In this talk Paul considers how pandemics have changed the way we live our lives.

Ever since homo sapiens emerged in East Africa 200,000 yrs ago we have been plagued by plagues: most of them local but just occasionally infectious enough to spread across the then known world and deadly enough to change the way we lived our lives. This talk will explore in detail three of the most devastating: to explain why they happened, to describe some juicy bits about their immediate impact, and to show how they have affected and will affect our future life, even in Northern England.