Sunday Feature is a Documentary programme.

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Sunday Feature: A Cultural History of the Plague

Series 1, episode 0

Laura Ashe explores how the plague has changed our social and cultural landscape. Laura visits the site of a plague pit with historian Richard Barnett to discuss the physical marks left by it on our cities and also talks about the plague's legacy in folklore with Diane Purkiss at an abandoned 'plague village' in Oxfordshire. She visits the British Museum print room to examine Holbein's Dance of Death woodcuts and considers the cultural legacy of the plague, from Daniel Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year to the current interest in zombie movies. There are readings of testimonies from plague victims and witnesses from across Europe - priests and monks from the 14th century. And Laura is joined by virologist John Oxford, who explains the ways in which our cultural memories and fears of plague inform our response to contemporary emergences - particularly Ebola