The Storm

Description

On the evening of 26 November 1703, a hurricane from the north Atlantic hammered into Britain: it remains the worst storm the nation has ever experienced. Eyewitnesses saw cows thrown into trees and windmills ablaze from the friction of their whirling sails and some 8,000 people lost their lives. For Defoe, bankrupt and just released from prison for his seditious' writings, the storm struck during one of his bleakest moments. But it also furnished him with material for his first book, and in this powerful depiction of suffering and survival played out against a backdrop of natural devastation, we can trace the outlines of Defoe's later masterpieces, A Journal of the Plague Year and Robinson Crusoe.

Richard Hamblyn is the author of the Invention of Clouds- How an Amateur Meteorologist Forged the Language of the Skies, which won the LA Times Book Prize and was short-listed for the BBC4 Samuel Johnson Prize in 2002. He lives and works in London. Richard Hamblyn is the author of the Invention of Clouds- How an Amateur Meteorologist Forged the Language of the Skies, which won the LA Times Book Prize and was short-listed for the BBC4 Samuel Johnson Prize in 2002. He lives and works in London.