Throughout the lockdown I’ve been nagged by a persistent thought. As I sit indoors and read the news; as I alternate between cooking and takeaways; as I venture outside into the socially-distanced streets; and as I listen to commentators catastrophise about lockdown Britain, it is there. The thought is simple: what if all this – the confinement and the fear and the confusion and the ever-rising death count – what if all this is the good part?

True, we are stuck indoors, but the scaffolding of our world looks much the same, even if we are not allowed to move about...