‘Around the Bay of Biscay and back for tea’. The weather bulletin has inspired poets and popstars and become our national lullaby

It is no surprise that the Shipping Forecast, which turned 100 on New Year’s Day, is one of the cultural touchstones of our times. The weather is our national obsession, after all. Alan Bennett and John Prescott have read it, while poets Seamus Heaney, Sylvia Plath and Carol Ann Duffy have been inspired by it, along with musicians Tears for Fears, Radiohead and Blur. To mark its centenary, BBC Radio 4 devoted a day to celebrate 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 exact” over New Year in East Sussex. And so it was a century later. Listening to the familiar refrains – Dogger, Fisher, German Bight – while wind and rain lashed outside, was a warm bath for the soul. Gavin and Stacey’s Ruth Jones read that day’s report as Nessa. But with parts of the country experiencing terrible flooding, it was a reminder of the dangers that led to its creation. This mixture of consolation and distant drama goes to the heart of what has come to be known as “the nation’s lullaby”.