The Guardian view on the Shipping Forecast at 100: the radio’s prayer | Editorial

‘Across the Bay of Biscay and back for tea’. The weather bulletin has impressed poets and popstars and turn out to be our nationwide lullaby

It is no shock that the Delivery Forecast, which turned 100 on New Yr’s Day, is likely one of the cultural touchstones of our occasions. The climate is our nationwide obsession, in any case. Alan Bennett and John Prescott have learn it, whereas poets Seamus Heaney, Sylvia Plath and Carol Ann Duffy have been impressed by it, along with musicians Tears for Fears, Radiohead and Blur. To mark its centenary, BBC Radio four devoted a day to rejoice this twice-daily bulletin and its place in the British psyche.

In her diary, in January 1925, Virginia Woolf reported that it was “all gale & flood; these words are actual” over New Yr in East Sussex. And so it was a century later. Listening to the familiar refrains – Dogger, Fisher, German Bight – while wind and rain lashed outdoors, was a heat tub for the soul. Gavin and Stacey’s Ruth Jones read that day’s report as Nessa. But with elements of the nation experiencing terrible flooding, it was a reminder of the risks that led to its creation. This combination of consolation and distant drama goes to the guts of what has come to be referred to as “the nation’s& lullaby”.

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