I could barely explain how much I wanted to go back to London, for I hardly understood myself. I'd hated the stinking city when we'd left, could hardly bear to think on its name, but now the plague had disappeared from the streets the people would be back, the theatres and shops would be open and we would find everything as cheery as it had been before.

Hannah returns to her beloved London to re-open the sweetmeats shop with younger sister Anne. Londoners are reeling from the plague epidemic of the previous year, but Hannah and Anne are keen to start enjoying everything the bustling city has to offer. But this is 1666, and it has been prophesised that terrible things will happen, and on Pudding Lane, flames are raging through the bakery…

Mary Hooper evokes with complete mastery the sights, sounds and terror of a London gripped by the ferocious and terrible Fire of London, engulfing everything in its path.

At the Sign Of the Sugared Plum