Weather forecasts once gave Britons something safe to chat about. Not any more | Andy Beckett

Our once-mild climate is increasingly extreme – and how we talk about it is now another front in the culture warsIn this fragmented but supposedly mild country, watching and talking about the weather forecast is meant to be a reassuring, unifying activity. Collectively, we have created and maintained a national climate narrative of small disappointments and pleasures. The first weather forecaster to appear on British TV, George Cowling, made his debut on the BBC in January 1954, predicting