Ague or marsh fever (vivax malaria) is a disease transmitted by female blood sucking mosquitoes that breed in shallow stagnant water. During the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries it was endemic in the English fenlands and the coastal marshes of Kent and Essex and was recorded spasmodically from scattered locations elsewhere in Britain. Drainage of wetlands for agriculture, changing land use and the discovery of quinine as an effective treatment led to its eradication from most areas by the late nineteenth century. It was a disease that disappeared before its true nature was known.

Ian Hodkinson is a retired Professor of Entomology and Animal Ecology, who lives in Levens, Cumbria, overlooking the Lyth Valley, a former known malarial area. He has worked extensively on the implications of climate change for invertebrate populations, particularly those of Arctic and Alpine habitats.

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