The curves of a jar say more of the dead than candles or yellow ribbons | Rachel Cooke

Britain is good at remembrance. No monument is better known in this country than the Cenotaph in Whitehall, designed by Edwin Lutyens to commemorate the dead of the First World War; in the 21st century, barely a football match kicks off without a minute’s silence in honour of someone or something. Sanctioned, sponsored recollection is one of our national skills, like queueing or talking about the weather.

But there are, too, strange and yawning gaps in the patchwork of our collective memory. There is no public memorial in the UK to the estimated 228,000 victims of the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918, and, so far, it has been left to volunteers to pay tribute to the more than 220,000 people whose deaths are associated with Covid-19, in the form of the National Covid Memorial Wall on the south bank of the Thames. On Wednesday, it will be three years since the first lockdown of the pandemic began, yet the National Day of Reflection that will mark this anniversary is not precisely official but organised by a single charity, Marie Curie. Visit the website, and you will find various fuzzy suggestions involving the lighting of candles, the sending of cards and the tying of yellow ribbons around trees.