<DIV>Influenza was the great killer of the nineteenth and twentieth century. The so called 'Russian flu' killed about 1 million people across Europe in 1889 – including the second-in-line to the British throne, the Duke of Clarence. The Spanish flu of 1918, meanwhile, would kill 50 million people – nearly 3% of the world's population. Here, Mark Honigsbaum outlines the history of influenza in the period, and describes how the fear of disease permeated Victorian culture. </p>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 was therefore a barometer of wider fin de siècle 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.<br/><br/></p></div>