This is not the first summer London has experienced the effects of a distant volcano.  In April 1816, Mount Tambora on the island of Sumbawa, Indonesia erupted in one of the largest volcanic events of the past ten thousand years.  Clouds of gas, dust and ash were launched into the upper atmosphere and over the next eighteen months, spread out across the globe. 

The result was massive devastation across North America and Europe during the summer of 1816.  Freak snows, crop failure and bizarre heatwaves coupled with falling ash caused riots, fatalities and famine.  The West of England and Ireland experienced heavy rainfall throughout the summer, recording rain on 142 days out of 153.  The average temperature in London was just over 13 degrees C.  The city was subject to rioting by people who could not afford the food being sold at inflated prices.  Ships arrived in June with stories of sea-ice near the Faroes.  The Lake District had snow in July and in September, London's lakes froze. 

From tragedy, came some of the best-known art of the Romantic period.  The spectacular sunsets recorded by Turner at this time are not the work of his imagination: they are the work of the airborne ash.  Byron, in his alpine phase was inspired to write some of his darkest and most heroic poetry, and in deepest Switzerland during endless dark, frozen days and a state of national panic, a young woman named Mary Shelley began to write the story of a creature who could not understand the world around him: Frankenstein.