Pandemic Diaries

Matt Hancock served as Secretary of State for Health and Social Care from 2018 to 2021, leading the UK government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, the biggest health crisis the country, and the world, has faced for generations.

This unique book, based on the author’s contemporaneous records of those extraordinary months, candidly recounts first-hand the most important events and decisions as they unfolded throughout this unprecedented global emergency.

Pandemic Diaries provides the definitive account of Britain’s battle to turn the tide against Covid-19.

For the first time, Hancock reveals the crucial moments of the struggle to save lives and the race to develop the vaccine. The MP for West Suffolk gives his unique perspective on how the NHS rose to the challenge, recognising the incredible hard work and sacrifice of so many, and offers an honest assessment of the lessons we need to learn for next time – because there will be a next time.

Matt Hancock is the Conservative MP for West Suffolk. From 2018 to 2021, he was the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, during which time he led the UK government’s response to the pandemic. He served in government from 2012 in various roles including Minister for Skills, for Business and as Culture Secretary. When first appointed to attend Cabinet by David Cameron in 2014, he became the third youngest person to do so since the war, after Harold Wilson and William Hague. He holds degrees from Oxford and Cambridge Universities, and before entering politics he worked for his family’s computer software business and as an economist at the Bank of England. At Newmarket in 2012 he became the first sitting MP in a century to win a horse race, and in 2005 he broke the world record for the most northerly game of cricket before succumbing to frostbite. He retains all his fingers.

Isabel Oakeshott is an award-winning political journalist and broadcaster. She was political editor of the Sunday Times and co-wrote White Flag? An Examination of the UK’s Defence Capability with Michael Ashcroft; Farmageddon: An Investigation into the True Cost of Cheap Meat with Philip Lymbery; and various other non-fiction titles. She is international editor for Talk TV and writes for The Spectator, the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday.