Helm, SarahHall, Faber, 2025, Hardback £20, 368 pp., ISBN 978‐0‐57‐138355‐9
Nell Hartney · Weather · 2025
Britain’s only named wind, the Helm, is the main character in this beautiful new book by Sarah Hall. To call the wind a character is not an exaggeration; in this story, Helm is playful, capricious and impulsive, a personality with an arch, egotistical tone. Helm has seen it all, from the formation of the atmosphere and landscapes, to the arrival of humans on Helm’s mountain at the Eden Valley in Cumbria. Pleasingly for Helm, the humans pay attention to the weather, and before long identify Helm. So begins the unique relationship between humanity and this awe-inspiring wind, an ever-changing and always evolving relationship that is explored with stunning beauty in this novel. The Helm wind is local to Cumbria and is most common in the late winter and spring. It is a strong northeasterly wind that blows on the southwest slopes of Cross Fell and occurs when the horizontal component of airflow is almost perpendicular to the hills and there is a stable layer of air about 600m above the summit of the range. When the Helm blows, a heavy bank of cloud rests just above the Cross Fell range, and a slender roll of cloud appears above the foot of the fell. A detailed description of the Helm and how it forms can be found, for example, in the 2014 Weather article by Lucy Veale and Georgina Endfield (2014). This unique wind takes on many different forms in the book, when viewed through the eyes of humans through the ages. Helm is a god to be worshipped, a force to be placated, a meteorological mystery and wonder, and, finally, a harbinger of the destruction that humanity is wreaking on the planet. Throughout the book, we move between different characters from different times in history and see how their lives are intertwined with Helm in various ways. Weather readers might particularly enjoy Thomas Bodger, a nineteenth century Royal Meteorological Society meteorologist who is fascinated by Helm and intends to ‘capture its very spirit and record it in detail for the Quarterly’. I also liked the character of Dr. Selima Sutar, a modern-day researcher who is measuring plastic pollution in Helm and perhaps witnessing the beginning of the end of this extraordinary phenomenon. Helm, who has seen so much change over the course of the book, is now starting to feel ‘a bit wrong’. Our impact on the planet could be summed up by what is happening to Helm: ‘Busy, careless humans; you probably didn’t mean to hurt Helm, but – it’s a relationship’. That relationship between humans and the planet is a familiar theme, but this imaginative exploration of our interdependence is unlike anything I’ve seen before. The language in the book is as unique as Helm itself; the vocabulary is unusual and somehow otherworldly, and so poetic that you hear it in your mind. Sarah Hall’s writing is truly beautiful and, here, she has produced a book that is as captivating as Helm itself.