It has been icy cold this week, with snow in places, but if it’s any comfort conditions were far worse 60 years ago. On this day in 1963 a two-day blizzard began that virtually cut off Scotland from England. The day before, a temperature of minus 22.2C had been recorded at Braemar in the Highlands, the coldest of the long freeze that winter.
It was not just the north that suffered. The southeast of England was also badly hit by blizzards and abandoned vehicles were strewn across roads all over the country, with trains trapped in snowdrifts and ferries having to steer through waters teeming with ice floes.
Seagulls were frozen in ice at Poole Harbour, while Heathrow airport, known then as London airport, was