‘Vivid . . . a rich mixture of imagination and research’
Daily Telegraph
 

If the story that struck the Grand Banks off Newfoundland in October 1991 was The Perfect Storm, the fire that destroyed London in September 1666 was The Perfect Fire.

A fire needs only three things: a spark to ignite it, and the fuel and oxygen to feed it. In 1666, a ten-month drought had turned London into a tinderbox. The older parts of the city were almost entirely composed of wood-frame buildings and shanties. The riverside wharves were stack with wood, coal, oil, tallow, hemp, pitch, brandy, and almost very other combustible material known to seventeenth century man. On 2 September 1666, London ignited. Over the next five days the gale blew without interruption and the resulting firestorm destroyed the whole city.

THE DREADFUL JUDGEMENT tells the true, human story of the Great Fire of London through the eyes of the individuals caught up in it. It is a historical story combining modern knowledge of the physics of fire, forensics and arson investigation with the moving eye-witness accounts to produce a searing depiction of the terrible reality of the Great Fire of London and its impact on those who lived through it.

‘Conjures up the vanished city . . . Hanson writes with knowledge and verve, as if making a television documentary on a natural disaster . . .informative and lively account’
The Sunday Times

‘Hanson’s prose is animated by the ferocious energy of the fire and seems to be guided by its inexorable movement. He creates the literary equivalent of the special effects in a disaster movie… compelling’
Daily Telegraph

‘Popular narrative history at its best, well researched, imaginatively and dramatically written… the author marshals his story and his mass of contemporary quotation with great skill’
The Times Literary Supplement

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