Overview

All but forgotten now, the Great Storm of 26/27 November 1703 was the worst storm experienced in recorded history in the British Isles. Over 8000 people died and the losses of property and shipping were immense. Martin Brayne tells in vivid detail the story of this tragic and catastrophic event.

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9780750935166

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It's a widely held perception that British weather has become more extreme in recent years, but this book will put current conditions, global warming and all, into context. In late November in 1703 Great Britain was hit by a truly catastrophic storm. The wind and rain were terrifyingly extreme right across the country, and over two days 8000 people died and there was extensive flooding. Damage to property and to shipping was appalling; it was an event that makes modern storms such as that in 1987 pale into insignificance. Brayne draws on eyewitness accounts and records made at the time to paint a fascinating, sometimes heartrending, picture of the trauma caused. The book contains some illustrations, but it is the text and the sources that bring it to life, and images of falling chimneystacks and church windows exploding inwards will linger with the reader for quite a while. Most strikingly, Daniel Defoe, whose Journal of the Plague Year memorably recalls that other natural catastrophe, wrote an account of the storm and its depradations, and his descriptions of the country's suffering and the difficulties of rebuilding afterwards bring this forgotten disaster effectively to life. (Kirkus UK)

Author Information

Martin Brayne is a retired geography teacher and a fellow of the Royal Geographic Society. He is editor of the quarterly journal of the Parson Woodforde Society, concerned with the life and times of the eighteenth-century diarist and has published a number of articles in professional journals. This is his first book.

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