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During the so-called High Lockdown in the UK (March to June 2020) a group of staff and students from University College Londons School of European Languages and Cultures (SELCS) gathered weekly for a Summer Book Club (SBC) to discuss works as diverse as Thomas Manns epic tale of convalescence and philosophical exploration The Magic Mountain and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichies captivating comparison of the experience of race in Nigeria, the UK, and the US in Americanah. Among the true pandemic-lit that we chose to focus on was Edgar Allen Poes The Masque of the Red Death. In discussing this tale, we could not help noticing the parallels between ourselves and Prince Prospero and his courtiers, whoin the face of devastating disease sweeping the realmdevoted themselves to aesthetic pleasures within their castellated abbey, just as we too found refuge in (closed) community and culture. Another of our book choices revealed a similar and uncanny parallel: in Emily St. John Mandels Station Eleven a band of actors and musicians roam a devastated America, putting on Shakespeare for the survivors of another deadly pandemic. Their motto, Because survival is not sufficient, a quotation from Star Trek, chimed with our sense too that, in the face of the pandemic, culture had a central role.