Just ask novelist Ali Smith, who finished the last of a four-book sprint during the first lockdown: “I felt the usual failure … Knackered. Curious as to whether the book would hold water, and as for the series: no idea. Hope, despair. All these feelings passed in the 30 seconds it takes to toast something that’s done with a single measure of single malt, then I emerged from my room into the very real, visceral confluence of hope and despair happening to us all in life in Covid lockdown.” – The Guardian (UK)