Böcker av Stephen Basdeo

People have always imagined that human history has an end point. The way this has been imagined has varied according to time, place, and culture. In medieval England people lived in expectation of the Biblical Day of Judgment, when the world would end and people would be judged by God according to their sins. In art and literature from the early modern period onwards, the most frightening scenes from the Bible were depicted to warn people of the dangers of sin. As the power of the church waned and society became more secular, "new" threats emerged such as pandemics and otherworldly beings which threatened to destroy humanity, and whose tales were told time and again in popular culture. This book examines stories of the apocalypse in popular culture from the medieval period to the twenty-first century; it is a history of the end of the world.

A humorous critique of the trends of turning serious subjects into comedy."Nothing now succeeds unless it's in the comic line. We have comic Latin grammars, and comic Greek grammars; indeed, I don't know but what English grammar, too, is a comedy altogether. All our tragedies are made into comedies by the way they are performed; and no work sells without comic illustrations to it. I have brought out several new comic works, which have been very successful. For instance, The Comic Wealth of Nations; The Comic Parliamentary Speeches ... I even propose to bring out a Comic Whole Duty of Man. All these books sell well: they do admirably for the nurseries of the children of the aristocracy. In fact they are as good as manuals and text-books."Those words from best-selling Victorian novelist George W.M. Reynolds were a nod to the work of a writer named Gilbert Abbot á Beckett. Beckett loved history and writing about history but he was also something of a comedian. Then one day he had a bright idea: What if history could be funny and still be factual and educate people? He resolved to start writing a funny history book which he named The Comic History of England, which was originally serialised in Punch in 1847.It was an irreverent take on the conservative history books of Beckett's day. Kings and queens emerge as mean-spirited petty rascals and to look for their virtues "would require the aid of one of those solar microscopes which give visibility to the merest atom, and the particle." Other monarchs such as King John were downright useless and allowed himself to be "bullied by bulls"--papal bulls. The Church came off not better either, being "the medium of extortion" and taking hard-earned money off the people. In this history book, then, readers can laugh with Cæsar during his invasion of Britain; stand in the sea with Canute; and joke about Richard on the field of Bosworth.

Throughout history humankind has faced a number of deadly pandemics and such diseases have left their mark in history books, fine art, novels, life writing, and newspapers. This book collects together writings from across the centuries which illuminate people's experiences with plagues and pandemics.