'Hello! Wintertime'

Pedestrians hustle briskly through a snowy George Square in Glasgow, while others stop to gawk at a stricken carthorse.

A blanket of snow can make a familiar landscape beautifully alien for a day or two, bringing a quiet peace to Glasgow’s George Square in this film. Yet the sludge and slush on busier streets taints the times as grey and bleak. February 1929 was particularly cold: these scenes of frozen Glasgow were taken for the local edition of newsreel Topical Budget, replacing scenes of “Arctic London”.