Vaxxers: The Inside Story of the Oxford ­AstraZeneca Vaccine and the Race Against the Virus
PROFessor SARAH GILBERT and DR CATHERINE GREEN
(HODDER & STOUGHTON, 352 PP, £20)
Tablet bookshop price £18 • Tel 020 7799 4064

Imagine, for a moment, that you are back in 2019, attending a conference of international vaccine experts. You announce to the audience that you think it is possible to create, test and manufacture a vaccine for an unknown virus in 12 months. Bearing in mind that only the mumps vaccine, at four years, has taken less than 10 years to develop, what do you think the reaction would be? When the incredulous laughter had died down, you would have been told, forcefully, that what you were suggesting was simply impossible.

Well, that is exactly what the Oxford AstraZeneca team have done, and Vaxxers is the story of how they did it. The book consists of alternate chapters written by Professor Sarah Gilbert, who designed the vaccine, and Dr Catherine Green, who was in charge of its manufacture for clinical trials. Each gives a detailed and often quite technical account of this incredible achievement.