How the Great Fire of London can be linked to Modern London

I read a very interesting piece on the BBC website today all about the Great Fire of London. This was prompted by the upcoming Channel 4 programme on the subject.

The gist of the article was that at the time of the fire and in its immediate aftermath, many people believed it to have been started by foreign agents. England was at war with both France and the Netherlands at the time. In fact the Royal Navy had recently sailed into a Dutch port and burned it, so many believed the London fire was stared deliberately in retaliation.

Such was the paranoia before the fire that England was going to be the target of a revenge attack that this view took hold for a while and immediately after the fire many foreign people in the capital were attacked and lynched and some were killed. The paranoia led to many acts of violence against anyone who was, or looked and sounded, foreign.

All of this was later dispelled, but the parallels with London in the aftermath of the 7/7 bombings are very interesting. Again I can see that there can be great value in bringing this to the table when teaching this subject - it is an interesting story and gives a very different slant on the story of the Great Fire of London, a slant that could help students to understand the London of 1666 far better than they might otherwise.