Daniel Defoe’s London Journal of the Plague Year: insights for the year 2020
PUBLISHED in 1722, A Journal of the Plague Year, by Daniel Defoe, is full of relevance in the year of COVID-19. Not because the diseases are similar: they aren't. But because many elements of the story ring true across the centuries. It's believed that Defoe's extraordinary novel may have been based on the real life journal of the experiences of his uncle in London during the plague. Certainly Defoe was only five years old in the plague year of 1665, but the document is so persuasively authentic it must surely have had a significant foundation in…