Phil Dourado is a writer who has lived and worked in both the US and the UK. He lost his wife, after he’d nursed her through a long illness, his brother and his best friend within weeks of each other. He then lost his grandchildren to the other side of the world and his father to dementia and confinement in a locked-down care home. The people he had loved seemed to be disappearing one by one. Then thousands began dying from Covid, while everyone - even those who hadn't lost a loved one - grieved the loss of normal life and connection in a locked down world. The last thing his best friend said to him before dying was, ‘You have a love story to tell, a tale of love and loss. Like Love in the Time of Cholera. You should write about it.’ So, he did. Hence his first novel, Love & Loss in the Time of Covid