Adam Fergusson’s account of hyper-inflation in the Weimar Republic of 1923 is now acknowledged as the classic economic textbook warning of the dangers of a government printing money to try and buy its way out of the problems of debt, civil unrest and unemployment. More than thirty-five years ago The Times wrote: ‘The Prime Minister would do well to put copies of this fascinating history beside every bed in Chequers’. That advice still holds good.