By the calendar it is winter, but the days are longer and the birds are singing. Snowdrops are scattered around the front door, and crocuses have already broken through on my lawn. Mostly they are slim and pale, but when the sun has shone they have opened their purple cups to its warmth. Virginia Woolf compared the yellow anther within to a lit match. 

In defiance of the calendar, spring shows its face. Hellebores droop with dappled flowers. Kneeling in damp earth to trim back their old leaves reveals their profusion. Catkins are on the trees, magnolia buds are splitting with promise, the scent of the daphne cuts the cold air, and the blade-like leaves of spring bulbs, ‘the green fuse that drives the flower’, push up along the grass bank beside the road.

How hard it is not to feel one’s spirits lift, and how curious that we should still be so influenced by seasons. Technology has weakened the links between the weather and our survival and even our comfort. Paul Fussell’s The Great War and Modern Memory, which showed how men of all ranks understood the........

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