Peter Hennessy, A Duty of Care: Britain Before and After Covid

Excerpt

Ill-health forced Peter Hennessey to “shield” at home during the first Covid lockdown from March 2020. Recognizing, like most of us, that this was an unusual time, he decided, unusually for him, to keep a daily diary. He had time on his hands to reflect and compare this great disruption of everyday life with the great disruption of World War 2, and to believe that, like then, “there had to be a better Britain come out of it.” (p. xvi). He concluded that both crises led to widespread feelings of “a shared duty of care, in an intense form between government and people, and also between individuals” (p. xvi). These reflections led him to spend the pandemic writing this book surveying the impact of the last great war and the subsequent British experience up to and including Covid in order to demonstrate why “a better Britain” is needed and suggest how it could come about. The book was completed in September 2021, perhaps too soon to assess the pandemic’s full impact since it was far from over. …