I FINISHED THIS BOOK IN LOCKDOWN during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. At the time of writing, the death tolls stand at 39,369 in the United Kingdom and 107,530 in the United States. Other countries that acted more swiftly and more vigorously have much lower death totals: New Zealand: 22; Australia: 102; Ireland: 1,658; Vietnam: 0. It may be possible that we have flattened the curve, terminology now familiar to nearly everyone in the world to mean controlling the infection rate and the spread of the virus – and hopefully the death toll – by sheltering in place. It is also possible that this will turn out to be only the outbreak's first wave, and, as some countries lift their lockdowns too soon, the infection rate will soar, and with it the death rate.

Some places that have long been neglected by the western world are now facing rises in the curve, and they are even less well prepared economically to meet the crisis. In Uganda, for example, as the chaplain at the University of St Andrews, the Rev Dr Donald MacEwan, wrote in one of the daily emails he has been sending since the lockdown began, Uganda has a population of 42 million people and only fifty-five intensive care beds.

Never in our lifetimes has the memento mori that so humbled people in the Middle Ages been more understandable or more frightening: remember that you are going to die. We also find ourselves experiencing some of the same fears medieval people felt about the body as the seat of corruption, the potential carrier of disease. The Black Death was a source of some of the most frightening medieval accounts of revenants, and, in at least one story, the revenant himself even passed the plague on to others. Great swathes of medieval art depict the violence inflicted on the living by Death – piercing them with darts, running them through with swords, dancing them away to the next world, or carrying away people they love while they stand helplessly by and weep. That is what we are facing now.

Just before I sat down to write this, I prepared the dough for sourdough bread. It is now resting, and in four hours, I will transfer it to the refrigerator to rise overnight.