Sunday Feature: Breaking the Ice

Seán Williams explores lake skating in culture through the centuries, examining references in painting, poetry, classical music and popular songs. Skating has mostly been sociable, and sometimes idealised as solitary, but the fun and sense of freedom can shatter if it does not thaw, and stories of ice skating are those of life and death, or flirtation. Seán chats to the Museum of London's senior fashion curator Beatrice Behlen, and hears from a spontaneous choir of Cambridge students