The Weather Experiment

Richly researched, exciting… It is both scientific and cultural history, of prizewinning potential and as fresh and exhilarating throughout as a strong sea breeze. – James McConnachie * Sunday Times *Superbly researched and grippingly written… Moore is at least as interested in the personalities and their rivalries, and the sheer spendour and catastrophies of weather itself - storms and shipwrecks, heatwaves and floods (all vividly described) - as by the science. And he weaves it together, deftly picking up threads left dangling in earlier chapters, darting across continents, embracing swashbuckling sea captains and fastidious bureaucrats, penny-pinching politians and mad inventors, with as sharp an eye for eccentricity, absurdity and tragedy as for genius. The result is a panorama of the entire Victorian era. – Richard Morrison * The Times *The Weather Experiment is a genuinely gripping read and demonstrates how scientific ideas can come ahead of the time – Gavin Pretor, 4 stars * Mail on Sunday *Moore is the rare science writer who can describe dew point so poetically you feel you’re with him in a twinkling field of white clover on a cool summer morning… Evocative and full of wisdom for modern times. – New York Times Book ReviewThe Weather Experiment is not the first book to have been written about FitzRoy…but Moore’s achievement is to imbue him and his work with palpable narrative life, while surrounding him with a large supporting cast of contemporaries * The Times Literary Supplement *A skilful, detailed account of a complex story, in which scientific advances are far from inevitable in a world of flawed humans and bad luck… Moore’s engaging, often surprising work of storytelling, written with such care and pleasure, is a fine tribute – Daniel Hahn * Spectator *Impressive – Ben East * Guardian Weekly *Thought-provoking… Rich and informative … Arnold Toynbee once railed against the view that ‘History is just one damned thing after another’. Recording weather data day in, day out must feel like one damn temperature reading after another. Yet Moore has skilfully converted decades of routine monotony into a gripping tale of derring-do. – Patricia Fara * Literary Review, Book of the Month *Elegantly constructed … The Weather Experiment surprises constantly, often by weaving together the famous and the obscure – Mike Jay * Wall St Journal *Prepare for turbulence in this history of Britain’s seminal contribution to weather forecasting * Nature *

Peter Moore is a writer, journalist and lecturer in creative writing at the University of Oxford. He is the author of five works of history, including the Sunday Times bestsellers The Weather Experiment and Endeavour. His latest book is A Dangerous Game, a new biography of Thomas Cochrane.