Adam Fergusson's When Money Dies provides a dire historical warning from Weimar-era Germany on the corrosive and merciless effects of inflation.

The book was originally written for a British audience in the 1970s. It would be stretching things to draw close parallels with the ‘quantitative easing' era overseen by Bank of England governor Mervyn King and chancellor George Osborne, but the lessons from the 1970s are sobering.