevant – the topics it covers kept coming up and I would say to my husband, “oh yes, that’s in Joe Shute’s book.” (For example, he writes about the Ladybird What to Look For series and we happened upon an exhibit of its artwork at Mottisfont Abbey.) I can see how some might think it crams in too much or veers too much between threads, but I would say that for the most part Shute handles his material admirably. I loved his writing so will catch up on his first book soon, and look forward to whatever he publishes next.
Favourite quotes:
“for as long as humans have existed on this earth we have sought to explain our lives by the passing seasons – the waymarks heralding the passage of each year. And now, within our own lifetimes, those very signs are falling beyond the reach of memory.”
“So many records are these days being broken that perhaps it is time to rewrite the record books, and accept the aberration has become the norm.”
“as the seasons themselves grow homogenised and our climate changes, so the very words we once used precisely to describe the weather and its effects upon us are drifting silently into oblivion.”
June 25, 2021
Forecast explores Britain's long-standing love affair with the weather and in it journalist and columnist Joe Shute, who has a keen passion for the natural world, discusses what happens when it changes beyond recognition. It's safe to say that over the last century our seasons have been profoundly changing or more accurately the stereotypical behaviour that often characterises spring, summer, autumn and winter have been with increasingly exponential odds occurring anytime and anywhere. Sometimes the season takes on the characteristics associated with another altogether different one or passes without barely being noticed at all. This book is about the weather watching Joe Shute has been involved and interested in his whole life and as with many people the pandemic has given him more of a free reign to take the care to quietly observe and record his findings beginning in the lockdown spring of last year. At the start of Spring 2020 while driving on The Great North Road Shute found it so deserted he could drift across the white carriageway lines. Buzzards starved of road kill perched on the treetops staring blankly over the empty asphalt. Some deer had ventured out of a patch of trees to graze the grass verges, nitrogen-enriched from the exhaust pipes of the tens of thousands of vehicles that on any usual day would be passing by.
Insects spattered against the windscreen with a ferocity he had not seen since childhood, smearing a blood mosaic across the glass. March gave way to the sunniest April, which in turn became the sunniest May ever witnessed (at least since records began in 1881). It was the fourth driest May, too. As every day dawned to another endless blue, Shute had a sense of Covid-19 bending time. So many of the seasons which normally dictate our year were, in a matter of days, rendered meaningless. The football season, the fashion season, the fishing season, the wedding season, academic calendars and holiday dates, all evaporated from diary pages as if drawn in invisible ink. Four seasons, however, remained. Their passing suddenly gained an importance that had been forgotten in the hurried turmoil of modern lives. People spoke of the scales falling from their eyes and wondered if the birds always sang that loud, or had they just started listening to them? But, amid the spiralling death toll and fear of every interaction with a stranger, spring, the season of regeneration, erupted in glorious technicolour. After this Shute expands on his findings for the rest of the seasons and the remainder of the year with sharp precision. Forecast charts the evolution of the seasons through time in a fascinating and evocative fashion with vivid description and a profound love of mother nature erupting from the words on every page. Highly recommended.
Insects spattered against the windscreen with a ferocity he had not seen since childhood, smearing a blood mosaic across the glass. March gave way to the sunniest April, which in turn became the sunniest May ever witnessed (at least since records began in 1881). It was the fourth driest May, too. As every day dawned to another endless blue, Shute had a sense of Covid-19 bending time. So many of the seasons which normally dictate our year were, in a matter of days, rendered meaningless. The football season, the fashion season, the fishing season, the wedding season, academic calendars and holiday dates, all evaporated from diary pages as if drawn in invisible ink. Four seasons, however, remained. Their passing suddenly gained an importance that had been forgotten in the hurried turmoil of modern lives. People spoke of the scales falling from their eyes and wondered if the birds always sang that loud, or had they just started listening to them? But, amid the spiralling death toll and fear of every interaction with a stranger, spring, the season of regeneration, erupted in glorious technicolour. After this Shute expands on his findings for the rest of the seasons and the remainder of the year with sharp precision. Forecast charts the evolution of the seasons through time in a fascinating and evocative fashion with vivid description and a profound love of mother nature erupting from the words on every page. Highly recommended.
March 19, 2022
As I write this review the sky outside is a stunning blue and there is not a single cloud in sight. It is a spring day, but it feels a little odd for this time of the year. When I step outside though, there is still a chill in the air that reveals that it isn’t quite summer yet. Whilst it is once to have it bright, it feels a little early in the year for weather like this.
As the grip of climate change bites, what were the familiar seasons, seem to be blurring into each other much more than I remember in my short time on this earth. Gone are the stark differences of cold winters, warm springs and hot summers and autumns where the leaves turned colour ready for the first storm to blow them all off. Now we have warm wet winters and cool wet summers, and freak weather events that can strike in any month.
These themes of a world out of sorts are what Shute explores in this book. He heads to regions where flooding is becoming more prevalent and once in a century events are now happening every 15 years or so. He speaks to farmers who have been noting the day that swallows arrive for decades and now seeing how the dates they appear in the sky are a month earlier than they used to be. Spring is the time that this is most visible, it used to travel up the country at 1.2mph and now moves around 2mph and all the plants and animals are struggling to keep up.
I liked this a lot. Shute’s prose is crisp and to the point, probably his background as a journalist has helped with this and it doesn’t feel like a nostalgic book, more of a careful warning of the changes we are forcing on the world. The points that he makes and reiterates all the way through are made as bluntly as he can; i.e. that we are in the very middle of a crisis that is not going away. If there was one flaw with this, I felt that the inclusion of his own quite sad personal story didn’t really fit with the rest of the book.
As the grip of climate change bites, what were the familiar seasons, seem to be blurring into each other much more than I remember in my short time on this earth. Gone are the stark differences of cold winters, warm springs and hot summers and autumns where the leaves turned colour ready for the first storm to blow them all off. Now we have warm wet winters and cool wet summers, and freak weather events that can strike in any month.
These themes of a world out of sorts are what Shute explores in this book. He heads to regions where flooding is becoming more prevalent and once in a century events are now happening every 15 years or so. He speaks to farmers who have been noting the day that swallows arrive for decades and now seeing how the dates they appear in the sky are a month earlier than they used to be. Spring is the time that this is most visible, it used to travel up the country at 1.2mph and now moves around 2mph and all the plants and animals are struggling to keep up.
I liked this a lot. Shute’s prose is crisp and to the point, probably his background as a journalist has helped with this and it doesn’t feel like a nostalgic book, more of a careful warning of the changes we are forcing on the world. The points that he makes and reiterates all the way through are made as bluntly as he can; i.e. that we are in the very middle of a crisis that is not going away. If there was one flaw with this, I felt that the inclusion of his own quite sad personal story didn’t really fit with the rest of the book.
September 23, 2021
Beautiful, elegiac stuff that we really shouldn't need to go on being reminded about. But we do, and this is a lovely way of doing it.
June 10, 2021
The book starts with a quote by Professor Chris Whitty - now a very familiar figure -, "The seasons are against us". It then goes into an exploration of seasons in Britain, starting with spring, and moving on through the different seasons - examining the current state of affairs, and our "cultural expectations" - the fact we have an idea in our heads of what these seasons look like but that reality is more and more different from that idyllic, children's book ideas of seasons.
Written during the pandemic, this book doesn't dwell on it too much but uses it as a background - many people have spent the lockdown noticing nature... a bit more than before, because there was nothing else to do. - as Joe Shute puts it, "So many of the seasons which normally dictate our year were, in a matter of days, rendered meaningless. The football season, the fashion season..." When the lockdown started, "people spoke of the scales falling from their eyes and wondered if the birds always sang this loud, or had we just started listening to them?"
Joe Shute refers to the past a lot, but also uses many current testimonies, meeting people who work closely in and with nature. There is a sense that nature and the weather as we know it is different, and that it is changing so rapidly that it keeps surprising us - but the dramatic "hottest day of the year" (to be outdone the very next day) are increasingly becoming the norm. At the moment, it is still "an unfamiliar weatherscape"; but within a few decades, it is unlikely London will see any snow most years - with spring and autumn being longer, and summer and winter shortening. He describes in details the new patterns of birds and plants - birds coming back from their migration much earlier, leaving later, and plants surviving winter when they didn't use it. I spent many days in my garden this winter admiring my neighbours' rose tree - which had beautiful white flowers in December, that finally withered some time in February. He dives into the science behind these little things we notice but don't think of - puts it into perspective: we might have to start mowing our lawns through winter, something which culturally is... different and odd to us.
Despite the many harrowing facts, it didn't feel like a depressing read - it made me feel like going to the park and enjoying all these things while I can... It was beautifully written, an artful mix of personal stories, meeting with experts, science, history and literature, and nostalgia. I really enjoyed it and would certainly recommend it.
Free ARC from Netgalley.
Written during the pandemic, this book doesn't dwell on it too much but uses it as a background - many people have spent the lockdown noticing nature... a bit more than before, because there was nothing else to do. - as Joe Shute puts it, "So many of the seasons which normally dictate our year were, in a matter of days, rendered meaningless. The football season, the fashion season..." When the lockdown started, "people spoke of the scales falling from their eyes and wondered if the birds always sang this loud, or had we just started listening to them?"
Joe Shute refers to the past a lot, but also uses many current testimonies, meeting people who work closely in and with nature. There is a sense that nature and the weather as we know it is different, and that it is changing so rapidly that it keeps surprising us - but the dramatic "hottest day of the year" (to be outdone the very next day) are increasingly becoming the norm. At the moment, it is still "an unfamiliar weatherscape"; but within a few decades, it is unlikely London will see any snow most years - with spring and autumn being longer, and summer and winter shortening. He describes in details the new patterns of birds and plants - birds coming back from their migration much earlier, leaving later, and plants surviving winter when they didn't use it. I spent many days in my garden this winter admiring my neighbours' rose tree - which had beautiful white flowers in December, that finally withered some time in February. He dives into the science behind these little things we notice but don't think of - puts it into perspective: we might have to start mowing our lawns through winter, something which culturally is... different and odd to us.
Despite the many harrowing facts, it didn't feel like a depressing read - it made me feel like going to the park and enjoying all these things while I can... It was beautifully written, an artful mix of personal stories, meeting with experts, science, history and literature, and nostalgia. I really enjoyed it and would certainly recommend it.
Free ARC from Netgalley.
August 14, 2021
Well researched, informative and thought provoking. It made me think about the reality of the natural world around us and how it is changed.
It's great reflection on the changes, not full of doom but a warning.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine
It's great reflection on the changes, not full of doom but a warning.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine
February 16, 2022
A very well written but at times worrying look at the weather and the changing of official "seasons" in the wake of climate change and the effects of humans on the planet. Summers are getting warmer and wetter, winters are getting ..... er warmer and wetter, no snow, poor harvests, confused and dying wildlife.
Shute does a great job of collecting information and stories from a wide variety of sources, making each chapter interesting and engaging.
Running alongside the observations on weather and the seasons, is Shute's narrative of him and his wife trying to conceive. Whilst I sympathise (to some point, although self-confessed anti-natalist here!) with couples who can't conceive, I don't understand the level of cognitive dissonance someone like Shute must have in his head- bear witness to horrific acts of destruction to the planet purely from humans, then desire to add to that destruction by having a kid of your own? Weird! Maybe all couples think their kid will be the different "planet saving wunderkind"! Who knows?
Anyway, good nature writing here. Thoroughly enjoyed (except for the kid bit!)
Shute does a great job of collecting information and stories from a wide variety of sources, making each chapter interesting and engaging.
Running alongside the observations on weather and the seasons, is Shute's narrative of him and his wife trying to conceive. Whilst I sympathise (to some point, although self-confessed anti-natalist here!) with couples who can't conceive, I don't understand the level of cognitive dissonance someone like Shute must have in his head- bear witness to horrific acts of destruction to the planet purely from humans, then desire to add to that destruction by having a kid of your own? Weird! Maybe all couples think their kid will be the different "planet saving wunderkind"! Who knows?
Anyway, good nature writing here. Thoroughly enjoyed (except for the kid bit!)
January 15, 2022
A whimsical read interspersed with interesting facts and anecdotes. It was a somewhat diluted version of Bill Bryson.
He talks about the problems he and his wife are having in their attempts to conceive a child. Those sections felt as though they belong in a different book.
He talks about the problems he and his wife are having in their attempts to conceive a child. Those sections felt as though they belong in a different book.
August 12, 2021
This is a fascinating account of relationships between weather and people over time. Joe looks back at our national fixation on the weather and where it came from through historical accounts. Whilst also observing the present ever-changing relationships we have with many examples explored through interviews as a curious journalist. The final strand is his personal journey through infertility which is delicately discussed and linked to his reflections on the weather and seasons.
In writing about all of this the sciences and arts are mixed well. An observation from centuries old poetry and philosophy is juxtaposed with current research on biodiversity and seasonal changes. As a geographer, it was satisfying to see these viewpoints collaborated on to create an informed account.
My personal critique would be to reflect more on the future of these lost seasons and the weather as climate change is discussed but not nearly as much as the nostalgic view backwards. Although being written throughout the Covid pandemic I can certainly empathise and relate with the human desire to look at the present and reflect on the past.
In writing about all of this the sciences and arts are mixed well. An observation from centuries old poetry and philosophy is juxtaposed with current research on biodiversity and seasonal changes. As a geographer, it was satisfying to see these viewpoints collaborated on to create an informed account.
My personal critique would be to reflect more on the future of these lost seasons and the weather as climate change is discussed but not nearly as much as the nostalgic view backwards. Although being written throughout the Covid pandemic I can certainly empathise and relate with the human desire to look at the present and reflect on the past.
September 18, 2021
A clear-sighted and readable account of how our seasons are no longer the four seasons we've traditionally recognised over the centuries, but are rapidly involving into something new, and difficult for wildlife and ourselves to adjust to. Shute has travelled the kingdom, delved into literature, folklore, plant and animal life, traditional industries, personal reminiscences, and even noted how language has changed in describing the weather. In among, he reflects upon the difficulties he and his wife have in conceiving a child: which might sound gratuitous, but isn't, at all.
A book describing the warping of our seasons sounds grim. But it's engagingly written, thoughtful, and crammed with interesting detail. It's a book I'll remember reading for a very long time.
A book describing the warping of our seasons sounds grim. But it's engagingly written, thoughtful, and crammed with interesting detail. It's a book I'll remember reading for a very long time.
August 20, 2021
Is climate change real? In this book Shute takes the evidence that he sees around him and relates it to science. However the book is so much more than that. There is a passion about the environment and the ecology of Britain and how humans are affecting it, not just the seasons but the use of land. Interspersed are little vignettes from Shute's own life including the pain of infertility. It's a book which is hard to describe, it's just beautifully written and incredibly sad.
October 11, 2021
Essential reading for all, but particularly for climate change sceptics and deniers
December 23, 2022
A damning indictment on the scale of human-created climate change, and the havoc it’s creating not only in the UK but globally. Shute’s writing is a mixture of personal observation and scientific fact and presents us with the undeniable reality that the planet faces. I found the book a bit depressing mainly because I have lived and worked in the outdoors for nearly two decades and have in that time noticed a significant change in the weather. However, don’t let that put you off reading it, it is poignant and well worth the read.
August 7, 2022
A beautiful book with a hard message. Anyone reading this cannot deny the changes in our climate,and the subsequent effects on flora and fauna. It made me feel unbearably sad whilst also wanting to be closer to nature. So many of us are urban dwellers, but the benefits of being in green spaces are clear. Everyone should read this book, if they care about the land we all depend upon.
June 19, 2025
I'm not quite sure what to make of this book, and I may be a bit unfair only giving it 3 stars. It mainly deals with how climate change is affecting our traditional relationship with the seasons, and while it is very interesting in parts, I found it jumped around a lot, so I was never quite sure what specific point he was trying to make.
January 22, 2024
Artfully written, with a hint of nostalgia. A book to make you think of those moments crystallized in your mind of weather and nature, a snapshot in time.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews