Nothing experienced in human history, before or since, eclipses the terror, tragedy and scale of the Black Death, the disease which killed millions of people in Medieval Europe. The Scourging Angel tells the story of Britain immediately before, during and after this catastrophe. It charts the progress of the plague from its inception in the Near East, through Europe, to the moment it strikes the south coast of England, and its subsequent devastating march northwards through the British Isles. It provides a full and original account of the aftermath of the pandemic. Against a backdrop of empty homes, half-built cathedrals and pestilence-saturated cities, we see communities gripped by unimaginable fear, shock and paranoia: infected houses are boarded up with survivors still inside; desperate tenants steal clothes from the corpses of their dead neighbours; men driven mad through grief roam the countryside while the invisible contagion incubates within them. By the time it completed its pestilential journey through the British Isles in 1350, the Black Death had left half the population dead. Despite the startling toll of life, physical devastation and sheer human chaos it inflicted, local and royal government showed an impressive resilience, trade continued and rural estates recovered, and within a decade an English king came close to seizing the French throne. Amidst disaster many found opportunity, as a new society was forged out of the embers of pre-plague existence: the market value of labour increased; decimated cities were re-energised by new migrants; and attempts were made by the privileged in parliament to put a stop to the consequent improvement in wealth and status enjoyed by so many across the country. The story of the Black Death is ultimately one of survival. Challenging widely-accepted theories about the plague's spread and effects, The Scourging Angel is the definitive account of the British Isles during the greatest catastrophe in human history.
Born in 1978, Benedict Gummer took a Starred Double First in History at Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he was an exhibitioner and scholar. He lives and works in Ipswich and London where he runs a corporate responsibility consultancy. The Scourging Angel is his first book.
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