Commentary The publisher Jonathan Cape used to say that there were only two things you needed to know about publishing in Britain. The first was that books about South America never made a profit; the second was that books about Nelson never made a loss. No doubt there are other subjects on which books never make a loss: dogs, for example. More recently, books about the pandemic have poured from the presses in an unrelenting flow, and I doubt that any of them makes a loss. At first I resolved to read them all, but before long there were simply too many of them to keep up with, I quickly grasped the range of opinions expressed and, frankly, the subject began to bore me. I sought instead to escape from, rather than to understand, the pandemic and its effects. Nevertheless, I bought yet another pamphlet on the subject recently, attracted …