9781422280256

This painting depicts what the Great Fire of London would have looked like at a distance.

40 miles (64 km) away. The fire began in a baker’s shop in Pudding Lane and spread rapidly. Before long, a huge cloud of black, choking smoke, “like the top of a burning oven,” hung over the city. The king of England, Charles II, and his brother James, Duke of York, helped to fight the flames by organizing firefighting teams and pulling down buildings to make firebreaks . But the flames leapt across the firebreaks, and John Evelyn, a famous English diarist, described what followed: There was nothing heard or seen but crying out and lamentation, running about like distracted creatures as [the fire] burned both in breadth and length, leaping from house to house and street to street; for the heat had even ignited the air, and the fire devoured houses, furniture, and everything. It took a long time for London to recover from this disaster. Many Londoners were unable to return to the city to live until 1672, six years later.

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