We constantly talk about learning the lessons of the past — if we can understand what went wrong at calamitous moments, we are forewarned and forearmed. There’s nowhere better to start than in our own city.
Everyone knows about 1666 and the Great Fire of London. But the city has suffered from at least nine other fires, all catastrophic neighbourhood or city-wide conflagrations. The last great flood of London occurred in 1928. Pandemics have hit the city five times, including the Black Death, the Great Plague and most recently Covid-19.
