The Fatal Breath: Covid-19 and Society in Britain by David Vincent review – a moving account of the plague of our times

This bold and forensic history of the pandemic, drawing on previously unpublished diaries, underlines the sheer scale of suffering, with the poor and isolated particularly badly hit

Covid-19 is the best documented pandemic in history. From the moment it became clear that the coronavirus would trigger a series of global lockdowns, every twist and turn in the pandemic has been chronicled in blogs, diaries and by print and digital media.

The desire to historicise the event has been just as urgent. As early as March 2020, the Pulitzer prize-winning writer Thomas Friedman declared that Covid-19 was our new historical divide" and predicted that henceforth there would be BC", the time Before Corona, and AC", the time After Corona.