Charles Dickens was the first to use the popular expression “the queen’s weather” in print, in a humorous account of the opening of parliament on 4 February 1851: “The sky was cloudless; a brilliant sun gave to it that cheering character which – from the good fortune Her Majesty experiences whenever she travels, or appears publicly – has passed into a proverb, as ‘The Queen’s Weather’.”
Dickens may have been writing tongue-in-cheek. Two diaries from the Met Office’s archives describe broken cloud and near-freezing conditions in London – “A dry, bitter day,” Mr A Edwin of Islington called it.
