It has been a strange time in which to write about time. This book was written during a year marked and scarred across the world by the Coronavirus, Covid-19. It would be nice to imagine that the comments I am about to make will quickly be out of date, but at the time of writing not only is there no immediate sign of any lessening of the pandemic, but also the glib slogans of public discourse ‘build back better’, ‘the new normal’, seem peculiarly hollow. It seems unlikely that this time of pandemic will be forgotten in the near future, or its impact unfelt.