The news is often determined to tell us that we live in uniquely critical times, beset by political disasters and afflicted by terrible crises and that the demise of human civilisation is surely imminent. We are encouraged to view the world – and our own lives – in bleak, apocalyptic terms. Oddly, history can be powerfully consoling, not because it tells us that our times are great, but because it shows us how normal large societal troubles really are.

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