We may be enjoying the mildest of Novembers, but a new book of vintage photographs reminds Londoners of the excitement of a snow day.
Drawn from multiple archives, and dating back a century, London In The Snow depicts familiar corners of the capital frosted over and muffled under a white blanket.
From Native American Sioux tobogganing on Hampstead Heath, to skating on the Thames, the black and white images of snowball fights and old fashioned ski gear have been collected by Hoxton Mini Press.
One image shows an intrepid skier taking to the slopes of Kite Hill on Christmas Eve 1938, while another sees London Zoo's Head keeper Buck Jones with Rusty the elephant back in 1958.
It features an introduction by journalist Lucy Davies who writes: "To spend a while with the photographs, with the gutsy boys testing the ice on a lake on Hampstead Heath, or the businessman in his plus fours pulling his daughter through Regent’s Park on a toboggan, or the children pelting each other with snowballs in the playgrounds of Chiswick and Catford – is to be dunked to your middle in what I can only describe as snow-euphoria. And a shout out, before I go, for the milkman pictured on New Year’s Eve 1962, who, cigarette in mouth, is delivering his glass produce on a pair of razor-thin skis."
London In The Snow is out in hardback on November 25 price £16.95 and is part of the Vintage Britain series dedicated to rediscovering the best British photographs from the 20th Century.
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