The Scourging Angel: The Black Death in the British Isles
by Benedict Gummer

* 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.

Reviews

An engaging if somewhat eccentric book… rarely fails to hold the reader’s attention
Richard Barber (Literary Review)

Not only is Gummer’s book a treasure chest of detail...it is also full of shrewd observations. The Scourging Angel is an elegant and self-assured debut.
Dominic Sandbrook (Telegraph)

Benedict Gummer’s highly impressive book charts the subsequent spread of the disease in meticulous and terrible detail
Noel Malcolm (Sunday Telegraph Seven)

[A] glorious picture of 14th-century England...a work of self-evident scholarship...this truly impressive work of narrative and interpretative history. In Mr Gummer’s elegant prose, with its ultra-precise vocabulary, Britain in the mid 14th century comes alive: you see it, hear it, smell it
 (Country Life)

Benedict Gummer’s study…establishes the facts more thoroughly than any of his predecessors, and uses a wider range of sources than most of them…Benedict Gummer is a Parliamentary candidate for Ipswich. Some reviewers have suggested that it would be a loss to literature if he were to be elected. But I should prefer to say that it would be a gain to the House of Commons.
Jonathan Sumption (TLS)

A terrific debut, brimming with life and detail. Read it, and then check your armpits for swellings, just to be sure...
Dominic Sandbrook (Prospect)