WE HAD TWO covers this week. In most of the world we featured our interview with Emmanuel Macron, France’s president. In Asia we looked at the science behind the threat from disinformation.

Our interview with Mr Macron took place in the opulent salon doré, which looks out from the first floor onto the expansive gardens of the Elysée Palace. It was a beautiful spring day and I was joined by our Paris bureau chief, Sophie Pedder. Through a half-open French window onto the balcony, you could hear birdsong. The jollity made Mr Macron’s apocalyptic warning about Europe’s future all the more shocking.

His worry is not just for the European Union, or even the defence of European territory. It is about the durability of a set of rules and values, underpinned by economic wealth and physical security, which bind all Europeans. European civilisation, he told us, is in mortal danger.

We had a photographer there and before we started the interview, he had some moments to snap France’s president against a dark screen set up at the top of the Elysée’s grand marble staircase. 

Seven years ago, when Mr Macron was first elected president, his campaign was brimming over with optimism. The first shot we considered for the cover, a portrait with a dark background, was sombre and bleak. Here was a man with a furrowed brow who has seen the future.