Tomos Roberts, a 26 year-old British poet and filmmaker, created a simple “Princess Bride”-esque fairly tale about life before and after the pandemic as a YouTube video that he read to his younger sister and brother and, like a fairy tale itself, he woke up to find that his “The Great Realisation” had gone viral with over a million and a half views. He had even attracted celebrity fans like Jake Gylenhall, Jennifer Aniston, Kristen Bell and Drew Barrymore. He was approached by an agent, and within three months his poem had been sold to HarperCollins and will be published as a children’s book on September 1st.
It may not be Shakespeare’s King Lear (which was said to have been written during the plague years), but this is an inspiring true story about someone who used the pandemic to create something.