Bruce Campbell argues that interactions between climate and disease during the fourteenth-century Black Death can inform insights into Covid-19 and alter historians’ understanding of the nature of historical change.
Historians’ Watch
The Death and Life of a Great British Trading Estate
Lisa Edwards explores the troubled history of Slough Trading Estate, a site that acted as a short-lived central depot intended to repair vehicles deployed during the First World War and played a pioneering role in Britain’s industrial economy.
The legacy of pandemics in the community: 1918 and 2020
What can the British provincial press tell us about the way pandemics have historically been experienced at a local level? Andrew Jackson proposes that such coverage offers vital insights into community-led responses to global public health crises in 1918 and 2020.
Taking Exception
In the second of a series on ‘Radical History after Brexit’, Charlotte Lydia Riley reflects on British exceptionalism, and asks how historians can work with it.
The Black Death, COVID-19 and Universal Basic Income
Epidemics are “moments of fluidity when parts of existing societies are laid bare as not fit for purpose”. Looking at the history of the Black Death, Jane Whittle asks whether our current crisis could lead to new solutions to entrenched inequality and poverty.
Behaviour Change, Public Health and ‘The Public’
How did behaviour change become an integral part of public health strategies in the twentieth century? And what insights can this history offer in tackling the unique challenge of Covid-19?
Solitude and Covid-19
These are exceptional times. But the dangers of solitude are a very old theme. Barbara Taylor and David Vincent reflect on the fine historical line between loneliness and solitude in light of Covid-19.
