From the Editors

One of the stranger questions swirling around the internet this year was whether ‘2016 was the worst year ever’. Sparked by the spate of high-profile celebrity deaths, rather than by more serious discussions surrounding headline events, such as the continuing conflict in Syria, the Brexit vote and the Trump victory, several news outlets offered tongue in cheek, click bait comparisons between 2016 and other years marked by plague, war, famine and devastating seismic activity. Perhaps keen to demonstrate some real world ‘impact’, a few historians played along, offering their expert opinions as to why one year might have nosed out another as particularly devastating. In the light of these mock deliberations, 2016 seemed not yet quite as disastrous as it might have been had Krakatoa re-erupted.