Adrian Tinniswood
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
Anyone who looked foreign was beaten up in the streets.
They tried to lynch people.
The rumors were spreading faster than the fire.
Thomas Farriner's bakery suddenly became a Dutch baker who'd purposely burned his house.
People were seen throwing firebombs through windows.
But the xenophobia and the fear just spread right through the city.
Well, I mean, I think you've said it.
He buried his parmesan cheese, wasn't it?
He must have loved that cheese.
Pepys is the best of all the narratives about the fire.
But there's that moment where he's sailing down the Thames to get to Whitehall and he sees the pigeons that Londoners keep for food fluttering above their homes, their wings singed.
They drop down into the flames.
It's such a memorable image that these birds just fluttering and fluttering and then dying.
It's a really good question and I'm going to say I don't know.
The fire, although it spread inexorably, it didn't spread that fast.
It spread maybe 30 yards an hour, 30 meters an hour or so.
It wasn't the flash fire.