[Hip Priest]

Splendid stuff. Good luck.

A little over 200 years ago, the eruption of a volcano in Iceland sent a huge toxic cloud across Western Europe. It was the greatest natural disaster to hit modern Britain, killing many thousands - but it has been almost forgotten by history.

"Such multitudes are indisposed by fevers in this country that farmers have difficulty gathering their harvest, the labourers having been almost every day carried out of the field incapable of work and many die."

So wrote Hertfordshire poet William Cowper in the summer of 1783...