Influenza was the great killer of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the so-called 'Russian flu' killed around one million people across Europe between 1889 and 1893, including the second-in-line to the British throne, the Duke of Clarence. The Spanish flu of 1918 then went on to kill a further 50 million people - nearly 3% of the world's population.

Through outlining the history of influenza in the period, Mark Honigsbaum describes how the fear of disease permeated Victorian culture. These fears were amplified by the invention of the telegraph and the ability of the new mass-market press to whip up public hysteria. The flu therefore became a barometer of wider fin de siecle social and cultural anxieties, playing on fears engendered by economic decline, technology, urbanisation and degeneration. A History of the Great Influenza Pandemics is a vital new contribution towards our understanding of European history and the history of the media.