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When was the worst time to be alive? You'll be surprised at what our expert has to say

When was the worst time to be alive? You'll be surprised at what our expert has to say

If there's one lesson we should take from history, it's that we're fortunate not to be living in the past, Professor David Carpenter tells Dr David Musgrove

Published: June 4, 2025 at 3:12 PM

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Imagine you’re having a truly bad day. You’ve dropped your phone down the toilet, burnt your toast, endured a packed commute on a slow-running train, and got soaked in a rain shower. And that’s all before you get to work.

If there’s one lesson from history that might get you through such woes, it’s the fact that however bleak things are for you now, chances are they would have been worse if you’d had the misfortune to be alive in the past.

That’s the message I got from the great medieval historian Professor David Carpenter, as he compared England in the 13th century to today. Professor Carpenter knows that century intimately: he is a world authority on Magna Carta (and was in the news recently over the discovery that he and Professor Nicholas Vincent made of a medieval copy of Magna Carta in an American library) and the definitive biographer of King Henry III. Recently I was chatting to him about Magna Carta for a HistoryExtra podcast, and when I asked him, at the end of that conversation, if there was any learning from his deep and extensive study of the past that he carried with him in day-to-day life, this was his reply:

“We ought to feel how profoundly lucky we are, in two key ways: the first is parliamentary democracy, in which we have evolved a system whereby political conflicts are conducted within a democratic framework. That contrasts hugely with the 13th century when we had two very, very violent civil wars from 1215–17 and 1263–67 in which property was ravaged, people were killed, Jews were massacred, and peasants starved to death. So I think that we should value our parliamentary democracy compared to, for example, the situation in the 13th century.

“The other thing we should value is that, although I know there’s obviously a lot of poverty, we live in a society where no one starves to death. Whereas in the 13th century, in years of bad harvest, very considerable numbers of peasants, and to some extent townsmen too, quite literally, starved to death.”

Two medieval men are shown hitting a sheaf of wheat with large sticks

Two men threshing sheaf in an illustration in the Luttrell Psalter, c1330. In years of bad harvest in this era, many peasants starved to death (Image by Getty Images)

Back to the future

Professor Carpenter here is comparing Britain today to the 13th century. Clearly, globally, there are wars going on where political conflict is definitely not being solved by democratic means, and the news shows us that people are suffering terribly from malnutrition and starvation in some parts of the world right now.

A man with white hair and round black glasses, wearing a suit and a dark blue and red spotty tie

Professor David Carpenter is a world authority on Magna Carta and the definitive biographer of King Henry III (Image by Damien McFadden)

Nevertheless, I think Prof Carpenter’s view is broadly shared by most people who study the past seriously. Over the years, I’ve asked various historians when and where they’d like to go back to if they could hop in a time machine, and I think pretty much universally they make the point that they wouldn’t really want to live in the past, because broadly speaking it’s better now. They generally mention dentistry as something they definitely wouldn’t want to experience without anaesthesia.

Reflecting on that, I was reminded of an article we ran in BBC History Magazine a few years back, which you can now read on the HistoryExtra website, by the historian Derek Wilson, who has sadly recently passed away. We invited him to come up with a list of the worst years to be alive in history.

Wilson was not short of contenders, but 1349 was a fairly obvious pick. If the 13th century wasn’t a great time to be alive, the 14th century was rock bottom. The Black Death of 1348–50 wiped out up to 60 per cent of Europe’s population, according to some estimates. “It was not just a health crisis,” he explained. “The psychological impact was devastating. It bred fear, paranoia, and a deep distrust of the authorities who had no answers.”

A sketch of skeletons dancing in a tavern

Death loomed large in the 14th century thanks to the plague and it is personified here in La grant danse macabre, carrying off booksellers (Image by Getty Images)

Norwich was one of the worst-hit cities in England, losing around 7,000 of its 12,000 residents. They are just numbers now at this remove, and hard to compute, but take a moment to just sit with that level of devastation in one single urban centre. Imagine what it was like to live there at the time, and hold that thought, because I’ll come back to it momentarily.

During the Black Death, Norwich was one of the worst-hit cities in England, losing around 7,000 of its 12,000 residents

Wilson’s other choices were similarly grim: AD 60 in Britain when Rome brutally stamped out rebellion; persecution and revolt in the Reformation in 1536; war and social breakdown in 1812; and economic depression and the looming threat of global conflict in 1937. None of those years would have been much fun, but I find it hard to look past 1349 for outright existential horror.

Read more | Black Death facts: your guide to "the worst catastrophe in recorded history"

Escape to the past

Does it actually help to know that people in the past had it pretty bad? To an extent, but David Carpenter did point out that although he does take solace in the fact that Britain today isn’t wracked by political violence and extensive starvation as it was in the 13th century, we do still have to worry about nuclear war and climate change. I get the sense that to escape those troubling new concerns, Prof Carpenter is quite happy to retreat back into the very period of the past that he’s so happy not to live in, but purely from an academic perspective, rather than any desire to time travel.

“I enjoy teaching medieval history so much,” he told me. “What I take away, I think, is how invigorating and eternally fascinating both teaching medieval history is, but also researching and writing about it. It’s kept me going all my life.”

So history offers two exit routes from today’s troubles – to escape from it, and to escape back into it. I guess we are supremely privileged to have the opportunity to do both of those things now.

A nun reads from a scroll. In the background, a cross is hanging on the wall and two candles burn on a table

An illustration by Rose Wilkinson of the mystic and anchoress Julian of Norwich, the 14th-century author of the remarkable Revelations of Divine Love

All shall be well

Going back to the 14th century, and the horrors of the Black Death, I sometimes find myself recalling the words of the remarkable mystic and anchoress Julian of Norwich. She lived in the second half of the century and bears a male name because we don't actually know what she was called. We do know that she spent years of her life walled up in a cell in St Julian’s Church in the East Anglian city, and that’s why she’s called Julian. As I’ve said, Norwich was hammered by the Black Death. Though Julian’s life took in that horrific plague, as well as social dislocation, and religious stress, she wrote a remarkable text called Revelations of Divine Love.

The historian and TV presenter Professor Janina Ramirez is, I think it’s fair to say, a Julian enthusiast. This is a quote from an article that Professor Ramirez wrote for BBC History Magazine about her (available on the HistoryExtra site for members too): “Julian lived through a time when the church was divided, communities were imploding and death was indiscriminate. Yet in the midst of this chaos she wrote a calm, optimistic and loving book. In it she stresses that God sees no sin, he is both mother and father, and that love is the root of everything.”

Professor Janina Ramirez is a historian, broadcaster and author of Julian of Norwich: A Very Brief History (SPCK Publishing, 2016) (Image by Fran Monks)

Professor Janina Ramirez is a historian, broadcaster and author of Julian of Norwich: A Very Brief History (SPCK Publishing, 2016) (Image by Fran Monks)

Read more | Medieval influencers: 4 women who brought change to the Middle Ages

Now, I’m not a religious sort, but nevertheless I do find something incredible in the fact that this woman was able to live the life she did, in a time of such general and deep horror, and still find a chink of light to cling onto. If I am having a bad day, I do occasionally reflect on Julian's famous mantra: “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” In fact, I chanted it to myself recently when I wasn’t feeling in tip-top shape on a ridiculous ultra-marathon running race that I had willingly paid to enter. I don’t know whether Julian would have been impressed with my voluntary submission to suffering, or confused by my strange self-inflicted decision to run myself into the ground, but either way, her wise words helped me get to the finish line.

In a time of such general and deep horror, Julian of Norwich still found a chink of light to cling onto

“It is a message that transcends theology,” says Professor Ramirez. “It speaks to anyone who has experienced hardship and found a way to endure.”

If someone who had seen the devastation of the Black Death could have that attitude and write something that still helps people today, I think that’s a lesson from history that we can probably all take something from.

This article is part of HistoryExtra's new Life Lessons from History Substack newsletter. Subscribe to the newsletter for more articles and podcasts exploring the ways in which history can help us live better, happier, healthier or more productive lives.