Looking outside (Photo – Melanie Hooks)
Daniel Defoe, whose Robinson Crusoe is said to be the most widely translated book in history (after the Bible) died on this date, April 24, in 1731.
By Reg Green
More relevantly Defoe wrote a harrowing book, part fact, part fiction, about the Great Plague of London of 1665-6 in which somewhere between 70,000 and 100,000 people died out of a total population of 450,000.
Until a few weeks ago bubonic plague, whose source was fleas, was the horror that people referred to when they meant an uncontrollable, unknownable, unnatural calamity. In that short time Covid-19 has replaced it.
Until about the same time also the saying, “May you live in interesting times” was something people said frivolously as a way of hoping you weren’t bored with life. A lot of the humor has gone out of it, hasn’t it?
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