Before the publication of her novel Hamnet Maggie O’Farrell took a vintage dress she had bought for its London launch to an Edinburgh dry cleaners. By the time it was ready for collection the party had been canceled and the world had gone into lockdown.
“Within a week everything had changed,” she recalls. Her agent telephoned. “I remember her saying: ‘It’s not going to be what we hoped. Bookshops are shutting, Amazon isn’t shipping books any more. I guess we’ve always got the paperback.’”
