The Black Death

The Black Death remains the greatest disaster to befall humanity, killing about half the population of the planet in the 14th century. John Hatcher recreates everyday medieval life in a parish in Suffolk, from which an exceptional number of documents survive. This enables us to view events through the eyes of its residents, revealing in unique detail what it was like to live and die in these terrifying times. With scrupulous attention to historical accuracy, John Hatcher describes what the parishioners experienced, what they knew and what they believed. His narrative is peopled with characters developed from the villagers named in the actual town records and a series of dramatic scenes portray how contemporaries must have experienced the momentous events.

a gripping read -- part historical inquiry, part novel INDEPENDENT This totally absorbing book presents the best account ever written about the worst event to have ever befallen the British Isles -- Simon Winchester The author is praised as a masterly social historian and the book as colourful as an episode of Midsomer Murders FINANCIAL TIMES Conveys with great effectiveness the intensity of medieval English devotions and their deep preoccupation with the business of dying. Reading this book I was reminded time and again of the Tibetan Book of the Dead -- Will Self EVENING STANDARD John Hatcher, a distinguished economic historian, sets out to attempt something new: the describe the plague in terms of one of these hard-hit communities... more than most of the purely historical accounts have given us LITERARY REVIEW the sense of creeping doom, panic and rampant superstition is conveyed with a novelist's skill GUARDIAN A compelling tale of ordinary people faced with a horror beyond imagining SUNDAY BUSINESS POST

The tragedy of that period of history we now call the plague years has been told many times and in many different ways. Whether it be a strictly factual history such as Philip Ziegler`s `The Black Death` or the excellent Karen Maitland`s `Company of Liars the history of this period has been well documented and yet John Hatcher`s book `The Black Death` is a welcome and highly worthwhile addition.
Perhaps a clue to the absorbing nature of this book is given in the subtitle:`The Intimate Story of a Village in Crisis,1345-1350. In this book the author has chosen to concentrate on one particular village. His reasons for doing so are spelled out in the preface. By so individualizing the history the author has managed to create an empathy with the people so terribly afflicted. The beginning of each chapter is preceded by a precis of the hist-orical facts and then proceeds to use those facts as the basis for a fictional narrative of the village and its inhabitants. The bare facts of the plague are terrible enough but by concentrating on the sories of indiduals the author is able to emphasise the personal tragedies involved.
With an agonising inevitability the vilagers await their fate. A drip feed of news reaches the village from the outside world. Emotions and reactions are charted. Will the plague by-pass the village? Will prayer protect them? If it does strike the village can they survive it? Some seek solace in prayer, some in beer, some seek a physical escape and take to the road. In the end the plague strikes. It is indiscriminate and it is deastating.
The death toll throughout the British Isles has been variously put as between 23% and 45% (the latter being the figure for beneficed clergy). Whatever the true figure the results were catastrophic for the population. Such a dramatic fall in population led to a new questioning by people of society and their place in it. Suddenly survivors who had barely scratcheed a livingbecame inheritors of land and found new responsibilities. Those who survived and had been the largest landholders found they did not have enough labour to work the land. Many began to question their faith in an all-powerful God. How or why did He let it happen to them-the faithful?
The plague precipitated social change. New power structures were instituted. But more than anything John Hatcher`s book gives us an idea of what it was like to live at such a time. Yet despite the horror people did survive and without the help of teams of counsellors. - Bob

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The Intimate Story of a Village in Crisis, 1345-50

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