🎧 The Prime Minister Hospitalised: Lloyd George's Influenza
20th Century
•
18m
In September 1918 David Lloyd George, the charismatic wartime Prime Minister, visited the city of Manchester, attended a vast public gathering and then collapsed. He spent the next week and a half confined to the Manchester Town Hall in a hastily assembled private hospital ward. He needed assistance breathing. His valet said it was touch and go as to whether he would survive. He did pull through but a vast number of his fellow Brits did not. The country was in the grip of an influenza pandemic, known as Spanish Influenza. It is interesting that Lloyd George was in Manchester because it was under the care of one of the most remarkable public health officials in British history, James Niven. His rapid response the pandemic, his insistence on a public information campaign and closing of mass gatherings meant that Manchester suffered fewer deaths than other big cities like London. In this podcast I talk to Mark Honigsbaum who has written extensively about the Influenza and Niven. We talked about sick Prime Ministers and social distancing. Please check out Mark's podcast Going Viral for more on this and the historical resonances of the present crisis.
Up Next in 20th Century
-
🎧 Western Europe’s Age of Democracy
In the second half of the twentieth century, western Europe was shaped by a revolutionary political force: democracy. Or at least that's what Martin Conway has argued in his major new history. On this podcast, Martin - a teacher from my university days - interrogated the years following the Secon...
-
🎧 The People's War with Jonathan Fennell
Jonathan Fennell has written a new book discussing the 'citizen armies' that made up the core of the British and Commonwealth armies, and Dan talks to him to find out more.
-
🎧 War with Margaret MacMillan
Margaret MacMillan joined me on the podcast to discuss the ways in which war has influenced human society. We discussed how, in turn, changes in political organisation, technology, or ideologies have affected how and why we fight.
