Vaxxers: The Inside Story of the Oxford AstraZeneca Vaccine and the Race Against the Virus

BY CATHERINE GREEN AND SARAH GILBERT. HODDER AND STOUGHTON, £20.00

Dr Catherine Green was queueing for pizza during her holiday in Snowdonia when she overheard a woman saying the people behind the Covid jabs couldn’t be trusted. Dr Green couldn't let this slide so she introduced herself to the sceptic: “My name is Cath Green and I might not look like it in my bare feet and this dress - I might not sound like it either, believe me I know - but I am “them”. You couldn’t have known this, but I’m the best person in the world to tell you what’s in the vaccine. I work with the people who invented it. It’s me and my team, in my lab, who physically made it.”

Overhearing this vaccine scepticism was the catalyst for the book. Professor Sarah Gilbert and Dr Catherine Green felt it was their duty to come out of their labs and put the truth into print. “I would like people to know how we really got here and what happens next,” Green writes. This is the most extraordinary story, which focuses on the often surprisingly ordinary lives of the women behind the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine. Although it was ghost-written, the chapters alternate between being authored by Professor Sarah Gilbert and Dr Catherine Green.

It’s hard to work out how these women found the time for this book. Not only are they working parents - Professor Gilbert is a mum of triplets - they are having to deal with issues such as not being able to buy toilet roll and worrying about vulnerable family members and, of course, they are also busy saving the future of humanity. At one point Green seems to lean into the working mum stereotype as she employs a baking analogy to explain how the vaccine works. She says making a vaccine for a new disease is a bit like making a specialist birthday cake. You can get everything ready and then when the order arrives you just add the icing with the message or, indeed, the spike protein.

Green in particular talks about the pressure of getting the messaging and explanations right and making sure the public understands what is going on.

“I woke up feeling really nervous. Not because it was the day we were going to put the first shot of our vaccine into the arm of our first volunteer in our first trial: I had every confidence that would go smoothly, but because I was due to do a radio interview with LBC’s James O’Brien… I didn’t want to let anyone down by saying anything wrong.”

At the beginning of the book is a quote from an anonymous source: “Better to light a candle than curse the darkness”. This epitomises their message, and this book is their solution to the anti-vaxxer movement. So forget your comic books, if you’re looking for superheroes you’ll find them standing among us, perhaps even in the queue of a takeaway.

Am I Loved? The Most Asked Question of All Time

JOHN D. BIEBER, UMBRIA PRESS. £17.99

Am I Loved is a peculiar book.

I was intrigued to find the answer to “the most asked question of all time,” but as is so often the case with love, my high expectations led to disappointment. As the author

John D Bieber is a divorce lawyer I was hoping for intriguing anecdotes and insights into lost love. Instead, I found myself feeling frustrated by sweeping statements about relationships and suffocated by confident assertions about God’s love.

Bieber describes this book as a “study of the human condition” but it is lacking in the key component of a study: quantifiable facts. Instead, the book attempts to rectify the fact humans share “ignorance of our true condition” with philosophical statements that seem to brook little opposition. “We were not provided with a manual when we came into this world but it is hoped that this book will be the next best thing. For this book explains the human condition. This is how it is,” Bieber says, grandly.

Rather than relying on facts Bieber evokes imagined scenarios. On kissing for instance he says: “We all want to be kissed. We enjoy it very much. With Nature wanting us to survive, kissing is a sign of caring and protection. With Nature wanting us to procreate, a kiss is the first step to intimacy.” He then proceeds to describe the imagined first kiss of cavemen. In another instance he writes up a script between an ‘unborn child’ and an ‘author’.

The problem with writing about love is it’s hard to be original. But a triumph of this book is that in its oddness it does, for the most part, avoid clichés. Recognising that a lot of love-based wisdom has been shared before, he elegantly weaves in quotes of wisdom from the likes of Chico Marx who said: “I wasn't kissing her, I was whispering in her mouth”; and Edmund Burke: “Never, no, never did Nature say one thing and Wisdom another.”

At times, I enjoyed the poetic lilt of the book. But, similarly to the book itself, the sentences often try to do too much. Take the opening line for instance: “Once upon a time, so long ago that it may have been upon the very first time, some 600,000 years or so before India collided with Asia to form the Himalayas and the long tapered fingers of North and South America finally managed to touch, before there were any such things as heartbreak, sadness or disappointment, when ambition had yet to be invented and insecurity, anxiety and self-pity did not exist, where not a single being suspected the existence of a Creator nor had the slightest anticipation of a tomorrow, a branch in a shrinking, drought-ridden frost in Africa suddenly snapped and crashed to the ground, causing a large and hapless ape to fall out of the tree.” As a sentence it’s simply too long. Proust used to write sentences longer than this, he was on a search for lost time and Bieber thinks he already knows all the answers.

I did not find this book a convincing study of the human condition. My agnosticism and the unsubstantiated certainty of the assertions in this book did not make for happy bedfellows. But it is not a bad book and I’m sure there are lovers who would happily take this book to bed and appreciate its poetic turn of phrase and optimism about humanity.

Post-lockdown Opera Rehearsal Holland Park

Summer will not sing more beautifully than this.

Verdi, I would guess, epiphanic and sudden, grows out of the open-air rehearsal marquee superimposing tone on neutrality: the boy's football match finds its drama, an elderly couple, their inveterate hands linked, becomes first courtship, perhaps beside the Arno, when a music like this went off in their minds.

The eventual concert, tense with the burden of money, will intervene between listener and music with the distractions of formality, but now, the soprano gilds the pigeons with sun, the drinks in the café are all ambrosial, and we are taller, that much stronger, for this music.

Sebastian Richter

Lockdown:

The English Teacher

BY NATASHA KAPLINSKY. HACHETTE CHILDREN'S GROUP, £8.99

This book features letters from celebrities such as singers Sir Paul McCartney and Ed Sheeran, the man keeping the nation fit, Joe Wicks, as well as some regular Covid heroes. They answer the familiar yet rather extraordinary question: What was lockdown like for you? Although the book was conceived of by children, Natasha Kaplinsky's, Arlo and Kika, and written for children, it is an uplifting read for all ages.

There are plenty of sad notes. Dr. Jenny Messenger, for instance, writes: “I am sorry to say that in this country it is not uncommon to see our patients die alone, without any family or friends to hold their hands. During this pandemic this was so much worse.” But there are warmer moments too. Comic Matt Lucas reveals how one of his best friends has had their first baby during the pandemic. “Nearly a year ago and I still haven’t met her. I think when I finally do, I will probably burst into tears. I’m a soppy sausage at times.” Children and the future of humanity are at the heart of this book and, fittingly, the publisher is going to donate all profits to the children’s charity, Barnardo’s.

Working Hard, Hardly Working: How to achieve more, stress less and feel fulfilled

BY GRAVE BEVERLEY. HUTCHINSON. £16.99

Grace Beverley reflects on the conflicting pressures young people feel when they enter the world of work. There's a pressure to work as hard as possible but, simultaneously, young people are told to relax and focus on self care. In this book Beverley suggests the choice doesn’t have to be between success or sanity. The entrepreneur and 'lazy workaholic' offers ideas on how to create a balance, be more productive and feel fulfilled. The book encourages people to engage in effective self-care and find a productive routine. Although the suggestions aren’t particularly unique, the book does provide a succinct guide that may improve the lives of our young workforce.

GO BIG: How To Fix Our World

BY ED MILIBAND. BODLEY HEAD. £18.99

In this book, Labour’s Ed Miliband interviews people who are successfully tackling problems on the planet, from transforming communities to creating environmental strategies. He looks at various initiatives, organisers and campaigns, from the UK's largest walking and cycling network in Greater Manchester as well to the campaign for the first halal Nando's in Cardiff. The challenges are vast but Miliband provides an optimistic look at the possibility of change.

There is always one latent in your life, who will shape you to your own advantage. Mine was Balkwill. Chaucer-fat. Quotationrife.

Flushed with good booze, and dying in a rage.

Rushing to complete his time, he came in for the lesson, ranted in despair about his death. The next day he swept through, played Beethoven –the Ninth – from start to finish. Nodded – left.

In those days, it meant little. How could we see past youth to bear witness to him dying in such glory?

We told ourselves it was how the world was framed: to the wise came decay; to the brilliant, shame.

Yet to suspect all this – the passion he held in that last summer of his, though dissolving in his palm, was to long to join him in whatever he loved, and do it ongoingly. This is how we all link arms:

When he died we knew that we’d been chosen. In his each and every fantastic literary whim –Hardy, Shakespeare, Coleridge, Wilde, Owenhe’d lived. We would too – and if we could, live like him.

Diego Murillo