Sunday Feature: Breaking the Ice
BBC Radio 3
Seán Williams began this entertaining synopsis of the place of skating in (mostly) European culture (9 January) at Skaters’ Meadow in Cambridge – simply a patch of ice-free marsh at the time of recording but, we were assured, a social hotbed in its great days of a century and a quarter ago. Male skaters were admitted for 6d (old pence – women got in free) and bygone reportage suggested that it may have had the edge on the modern-day rink at Parker’s Piece to which our host eventually repaired.