Hello everyone and welcome back to the history of England.

Episode 439, London Reborn. Last time we heard about 1666,

we saw a year of mixed emotions in the second Anglo-Dutch War and a year of decidedly unmixed emotions in a London burned to sticks.

Now, I had hoped that you and I would get through this episode of dashing off something about the rebuilding of London, blah, blah, blah,

and then get back to the war.

Sadly, that isn't going to happen.

I got rabbit hold, and this is all about exciting plans,

breaking the photosynthetic constraint,

property development, home insurance, so sorry.

Anyway, on Friday this month of September, Ejohn Evelyn took himself to walk through London.

He was of course gutted by what he saw when he reached the ruined St. Paul's, with its fallen walls and melted bells,

and everyone he met was wandering around inner days.

The people who now walked about in the ruins appeared like men in some dismal desert,

to which was added the stench that came from some poor creatures body beds other combustible goods.

The ground and air, smoke and fiery vapour continued so intense that my hair was almost singed and my feet insufferably sore.

Nor could one possibly have known where one was, but by the ruins of some church or hall

that had some remarkable tower left standing. The death toll from the fire was officially

six. But that of course must be nonsense, wasn't? It must simply reflect people wealthy enough to be counted.

The poorer sections of society in the cellars and packed tenements,

they must have died in far greater numbers.

As an example of that, a 15-year-old schoolboy made his way to St. Paul's,

almost his last experience as it happens, because he came

...