As snow brings the UK to a standstill we track the effect of the white stuff on the the literary imagination, from Shelley to Apsley Cherry-Garrard and Sean O'Brien. Charlie English, author of The Snow Tourist, talks about the history of the big freeze, Chris Moran reads Louis MacNeice's Snow, and we suggest some books you might want to curl up with as you wait for the the thaw to set in. We also discuss the category winners of the year's first book prizes – the Costas.
Reading list
Fiction
A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens (Vintage Classics) or in an illustrated version by Quentin Blake (Pavilion)
The Call of the Wild, White Fang, and Other Stories , by Jack London (Penguin Classics)
Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow by Peter Hoeg (Harvill)
The People's Act of Love, by James Meek (Canongate)
Non-fiction
Cherry: A Life of Apsley Cherry-Garrard by Sara Wheeler (Vintage)
The Snow Tourist, by Charlie English (Portobello)
Poetry
The Drowned Book, by Sean O'Brien (Picador)
The Collected Poems, by Louis MacNeice (Faber)
Children
The Dark is Rising, Susan Cooper (Bodley Head)
The Snowman, by Raymond Briggs (Puffin)
The Long Winter, by Laura Ingalls-Wilder (HarperPaperbacks)
The Costa Category winners
Brooklyn by Colm Toibin (Viking)
The Ask and the Answer by Patrick Ness (Walker)
Beauty by Raphael Selbourne (Tindall Street)
A Scattering by Christopher Reid (Arete)
The Strangest Man, by Graham Farmelo (Faber)
