Few people who were lucky enough to witness the spectacle of a total eclipse of the sun fail
to be moved by the event.
The last time a solar eclipse was seen on mainland Britain was in 1927, when more than 3
million people travelled north to stand under the path of totality as it passed over Lancasshire
and Yorkshire.
Unfortunately the clouds spoilt the view for most spectators but Virginia Woolf was among the lucky few to
witness the full spectacle.
"It became darker and darker as the beginning of a violent storm", she wrote in her diary of that Sunday
afternoon on June 29. "The light sank and sank; we kept saying this is a shadow;and we thought now it is
over - this is one shadow; when suddenly the light went out.
We had fallen. It was extinct. There was no colour. The Earth was dead. That was the astonishing; and next
when as if a ball had rebounded, the cloud took colour on itself; and so the light came back....
Then it was all over till 1999.
Even the assembled scientists and journalists in the grounds of Gigglewick Grammer School were moved
by the drama of the event.
"There in the heavens hung the jet black disc of the moon", wrote Dr W H Stevenson, at the time president
of the British Astromical Society. "All around its edge was a narrow ring of vivid flame....one of the most
beautiful of its kind that I have seen".
A journalist from the Daily Express was even more in awe of the vision:
"I caught my breath as I looked up. The grey shadows near me were really men and women but looked they
looked like ghosts. Their faces were dry and dead. This, I thought is what it must be like to be dead."
"All around the north and south, the horizon glowed like a weird unearthly double sunrise. The wind fell
calm and there was silence. The temperature dropped quite fast."
"Just for a moment I felt a touch of fear, until a jet flew high above us leaving a vapour trail that glowed
by reflected light, reminding me that we lived in a rational world."
The last total solar eclipse in the British Isles took place on 30th June 1954, when
totality skimmed the northern-most reaches of the Shetlands. Michael Lester-Cribb, then a young music teacher
at Fettes School in Edinburgh was probably one of only two people to witness the whole event.
"I watched in awe, the entire process, about 50 seconds I think it was probable that a man standing
outside a nearby Crost and myself were the only people to benefit from a miraculous break in the clouds."
This will stay in my memory forever.
The next total eclipse will be on August 21, 2017k
ECLIPSE
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