Before we get to your selection of the best history books of 2021, I wondered if you have seen any trends in history publishing this year. It was the 200th anniversary of Napoleon’s death, which is reflected in your choices. Are we about to have a slew of pandemic history books coming down the track? Or are they already being published?
An awful lot has already been published of one kind or another on the pandemic. There are a lot of historical parallels being drawn, but I think it’s going to take a long while for us to really appreciate what happened. You have this febrile social media so prominent, making immediate judgments about things. At one moment the UK was doing catastrophically badly, and now the EU is having its moment. I don’t think any of us really appreciate exactly why there are spikes and why there are drops and why societies seem to be doing well one moment and not doing well another. These are important questions and there are obviously lessons to learn, but I think we’re still a long way off from really understanding what this is about. Vaccination is the key to everything.
