Columns
The healing power of kindness
Nobody earns the right to respect just by having lived into old age, whenever that begins — it has happened…
Is living without risk really living at all?
Taking my life in my hands — as we all do when getting out of bed — I walked along…
X number of days to save the economy!
I wonder what the Labour party will use as its scare slogan at the next election? After all, the usual…
Why schools should stay shut
Has the stock of any politician fallen more sharply, these past three or four years, than that of Shami Chakrabarti?…
Are you a lockdown eel or a pygmy goat?
I identify strongly with the garden eels in the Tokyo aquarium. Pre-corona, they were perfectly sociable. Come opening hour, when…
The dream is over
It started when, the day after the announcement of some lockdown easing, I drove five miles along the coast road.…
Who can still make a Sunday joint last a week?
Sunday lunch was always roast beef and, in the traditional way, the Yorkshire pudding was served first with gravy, supposedly…
This is not a natural disaster
Should our future permit an occupation so frivolous, historians years from now will make a big mistake if they blame…
In defence of the lockdown
I realised things were getting back to normal when I threw away a third of a tin of chopped tomatoes…
The British state needs rewiring
‘Covid-19 has been perhaps the biggest test of governments worldwide since the 1940s,’ declares the government’s command paper on the…
You’re not special – just ask Google
My research assistant, John Steele, is also a songwriter. A friend emailed him with the lyrics of a Fleetwood Mac…
For now, age isn’t just a number
When I told my seven-year-old granddaughter, over Zoom, how much I missed being with her, I added: ‘Maybe it won’t…
It’s not us, China – it’s you
Like nearly everything named a ‘scandal’, ‘affair’ or given the post-fix ‘gate’, almost nobody now remembers the Dalai Lama affair.…
The politics of bookshelves
I pulled a Canadian girl in a nightclub, back when I was in my very early twenties. She seemed very…
Lullabies and lockdown
I laughed when my Spanish midwife mentioned in passing that in Latin American countries they have a custom for new…
The coronavirus catalyst
‘The normal grease of politics is not there,’ bemoans one sociable cabinet minister. Certainly, the whispered conversations in corridors that…
This crisis will be decided by politics, not science
One of the strangest developments to have occurred during this very strange time is that the Prime Minister’s special adviser,…
With an order of cloth the plague arrived
Locked contentedly into the rhythms of farming life and digging for lead on its Derbyshire Peak District slopes, the village…
If this is a war, let’s fight it like one
Under the cloud of conformity that has settled over the land as a replacement for air pollution, heretics who doubt…
Lockdown productivity? Let it go
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…
An outbreak of bad manners
It all started on the day after the Brexit referendum. People who do not get the result they voted for…
An infectious uncertainty
I had thought that actually getting the coronavirus would bring clarity — that there would be some satisfaction in meeting…
I love my strange, disagreeable tribe
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…
