This is a book from the depths of lockdown. When Tim Key got locked down last year he refocused his fitful rudderlessness into writing about the insane developments that were setting in. First he scribbled poems about events, or lack of them. And then he began to augment the poems with conversations. Phone calls, Zooms, yelled back-and-forths with passers-by. He scribbled these exchanges down. Sometimes verbatim, sometimes fabricated, often somewhere in between.
After three months of this madness he reached out to his long-time designer, Emily Juniper. She makes the written word look beautiful, and the two of them began collaborating to give their Lockdown a bit of purpose and colour.
The result is Key’s fourth book, a sprawling account of three peculiar months in his bit of the UK; partly observed, partly lived, partly made-up. All easy on the eye.