Philip Eden wrote:
http://www.climate-uk.com/Hotdays.htm

Warning: you might need sunglasses gr

What surprises me is how very exceptional the '60s and early-'70s
were, coinciding with the period when my perceptions of the
British climate were becoming hardwired. It may (though
probably doesn't) explain my antipathy towards hot weather now.

Philip Eden

Thanks for that one too Philip.

What surprised me about that chart was how high the numbers of both
warm and hot days were in recent summers which this post-1970 person
considers poor, eg 1998 and 2002 (both no 80F days here). It looks like
it's more than 30 years since the SE had a summer as bad as those two
were here.
I think if you made a graph like that for somewhere outside the SE,
1995 would stick out far more prominently.

The fact that 2002 in Luton did better than 2003 round here (55 warm, 8
hot*, I'm hardly in the north here in Shrewsbury) just shows how
untypical the southeast is of Britain in general.

*figures for Shawbury, from weatheronline.co.uk

Edmund