The most important book of the Trump era was not Bob Woodward’s “Fear” or Michael Wolff’s “Fire and Fury” or any of the other bestselling exposes of the White House circus. Arguably it was a wonkish tome by two Harvard political scientists, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, published a year into Donald Trump’s presidency and entitled “How Democracies Die”.

After many years researching democratic slippage in Eastern Europe and Latin America, the duo admitted to experiencing double-take as they turned to their own country: “We feel dread…even as we try to reassure ourselves that things can’t really be that bad here.” An invasion of the Capitol Building on January 6th by thousands of Mr Trump’s supporters brandishing baseball bats and Confederate battle flags suggested they really are.