The ‘Horrid Popish Plot’, as it was called, was an anti-Catholic conspiracy that flared up in the 1670s; a classic example of fake news infecting the public imagination. Anna Abney examines the bizarre and sometimes shocking events. ‘Since Hell is broke loose, and the Press set a work,By Jesuit, by Jew, by Christian, and Turk; […]
Plague and pandemic: how we responded then and now
The idea for Anna Abney’s debut novel came from the “wider implications” of the Plague of 1665: the responses to the disease and its social effects. Then, editing her book during Covid, she was struck by the similarities between the ways the two pandemics affected people, as she tells Historia. I was teaching Daniel Defoe’s […]