“And they died by the hundreds, both day and night, and all were thrown into those ditches and covered with earth,” wrote Agnolo di Tura about the plague in Siena. The impact of the Black Death still resonates, and its effects are there to see. None more than the Black Death, the great plague that killed 40 per cent of Europe’s population in the 14 th century, and the “Spanish” Influenza outbreak that killed anywhere between 50 and 100 million worldwide between 19.

Pandemics have had a huge and persistent impact on humanity. But building villages and houses round them – that’s a political decision, and they continue to do it.” He admits that he has been writing the new book from his residence bang on top of the San Andreas Fault in California. “Take volcanoes – sure you can say there is nothing manmade about their eruption. “Look into these disasters and you find them shaped by politics,” he tells me in a recent telephone conversation.

It’s a format at which Ferguson excels – he would have made a brilliant editor of one of the world’s great titles whether the Times of New York, London or India – but I fear this aspect has baffled some of the book’s narrow minded critics. And it is not just a history as such, but a beguiling piece of argumentation – a brilliant amalgam of historical analysis and raw journalism. It is the politics of disaster from all angles and at all levels, from the family and village to the palace and mighty bureaucracies of governance. It looks at how those in charge, and the victims, reacted to cataclysmic and world-changing events. The book, however, is no mere catalogue of major disasters and emergencies floods, fire, pestilence, famine and death – though there are these in aplenty. Smaller powers, learning from experience and recent history, fared better, and countries like Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan have led the pack. Some have recovered from dismal starts, the USA and Britain especially. The present Covid crisis is no exception – great powers east and west have made disastrous choices from the beginning. The game of survival has been a tangled tale of decision and indecision, misunderstanding and self-deception. Humanity has lived with a sense of doom and destiny since society and history began, argues Ferguson.

Neil ferguson doom