Television schedules for later today reveal what Byron called: A `strange coincidence', to use a phrase By which such things are settled now-a-days. First of all, few readers of Weather Eye will wish to miss the live coverage of the 29th Booker Prize announcement at 9 p.m. on Channel 4. Melvyn Bragg, apparently, will host proceedings, and there to provide a running commentary on the ebb and flow of odds will be the winner of the 1990 prize, Antonia Byatt. She won with her novel, Possession.
Now it so happens that the denouement of Ms Byatt's admirable book takes place in a cemetery in Sussex in the south of England. The protagonists are trying to exhume a box of letters from a grave when, as Byatt tells it, "there was a whining ripping noise . . . the sound of trees along the track and in the hedgerow whipping to and fro, tossing their crowns of trailing twigs from earth to sky to earth." In other words, there was a violent storm. The disturbance, according to the book, occurs in the early hours of October 16th, 1987.
In fact, there really was a storm in Britain on that day. A depression moving northwards across the English Channel during the night of October 15th/16th deepened explosively, and by the time it reached the English coast at Plymouth shortly after midnight, it had become the deepest October low for more than 150 years. During the following six hours winds averaged 75 m.p.h. in many parts, and gusts of over 100 m.p.h. were commonplace. Eighteen people died, 15 million trees were blown down, and thousands of roads and railway lines were blocked by debris. Virtually all of southeast England was deprived of electricity.
The "October Storm" so skilfully dramatised by A.S. Byatt is remembered both for its great ferocity and for the fact that shortly before its arrival the unfortunate Michael Fish assured television viewers that there was no danger whatsoever of a hurricane. He was right of course; the storm was not a hurricane, and had no connection with any such sub-tropical phenomenon - but it was of comparable proportions in terms of the strength of its associated winds. In the aftermath of the devastation the British public had little sympathy for Mr Fish's fine distinctions.
And this brings us to the other arm of our televisual coincidence. You will note, if you give the date a second glance, that tomorrow is also the 10th anniversary of the October Storm, and the occasion is being marked by an hour-long TV documentary tonight. The Great Storm is on BBC1 at 11.25 p.m.