Exactly five years ago Boris Johnson announced that the United Kingdom was being placed in lockdown. “From this evening I must give the British people a very simple instruction – you must stay at home because the critical thing we must do is to stop the disease spreading between households,” the PM told the nation.
That lockdown, Britain’s first of the Covid-19 pandemic, lasted until June. People reacted in myriad ways: with manic outpourings of video calls; obsessive outbreaks of bread baking and pet dog purchases; or simple, quiet desperation as they tried to fend off the isolation imposed on them. More lockdowns were to follow, but the first defined the sudden, chilling, unwelcome seclusion that individuals were forced to experience as social contact was halted across the country.
