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Hello and welcome to The Rusted History, the podcast that knows its plague from its pestilence.

Do you know? I'm reading that from script and basically plague is pestilence, isn't it?

Whatever. Anyway, moving on. I'm Tom Holland. I'm a historian of the ancient world.

And I am Dominic Sambrooke, historian of the moderns. Tom, that introduction was seamless.

Beginning is I hope we carry on. Today, what we're going to ask is what with pestilence or plague,

it depends on what you want to call it. Statue smashing, the government on the verge of

treating Christmas as a time of solemn humiliation, are we living through a 17th century moment?

...