Sweeping from Asia into Europe, where its more appalling by-products included the Flagellants and the first great Jewish pogroms, the plague reached England in 1348. Philip Ziegler's classic account traces the course of the plague through Europe, and includes detailed chapters on the state of medicine, the position of the Church and the broader social and economic repercussions, as well as a fascinating reconstruction of life in a medieval English village suddenly overtaken by plague.