The Times bestseller FT Book of the Year On 3 April 2020, Kate Bingham was told that the likelihood of any Covid-19 vaccine working was 15% at best. But on 8 December 2020, the first NHS patient received a vaccine. Now nearly every adult in Britain has had a jab, lockdowns have ended and we can finally live with Covid. What lies behind this staggering success story? From a cottage miles away from Westminster, Bingham juggled vaccine suppliers, Whitehall, the media circus – and her daughter’s exams. Political manoeuvring, miscommunications and administrative meddling nearly jeopardised the project. But perseverance paid off. Catapulted into a national crisis, Bingham’s eclectic team secured the first vaccine doses administered in the West and saved thousands of lives in the UK as new variants struck. This is an unmissable insider view into how the Vaccine Taskforce beat the odds and delivered the scientific miracle we all waited for.

The Sunday Times bestseller On 3 April 2020, Kate Bingham was told that the likelihood of any Covid-19 vaccine working was 15% at best. But on 8 December 2020, the first NHS patient received a vaccine. Now nearly every adult in Britain has had a jab, lockdowns have ended and we can finally live with Covid. What lies behind this staggering success story? From a cottage miles away from Westminster, Bingham juggled vaccine suppliers, Whitehall, the media circus - and her daughter's exams. Political manoeuvring, miscommunications and administrative meddling nearly jeopardised the project. But perseverance paid off. Catapulted into a national crisis, Bingham's eclectic team secured the first vaccine doses administered in the West and saved thousands of lives in the UK as new variants struck. This is an unmissable insider view into how the Vaccine Taskforce beat the odds and delivered the scientific miracle we all waited for.

Perceptive, persuasive and intricately patterned, the poems of Kate Bingham's third collection, Infragreen, take the reader on a startling and intimate journey through everyday experiences and phenomena. Her keen eye, reflectiveness and quiet wit endow her subjects with a shimmering freshness. 'A revelation to me this year was the work of Kate Bingham, whose second collection, Quicksand Beach, shows a poet already in complete command of her voice and of her form. Spry, witty, gently cynical, her talking lyrics about love and domestic life are a pure pleasure to read; and she has a breathtakingly acute ear. I read most of a sestina without even noticing that it was a sestina. That's craft.' The Telegraph, books of the year 2006 'Kate Bingham's Quicksand Beach, shortlisted for the Forward Prize, offers an urgent interrogation of the ways in which we love - as parents and children, husbands and wives. Her command of form is enviable and her grasp of subject-matter complete.' The Guardian 'Bingham has the unusual ability to write convincingly and infectiously about happiness - the happiness of family and parenthood.' Sunday Times 'There's something profoundly English about these intelligent, technically accomplished poems: understated, almost self-deprecating, but subtly rewarding.' Financial Times, Picks of the Year 2006 'Her poetry possesses a hushed power; a charm that creeps up on you, catching you unawares.' Poetry Wales

"Quicksand Beach" will please fans of her fiction and of her first book of poems, "Cohabitation". She has a beautifully poised natural tone composed of intelligence and a slightly subversive sense of humour, and captures her subjects with precision and grace. These subjects are often domestic: family, friends, childhood memories, visits, walks, meals...Childhood, both the author's and that of her own children, features often. A schoolday 'craze' for fountain pens prompts an affectionate memory of a younger self, watching 'the tip of a new pen touch its first white sheet'. Bingham's work is both subtle and accessible, a rare commodity in a poet. She can be gentle, passionate, half-mocking and very funny.