In the first episode of Experiencing Epidemics podcast, Gašper Jakovac discusses an anonymous plague poem written in the wake of the 1636 Newcastle plague epidemic. This outbreak was far from the worst in the history of England, but for Newcastle, the north-eastern port city, it was devastating. What might poetry tell us about the people’s experiences of the plague and the prevailing attitudes towards infectious disease in early modern England? Get ready for thundering verse and God’s unquenchable wrath!

Hosted by Ian Hathaway