The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time

by John Kelly

We never say, ‘Tomorrow I will go to the country’; we say, ‘Dumani, vaju in compagna’—‘Tomorrow I am going to the country.’ How can you fail to be pessimistic in a country where the future tense of the verb does not exist?”

The west coast of England is shaped like a galloping pig in profile. North Wales forms the pig’s floppy ear, central Wales its snout, and the Bristol Channel, below Wales, the space between the pig’s jaw and its outstretched, galloping leg.