Britain and the 1918-19 Influenza Pandemic: A Dark Epilogue

1918-1919 saw the end of the Great War and the eruption of the largest epidemic in history, a pandemic of flu. Influenza struck half the world's population, killing 50-100 million people in less than a year. This work is the first examination of Britain's experience of the pandemic. But this is not only history, as well as telling the story of the "Spanish" influenza the book looks forward and considers the possibilities of future pandemics, including the dangers of bird flu. A "total" history, this book ranges from the spread of the 1918-1919 pandemic, to the basic biology of influenza, and how epidemics and pandemics are possible, to consider the demographic, social, economic and political impacts of such a massive pandemic, including the cultural dimensions of naming, blame, metaphors, memory, the media, art and literature. In many countries the pandemic precipitated the creation and expansion of public healthcare as nothing else ever could. Despite this, in subsequent times, the role and impact of thepandemic has been overlooked, an oversight this work redresses. The British story of the pandemic has never been told. Britain and the1918-19 Influenza Pandemictells that story but also places it in its fuller context with extensive material from around the world. The book provides the most recent tally of the pandemic's impact, including the vast mortality, as well as questioning the apparent origins of the pandemic. An inter-disciplinary study, it stretches from history and geography through to medicine in order to convey the full magnitude of the first global medical "disaster" of the twentieth century.