Nigella Lawson admits she is anxious about leaving lockdown because she’s become so ‘utterly content with desocialisation’ that she’s ‘gone feral’ – and says she’s ‘going on a 5:2 diet with people’ to limit interaction Nigella Lawson has confessed to feeling anxious about emerging from lockdown Says she’s become so ‘utterly content with desocialisation’ that … Read more
For those of us sensitive to noise, the rules likely to govern public manners as the nation eases out of lockdown seem almost like paradise, and certainly an improvement on the pre-Covid-19 social code. The new measures are based on the scientists’ belief that talking loudly produces thousands of droplets, which can remain in the … Read more
Some images from the Black Lives Matter demonstration in London on Saturday will linger long in the memory. The sheer scale and physical density of the march, as viewed from above, is one, simultaneously impressive in its display of solidarity and terrifying for NHS medics anxious to avert a ‘second wave’ of Covid-19 infection. Then … Read more
At last, our Government is displaying a backbone – and a sense of honour – in its dealings with the totalitarian Communist regime of Beijing. Interviewed by the BBC’s Andrew Marr yesterday, the Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab declared that unless the Chinese Communist Party revoked its decision last week to apply its own tyrannical and … Read more
Kelly Brook has revealed she wants to be the next Nigella Lawson following her stint on the Great British Bake Off. And the actress and model, 40, hopes to launch her own TV show inspired by the domestic goddess. Speaking to the Mirror about the coronavirus lockdown, she said: ‘During this time I’ve realised my … Read more
As Britons prepare for the end of lockdown, after months of isolation at home, I thought it might be helpful to offer a guide to various terms which have fallen into disuse and which some of you might have forgotten ever existed. Tie: Traditionally, an item of clothing by which the management class distinguished themselves … Read more
The Government’s decision to extend the lockdown for a further three weeks has, unsurprisingly, intensified the complaint that ‘shutting down the economy will cost more lives than the coronavirus’ — or, in the words of President Trump, that the ‘cure may be worse than the disease’. The argument, in essence, is this: recessions kill. Intuitively, … Read more
This wasn’t supposed to happen. The British people have responded to a draconian lockdown — the Government-directed measure to stamp out coronavirus infection — with good humour and fortitude. Not only that, we have been significantly more observant of the rules than most other nations in similar lockdowns. Saturday’s Daily Mail reported a poll conducted … Read more
Only a certain type engages in professional point-scoring in the midst of a pandemic. But Sir Paul Nurse, the Nobel prize-winning scientist, seems to fit that bill. On Saturday, in a lengthy interview for the Times, the geneticist and former president of the Royal Society laid into Boris Johnson for what he described as a … Read more
The founder of the People’s Republic of China, Mao Zedong, invented a term for ‘reactionaries’ in the West who made threats against his regime. He called them ‘paper tigers’ — the ancient Chinese word is zhilaohu. What Mao (whose vast portrait still looms over Beijing’s Tiananmen Square) meant was that we, to use an equally … Read more