lockdown
Net effect
Let’s face it. Theatre via the internet is barely theatre. It takes a huge amount of creativity and inventiveness to…
Comfort eating
Brasserie Zédel is a grand salon under Piccadilly Circus and the only place I desired when lockdown (or lock-in) ceased…
Real life
‘What are you going to put on my head to protect me?’ said the man outside the barber’s shop to…
Dear Mary
Q. As we attend socially distant events, we expect of our hosts a scrupulous accommodation of our preferences around physical…
Real life
‘Are you seriously telling me you would rather meet up on Zoom than in reality?’ I asked a friend as…
Diary
‘Musician’ is how I described myself to the nice Latvian lady interviewing me the other week for an ONS survey…
The Covid conundrum
How strong was the scientific advice behind the lockdown?
The pandemic’s invisible victims
I sometimes pick up some food at Tesco for an 86-year-old pensioner who lives a few streets over. At the…
Plan to fail
How was Britain so ill-prepared for a pandemic?
Author’s Notebook
From the balcony where I take my daily exercise there is a view of the commercial centre of London that…
A whole new deal
If Boris wants to channel Roosevelt, he should end lockdown
Barometer
Leicester lockdowns Leicester was forced to impose the first local lockdown, in response to a reported surge in cases of…
Diary
Do you remember where you were when the BBC showed a rerun of Bowie’s Glastonbury set? When we ask each…
Peaty giant, Tuscan flower
The virus is in retreat, the lock-down is crumbling, the sherbet dispensaries will shortly reopen and there is a second…
Who watches the watchdog?
At the beginning of April, I became so frustrated by the supine coverage of the government’s response to the coronavirus…
A VAT cut won’t boost spending if we don’t trust this government
Should Chancellor Rishi Sunak cut VAT as an emergency stimulus to the consumer economy? When Labour’s Alistair Darling made a…
Portrait of the week
Home Pubs in England would be allowed to reopen for table service from 4 July, Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister,…
Sorry state
The private school advantage has never been greater
Britain emerges, blinking
The Prime Minister’s announcement that pubs, restaurants and many other facilities will be able to re-open on 4 July amounts…
Battle lines
The art of corona warfare
Real life
‘Have you met the man who keeps his horses in this field?’ said one silver-haired lady to the other, as…
The turf
Royal Ascot it wasn’t: for the first time in her 68-year reign, thanks to Covid-19, the Queen was not there.…
Barometer
Voyage into history How did the Labour government respond to the arrival of the Empire Windrush on 22 June 1948?…
Where are the deaths?
The coronavirus doomsayers could not even wait until the fall for the apocalyptic announcements of the dreaded second wave. Because…
Low life
I took a table on the terrace of the reopened bar and ordered une pression from the waitress. ‘Back to…
