The Long Shot: The Inside Story of the Race to Vaccinate Britain. This item is unavailable.The Long Shot: The Inside Story of the Race to Vaccinate Britain

A Sunday Times bestseller and Financial Times Book of the Year.

The unmissable inside story of the race against the virus.

Catapulted into an international crisis, Kate Bingham knew the odds were heavily stacked against a workable Covid-19 vaccine.

From a remote cottage, Bingham juggled vaccine suppliers, Whitehall, the media circus… as deaths mounted and the world shut down. Political manoeuvring, miscommunications and administrative meddling nearly jeopardised the project. But perseverance and expertise paid off.

Bingham’s eclectic team secured the first vaccine doses administered in the West, saving thousands of lives in the UK as new variants struck. Now, nearly every adult in Britain has had the jab, lockdowns have ended and we can finally live with Covid.

This is the insider view into how the Vaccine Taskforce beat those long odds and delivered a scientific miracle.

Dame Kate Bingham served as the Chair of the UK Vaccine Taskforce, on a seven-month unpaid secondment, steering a team of experts to deliver the world’s fastest Covid-19 vaccination programme. She is Managing Partner at life sciences venture capital firm SV Health Investors where she co-leads SV’s biotech franchise which has a long history of developing transformational new medicines. SV’s investments have led to the launch of twenty drugs for inflammatory and autoimmune disease, blindness and cancer. At SV, Kate co-manages a number of global biotech venture funds which make investments into innovative companies developing novel therapeutics and she helped launch the Dementia Discovery Fund. She is a board member of the Francis Crick Institute and was awarded a DBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for her services as Chair of the UK Vaccine Taskforce.The author proceeds will be donated to the new university The New Model Institute for Technology and Engineering (NMITE) and early years education, development and advocacy charity Kindred Squared.

Dr Tim Hames started his career as an academic. He was a lecturer in Politics at Oxford University 1989–96, specialising in American and British Government. He then moved to The Times where he became the chief editorial writer, a weekly columnist and regularly edited the newspaper. He was Director General of the British Venture Capital Association from 2013–19.