Paul Cookson is a National Reading Hero award-winner, Poet in Residence for The National Football Museum and Everton in the Community, Writer in Residence for Sing Together, and a frequent guest on BBC and Talk Radio. Rock legends Slade have proclaimed him their very own Poet Laureate, and with the band's Don Powell and Les Glover he is now a songwriter and performer with the Occasional Flames.

"Trying times need poets. This book is a must." Michael Rosen ; "A book that future historians will want to read; it will tell them what it was like to live in turbulent times through a poet's eye." Ian McMillan ; "A modern take on Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year. Brilliant." Paul Ross ; "Manages to season cogent observations with a dash of humour that makes you want to dip in again and again." Valerie Bloom MBE ; "A poet for all seasons and all occasions." Henry Normal ; "Pithy blinders, heartfelt and moving, marvellously inventive and original." Stewart Henderson