In the dying months of the First World War, Spanish Flu suddenly overwhelmed the globe, killing up to 100 million people. it was one of the most devastating natural disasters in world history. But behind the staggering figures are human lives, stories of those who suffered and those who fought back - at the Front, at home, in the hospitals and laboratories.

Digging into archives, unpublished records, memoirs, diaries and government documents, Catharine Arnold traces the course of the disease through the accounts of those who experienced it - from those in high office to the ordinary people: the troops, nurses, miners, labourers, and many others who were left with no memorial. Now, 100 years after the disease burned its way across the globe, this stingingly prescient book examines the lessons that devastating outbreak taught us - and those we still urgently need to learn.