The newspapers were impressed, too. The News of the World thought it “impossible to rate overmuch the blessing of the holiday” and The Times welcomed a Holy Day with “a reasonable prospect of fine weather”. Mind you, that can no longer be guaranteed, after an experiment between 1965 and 1970 led to the holiday being shifted, in 1971, to the last Monday in August. This brought it almost into autumn, and many a summer fête has been washed out or blown away by early gales as a result. Why was it moved? The responsible minister, Edward Heath, told MPs it was part of “a general desire that everything possible should be done to alleviate the growing congestion at the peak of the holiday season”. Heath said this would be better achieved by a holiday later in August. At the same time, the government scrapped Whit Monday as a day off (it is a moveable feast determined by the date of Easter) and replaced it with a fixed holiday on the last Monday in May.