Church House were delighted to see the uniquely wonderful Chalke Valley History Festival back in action and to be able to sponsor a talk there once again. Not just because of the unfailing quality of the programme of speakers Jane Pleydell-Bouverie and her team lay on, but also because of the Chalke Valley History Trust, which owns the festival and which supports an educational programme of history studies for schools. 

To some, the 1960s may seem like ‘history’, to others it may seem as if that era has only just disappeared in the rear-view mirror of time. Author and social historian Juliet Nicolson threw some fascinating new light and some surprising parallels on an extraordinary period via a long-forgotten event, the great freeze of Winter 1962, when the country seized up for a period of ten weeks.

To a packed audience of CH guests and members of the public, Juliet provided a revelatory, and partly personal, perspective on the events of the period, all chronicled in her latest book: ‘Frostquake – The frozen winter of 1962 and how Britain emerged a different country’