Columns
Do we really want to go back to normal?
On the day our A-level exams began some wit wrote on the blackboard: ‘I wasted time, and now doth time…
Real problems erase fake ones
Last week, a friend quoted a two-year-old email of mine: ‘I’m starting to root for a plague or world war…
Now is the time for comfort reads
It all started on the day after the Brexit referendum. People who do not get the result they voted for…
Getting coronavirus does not bring clarity
I had thought that actually getting the coronavirus would bring clarity — that there would be some satisfaction in meeting…
I love my fellow hacks – even when I disagree with them
It’s one way to keep in touch with people. Each morning, somewhere between the first coffee of the day and…
The difficult balance of public vs political agony
Fear is the politician’s friend. When terror grips the public, an opportunity arises for those in power to step forward…
Would Churchill have worn a face mask?
The problem with face masks is cutting an opening of the right size to accommodate a cigarette, without the hole…
How Covid-19 will change the Tory party
Politics is full of events that are meant to change everything but actually do little. Yet the coronavirus crisis will…
We’re all guilty of recruiting this virus to our cause
There must be a quote from Shakespeare for this, but so far I haven’t found it. It’s the way we…
The joy of short stories in these taxing times
From time to time, usually when things are quiet, the government brings on the dancing girls. David Cameron made Carol…
The British have bought the lockdown hook, line and sinker
I am a type. I don’t like groups. I maintain few memberships. I question and resist authority, especially enforcement of…
There’s nothing equal about this virus
Filthy germ-laden townsfolk were out and about on the footpaths near my home on Easter Sunday, dragging with them their…
The online museums you’ll never want to leave
‘We don’t talk about the war.’ Yet those of my generation and older reference it daily. The coronavirus is an…
Coronavirus has made amateur mathematicians of us all
‘What is the point of learning maths? When do you ever actually need it? How does it ever affect your…
Monkeys, bats and our national trust
There was always one key flaw in our species. Which is that someone always shags a monkey. I have expressed…
If anything is ‘essential’ right now, it’s cigarettes
The owners of my local grocery shop, a mile or so from my house, very kindly sell me cigarettes in…
Dominic Raab is the constitutional choice, but a complicated one
We have never had a moment like this before in our history: a time when the Prime Minister is, in…
Keir Starmer may have a better chance of taking Labour to power than anyone expected
First impressions matter in politics. Once the public have made their mind up about a politician, they rarely change it.…
The corona curtain-twitchers are watching
Welcome, then, to a country in which the police send drones to humiliate people taking a walk and dried pasta…
The longer lockdown continues, the more imperilled we become
Comically, Chinese Communist party officials have speculated that Covid-19 was planted by the US army. Yet a respectable conspiracy theorist…
My isolation reading list
A psychiatrist once told me that it takes one’s subconscious about three weeks to catch up with a significant life…
Don’t let anyone tell you there’s a war on
‘Shut up — don’t you know there’s a war on?’ Strong hints of that attitude have emerged in recent weeks,…
How will the ‘war’ on coronavirus change Britain?
In the past ten days we have seen the greatest expansion of state power in British history. The state has…
The world of make-believe is stranger than we realise
Last summer, in the bc era, I took my then three-year-old to a new group play session: ‘Lottie’s Magic Box.’…
In this strange new world, where do we find purpose?
Perhaps we are at least past the beginning of this crisis. The phase where the hunt for multipacks of loo-rolls…
