麻豆约拍

Melvyn Bragg explores how alderman John Ivie saved the plague ravaged town of Salisbury in 1627. With extracts from Ivie's written personal accounts.

Ivie describes the differing reactions of Salisbury's 6,000 inhabitants in the face of impending disaster.

Ivie was responsible for the welfare of the city's poor in times of crisis and so his account of the plague is very closely focused on the powerless. In terms of describing in minute detail how a community responded to a plague outbreak, it's one of the most informative documents of its kind.

With Dr Justin Champion, Reader in the History of Early Modern Ideas at Royal Holloway and Bedford College, University of London and Professor Paul Slack, Principal of Linacre College Oxford and author of The Impact of Plague in Tudor and Stuart England.