This summer could be the hottest, driest and deadliest in English history. Successive heatwaves have so far claimed almost 3,000 lives. Nearly three-quarters of England and all of Wales is in drought, while key reservoirs are parched. Across this brown and stickily unpleasant land, from Grimsby down to St Ives, hosepipe bans are in force, while music festivals are staged not on green fields but in giant dust bowls.

Just how bad is it? I asked a leading climate scientist.

“This is as good as it’s going to get,” said Hayley Fowler, a professor at Newcastle University. “It will only get hotter.”

A little while back, the Met Office filmed a mock weather forecast for 2050, with an authoritative yet smiley man wielding a clicker in front of a map. So far, so soothingly familiar – only the UK had gone from its usual green and jaunty yellow to a deep, bloody red. Cambridge was stamped with 40C, while Somerset and Dorset were up at 45C. This is the near-future that awaits you and me, our children and grandchildren. Just two decades away, the weather forecaster urged us to block out the sun and stay indoors. “Drink plenty of fluids,” he added.

Except there will not be as much fluid to drink. Britain is world-renowned for its soft steady drizzle, but over the next couple of decades, our summers will turn arid while winters are more likely to bring a regular deluge of rain, breaking our riverbanks and flooding our homes. Indeed, El Niño means this winter is likely to be especially bad – up there with Storm Desmond,........

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