Living with Enza by Mark Honigsbaum

“I HAD a little bird, its name was Enza,” went the schoolyard song in 1918. “I opened the window and in-flu-enza.” The 1918 flu pandemic has been the subject of several books, but this is the first I know of from a UK perspective. The science isn’t always current or correct to the last detail, but read this book to understand what happened to a country caught up in both a war and a disease that killed millions worldwide, led by variously competent civil servants whose responses, or lack of them, have some worrying parallels with UK pandemic plans today.…