Foreign Bodies: Pandemics, Vaccines and the Health of Nations
By Simon Schama
Simon & Schuster £30
If not a curate’s egg, Simon Schama’s new book is certainly a curiosity. From its subtitle, you assume this will be a learned history of pandemics, delivered with orotund, if not verbose, panache.
With a heavy heart, you imagine that this arduous 400-page journey will begin in the Black Death, canter through the modern era, halt awhile at the
