by DR HUGH KEARNEY Reader in History,
University of Sussex
From the 14th-century Black Death to the Great Plague of London in the 17th century, plague was a regular phenomenon in these islands. This is borne out in Professor J. F. D. Shrewsbury's A History of Bubonic Plague in the British Isles, a major work of medical history with whose formidable scholarship, Dr Kearney argues, social and economic historians must now come to terms