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World in lockdown
How long can Britain cope?
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2 NEWS The main stories…
Lifting the lockdown: the Government’s dilemma
“The extraordinary has started to confinement indefinitely. Nor can the
become commonplace” during the Treasury afford to finance the income
coronavirus crisis, said The Independent. of tens of millions of working people
But inured as we have become to for months on end. The shutdown has
dramatic news, it was shocking to hear reduced economic activity by about a
on Monday evening that Boris Johnson third, said Hamish McRae in The
had been moved into intensive care as a Independent. Even two months of this
result of his Covid-19 infection. News will be enough to plunge us into a deep
of the Prime Minister’s deteriorating recession. We have to balance the health
condition came as UK health authorities risks of Covid-19 against the human
announced their highest daily number costs of the lockdown, agreed Daniel
of coronavirus deaths, at 938 – a higher Hannan in The Sunday Telegraph. The
daily figure than any other country in latter are illustrated by the plight of one
Europe, apart from Spain, a nation of my neighbours who is “facing the
that has lately borne the brunt of the grimmest of hat-tricks: her business
pandemic. Sir Patrick Vallance, the ruined, her house-move frozen and her
Chief Scientific Adviser, nevertheless cancer operation postponed”.
said there were signs that the number
of new cases of the virus in the UK was It’s a horrendous dilemma for the
perhaps starting to level off in response Government, said Robert Peston in
to the national lockdown. Elsewhere in The PM clapping the carers last Thursday The Spectator. If it relaxes the rules
the world, China reported its first day too late, swathes of jobs, firms and tax
without a coronavirus death since the outbreak began, and revenues could be lost forever. Business leaders say privately
several countries in Europe, including Denmark and Austria, they’re already planning for wholesale redundancies in the
began preparations for a gradual easing of their lockdowns. early autumn, when the Government’s job support scheme is
scheduled to finish. But if ministers relax the rules too early,
What a time for the Prime Minister to be out of action, said they risk unleashing a second devastating wave of infections.
Philip Johnston in The Daily Telegraph. On Sunday, the The evidence from China, which has eased some of its initial
Queen “offered a matriarchal measures, is that certain
embrace to her people” in “It will require some of the most fraught calls be resumed sectors of activity can safely
a well-judged TV address, so long as there
but rallying cries from a any peacetime government has had to make” is strict monitoring in place,
head of state “can bring only said Tony Allen-Mills in The
temporary comfort”. We need political leadership. In our Sunday Times. But it requires a lot of testing, upon which
constitution, the PM is “primus inter pares, but some are more we’re still behind the curve (see opposite). Chances are, we’ll
primus than others. Mr Johnson is one of them.” The mandate end up with a “cycle of locking and unlocking” over the next
Johnson won at the last election was a “peculiarly personal 18 months, with restrictions partially eased for certain groups
one”, agreed The Guardian. This will make things tricky for or regions until the infection rate starts climbing again –
the man now standing in for him, Foreign Secretary Dominic “rinse, wash and repeat”, as one expert describes it.
Raab, and for the rest of the relatively inexperienced Cabinet.
With the UK epidemic expected to peak in the coming days, The task, in the words of Italy’s health minister Roberto
the next few weeks will “require some of the most fraught Speranza, is to work out a way “to live with the virus” until
political calls any peacetime government has had to make”, a vaccine is found, said The Guardian. One thing we can
as ministers decide how and when to ease the lockdown. predict for sure is that the politics of easing the lockdown –
deciding which groups to favour first, and how to police it –
The sooner we relax the rules the better, said Nick Boles in will be “as fraught and treacherous as imposing it in the first
The Sunday Times. Some experts are suggesting that the place”. It’s only going to get harder for the Government,
strategy of suppressing the virus will need to be kept in place agreed Iain Martin in The Times. Ministers are still benefiting
for 18 months while a vaccine is developed, but that’s crazy. from a lot of public goodwill in their fight against coronavirus.
While people will put up with a month or two of lockdown, if But that will dissipate as voters wake to the reality that “there
it means saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of people is not going to be a VE Day-style drunken celebration in May,
and allowing the NHS to get prepared, they won’t tolerate this and that this is a crisis likely to come in waves”.

It wasn’t all bad Two martial arts experts have been running around
Stockport in Spider-Man suits to entertain local
A dog in Maryland is helping children. The Stockport Spider-Men – aka Jason
to keep the local economy Baird and his colleague Andrew Baldock– have been
going by delivering wine taking requests for visits via Facebook. In South
© COVER IMAGE: CREDIT CAMERA PRESS-CHRIS MCANDREW

to people observing social- Tyneside, a postman has been doing his rounds in
distancing measures. The fancy dress (including Little Bo Peep and Cleopatra) to
11-year-old brindle boxer, cheer up residents in lockdown. And in Liverpool, a
named Soda Pup, apparently police officer stopped off to help a four-year-old boy
relishes donning a saddlebag celebrate his birthday. Dexter’s mother had put out
containing bottles, and taking a request on social media for a police patrol to wave
them out to customers of the at him. Instead, Sergeant Mark Wilson visited with
Stone House Urban Winery. a goodie bag and a card from the Chief Constable.
It’s proving good for business, In Norfolk, a paramedic who headed to Lidl after a
too: “Some customers will buy night shift was given a round of applause by fellow shoppers, one of whom paid for his shopping. And
more bottles of wine so their in London, Syrian refugee Hassan Akkad, 32, was invited onto morning television, after his social media
kids can see Soda deliver it,” post – in which he said he’d been “honoured” to join the NHS’s volunteer army as a hospital cleaner –
said the shop’s owner. went viral. The Bafta-winning film-maker, who fled Damascus in 2015, said it was “the least I can do”.
COVER CARTOON: NEIL DAVIES
THE WEEK 11 April 2020
 …and how they were covered NEWS 3

The race to test

before global demand outstripped supply.
As it was, no such preparations were made
– and Britain lost valuable time increasing
Finally, Britain has a clear strategy on its laboratory capacity. When it finally
testing, said The Daily Telegraph. After decided to ramp up testing, the UK found
a barrage of criticism, Health Secretary itself in a “worldwide scramble” for the
Matt Hancock announced last week that necessary laboratory equipment, said
the Government would call on university George Parker in the FT. And while
and private-sector laboratories to help ministers point to a global shortage of
deliver 100,000 Covid-19 tests a day by chemical reagents needed for tests to work,
the end of the month. Coming as it does industry figures have disputed the claim.
after weeks of excuses, the promise will
have been “music to people’s ears”. But If there’s one thing that’s guaranteed to
it wasn’t so long ago, said The Economist, make officials dealing with this crisis
that Boris Johnson said he was aiming for bristle, it’s mentioning the Germans, said
250,000 tests a day. And by mid-week, the FT. The UK and Germany entered the
the Government was still only delivering Testing: why is Britain lagging? crisis in “lock-step”, working together on
14,000 daily tests, with just 266,000 some of the world’s first Covid-19 tests.
carried out in total. As of last week, only 2,000 out of a total But Germany’s labs – with help from German healthcare giant
500,000 front-line NHS staff had been tested. Roche – have worked at four times the NHS rate, conducting
almost a million tests already. It’s a “national humiliation”,
So why wasn’t this “Dunkirk approach” to laboratory testing said Jeremy Warner in The Daily Telegraph – and the fact that
– using “little ships to aid destroyers” – adopted weeks ago, Britain must now source much of its testing equipment from
asked The Times. It’s “clearly” the right way forward, but has China, a developing economy, renders it “doubly demeaning”.
arrived far too late in the day.
Blame Public Health England, “The failure to test NHS workers is There are two different types
said Guy Adams in the Daily of test, said Paul Hunter in The
Mail; for weeks, it reportedly undoubtedly costing lives” Guardian. One – the “antigen”
declined offers from scientific test – detects whether people
institutions to help expand testing. Instead – thanks to a are currently infected, and requires laboratory space. The
mixture of “control freakery and incompetence” – it initially second – the “antibody” test – in theory establishes whether
insisted all tests be done at its own lab in London, even as the people have already had the virus and could be immune, and
failure to test NHS workers was “undoubtedly costing lives”. can be done with just a spot of blood. Yet none of the anti-
body tests bought by the Government has yet proved accurate
Ministers bear some responsibility too, said Alex Wickham on enough; this week, ministers called on British industry to
BuzzFeed. If testing had been the strategy from the off, Britain produce one that works. Only when a reliable test is brought
could have increased its manufacturing and imports of test kits into mass circulation might we “finally return to normal life”.

The ventilator challenge toilet-paper stampeding over each other in March”. Using
ventilators is a “drastic step” taken when there is no practical
British manufacturing this month faces “perhaps the greatest test alternative. It’s no panacea. Patients have to be heavily sedated,
in its history”, said Rob Davies in The Observer. “Specialist firms making them weak and immobile; the process can badly damage
have joined forces with industrial powerhouses such as Airbus their lungs. And ventilators don’t cure anything on their own. A
and Rolls-Royce in an unprecedented collaborative effort to make recent study of 20 ventilated Covid-19 patients in Seattle found
medical ventilators to treat Covid-19 patients.” Ventilators are that nine had died, and only four had yet escaped the hospital.
critical to the treatment of the most severe cases; they take over
the breathing when the lungs fail. The NHS currently has access There are, though, less invasive devices available, said Gabriel
to around 9,000 of them; but the Department for Health has set Pogrund in The Sunday Times. Continuous positive airway
a target of 18,000 devices in the coming weeks, mostly from pressure (Cpap) machines are “halfway houses” between oxygen
Ventilator Challenge UK, a consortium of engineering firms. It masks and full ventilation. They pump air and oxygen into the
has also ordered 10,000 of a new design invented from scratch lungs at pressure; in Italy, early reports suggest they were
by Dyson, and 10,000 from the defence contractor Babcock. effective in 50% of cases. A remarkable collaboration between the
Mercedes F1 team in Northamptonshire and University College
As a critical care physician, “I’m flattered by all the attention our London saw a prototype produced in less than 100 hours.
tools are receiving”, said Matt Strauss in The Spectator. But the Following trials and regulatory approval, Mercedes manufactured
clamour for ventilators reminds me rather of “the panic buyers of its first 600 devices on Monday; it is now making 1,000 per day.

Editor-in-chief: Caroline Law

THE WEEK
The leader of the Government is in critical condition... his deputies Editor: Theo Tait

jockeying to take over the reins. If you want a cheery way to brighten Deputy editor: Harry Nicolle Executive editor: Laurence Earle
City editor: Jane Lewis Assistant editor: Robin de Peyer
up the lockdown, you can’t beat Armando Iannucci’s The Death Contributing editors: Daniel Cohen, Simon Wilson,
Rob McLuhan, Catherine Heaney, Digby Warde-
of Stalin (2017). A searing commentary on political ambition and political manoeuvring, the film Aldam, Tom Yarwood, William Skidelsky Editorial
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encompasses more than its immediate setting. The blood-drenched evils of the Kremlin in 1953 have editor: Tom Cobbe Production editor: Alanna O’Connell
Editorial chairman and co-founder: Jeremy O’Grady
no counterpart, needless to say, in the Downing Street of 2020; and unlike Stalin, our PM – we hope Production Manager: Maaya Mistry Production
and pray – will enjoy a full recovery. But the parallels are there: shell-shocked Dominic Raab, nature’s Executive: Sophie Griffin Newstrade Director: David
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almost comical insistence by Michael Gove, our Khrushchev, that decisions be taken “collectively”. Advertising Manager: Carly Activille
Group Advertising Director: Caroline Fenner
And everyone insisting theirs is the path the absent leader “would want us to follow”. Founder: Jolyon Connell

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in Stalin’s Russia – the wise journalist, the one who’s never run a whelk stall yet knows exactly what
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in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publishers 11 April 2020 THE WEEK
4 NEWS Politics
Controversy of the week Warning over death toll
Labour’s new leader Experts warned this week
against reading too much
into the UK’s daily tolls of
“It’s finally over,” said Ayesha Hazarika in the I newspaper. deaths linked to Covid-19,
As Frankie Boyle remarked: “I’m not saying the Labour as they represent the day
leadership election has gone on too long, but human on which the death was
civilisation ended in the middle of it.” On Saturday, the votes reported, not the date on
were, at last, counted – and Keir Starmer swept the board. He which it occurred, which
won more than 56% of the vote; his nearest rival, Rebecca may have been days or even
weeks earlier. New figures
Long-Bailey, took 28%, and Lisa Nandy 16%. He was the top
released by NHS England at
choice of members, affiliates and registered supporters alike. the weekend showed there
The political landscape has been “recast beyond recognition”, were 300 more deaths than
said Polly Toynbee in The Guardian. During the Corbyn era, previously thought between
“there was no effective opposition, a void, a limbo”. Now, in 11 March and 1 April. The
Starmer, Labour has “a grand prosecutor well qualified to hold ONS has also pointed out
the Government’s feet to the fire”. A former Director of Public that the figures relate to
Prosecutions, who has managed to unite the Corbynite and deaths in hospital, and do
Blairite wings, he is just what is needed to transform the party: not include the minority of
Covid-19 patients who die at
“trusted, tried and tested”, a “big-brained grown-up”. Starmer: a new broom
home, or in care homes.
During the contest, Starmer was careful not to alienate the Corbynites, said The Times. But he has
now shown his hand. Key Corbyn lieutenants like Richard Burgon and Barry Gardiner have been
removed. “The shadow cabinet no longer has a place for John McDonnell or Diane Abbott.” Ed
Miliband has returned as shadow business secretary, along with Lord Falconer and Rachel Reeves.
Long-Bailey, appointed to the education brief, is one of the few survivors from the party’s hard-left.
And one of the new leader’s first acts was to “rightly and profusely apologise to Jewish groups” for
the anti-Semitism of the Corbyn years (his wife is Jewish). For the first time in five years, it seems that
“the country will have an opposition worthy of the name”. The more one contemplates Starmer,
“the more perfect for the moment he appears”, said Matthew Norman on The Independent. The
main criticism of him used to be that he’s a bit dull. But while that might have been a weakness
pre-coronavirus, in current circumstances it’s just the ticket. Starmer is dependable and “doggedly
industrious”. We can expect him to pick apart Government mistakes “with legalistic precision”.

There are four years until the next election, said Nick Timothy in The Daily Telegraph – and we don’t
know how the virus will play out politically. But so far, the Tories are riding high at the polls. And
Prisoners released
Starmer has a clear Achilles heel. If you were a Labour candidate trying to regain a northern seat, Up to 4,000 prisoners will be
then “the three scariest words in the English language” would be “human rights lawyer”. “And that, considered for early release
to his fingertips, is what Sir Keir Starmer will always be.” But he’s also the son of a toolmaker and a in England and Wales to help
nurse, said Leo McKinstry in the New Statesman – not a typical “member of the metropolitan elite”. control the spread of the
This Government will be judged by the death rate, and by whether economic meltdown follows. coronavirus. Inmates with
That is far in the future – but “by backing Starmer, Labour has taken the first step back to power”. two months or less still to
serve – excluding those
convicted of terror offences,
Good week for: or violent or sex crimes –
Spirit of the age Potters Corner, which won the Grand National – in the virtual will be released on licence.
world. With the real race cancelled, the Welsh-trained steeple- Robert Buckland, the Justice
Anxious Britons looking for
Secretary, said that while the
reassurance and calm in chaser was awarded victory by an algorithm. Bookmakers
Government was committed
troubled times may be accepted small bets on the computer-simulated race, broadcast to seeing justice served, it
behind a surge in ratings on ITV, and donated their profits to NHS Charities Together. also needed to reduce the
for The Repair Shop – a TV
Renters in Brooklyn, after a local landlord who owns at least risk of outbreaks in jails,
show in which a team of
craftspeople carefully repair 80 apartments in the New York borough told his tenants he which could overwhelm the
wouldn’t be charging them any rent this month – and to look NHS. So far, 88 inmates and
a range of well-loved
out for their neighbours who might be struggling in the crisis. 15 staff have tested positive
objects (old dolls, broken
for Covid-19; three inmates
musical instruments) The show going on, after English National Opera announced have died.
brought in by members of that if it can’t use actors and musicians in its productions, it will
the public. Since it moved to use Lego figures instead. Scenes from past productions including
BBC One last month, some Universal credit surge
The Marriage of Figaro have been recreated by opera lovers and Some 950,000 people have
6.7 million people have
been tuning in to watch the
posted online under the Twitter hashtag ENOLegoChallenge. applied for universal credit
show, giving it a larger since 16 March, the
Department for Work and
audience than EastEnders. Bad week for: Pensions (DWP) said last
Airbnb, which was criticised for letting hosts advertise properties week. The scale of the
A couple in India have
as “Covid-19 retreats”. Government guidelines make it clear that applications is almost ten
named their newborn twins
Corona and Covid, in order holiday homes should only be used by self-isolating key workers; times the norm. The
to make the day they were however, there have been rumours of city-dwellers driving into applicants include people
born “memorable” and to the countryside in the dead of night, to stay in rural properties. who have been made
redundant or furloughed,
assuage the fear associated Animal lovers, who were advised to be wary of cats and dogs.
with the words. The babies, are self-employed, or have
So far, there is no evidence that humans can catch Covid-19 from had their pay cut. More than
a girl and a boy, were born their pets, but animals may carry the virus on their fur.
on 27 March, two days after 10,000 DWP staff have been
the country’s national
Cancer Research UK, which became the latest charity to warn redeployed to work on
lockdown came into force. that it is losing vital revenue, as a result of charity shops being processing the claims.
closed and fundraising events being cancelled.

THE WEEK 11 April 2020

 The UK at a glance NEWS 5
Glasgow Earlsferry, Fife
Care home deaths: Sixteen residents of a care home in Glasgow Double standard: Scotland’s Chief
have died during a suspected outbreak of coronavirus. The deaths Medical Officer resigned this week after
took place over seven days at the 90-bed Burlington Court Care being caught flouting her own advice
Home. The patients, who all had underlying health conditions, against non-essential travel. Dr Catherine
had not been tested for Covid-19, as they had not been admitted Calderwood had regularly urged people
to hospital; however, their symptoms suggested the presence of not to leave their homes – but on
the virus. A number of deaths at other care homes have also been Saturday, The Scottish Sun published
linked to the pandemic, including nine at Liverpool’s Oak Springs photos of her walking with her family
Care Home and two at the Newfield Nursing Home in Sheffield. near their home in Earlsferry, 45 miles
The fatalities have exacerbated concerns that care workers, in from their main home in Edinburgh. At
residential homes and in the community, still do not have the first, she implied it had been a one-off
protective equipment they need and that, in the absence of testing, essential visit, but she later admitted she
they risk infecting vulnerable older people. At least two care had been there on consecutive weekends. First Minister Nicola
workers have died with Covid-19. Sturgeon initially backed her, then accepted her resignation.

Liverpool
Infrastructure attacks: Police have blamed conspiracy theorists for
a spate of suspected arson attacks on mobile phone masts in cities
including Liverpool, Birmingham and Belfast. At least 20 masts
have been torched or vandalised in the past week or so, possibly
as a result of baseless claims, circulating on social media, that
radiation from 5G technology makes people more vulnerable
to Covid-19. On Sunday, boxer Amir Khan became the latest
celebrity to air the theory. “Coronavirus,” he wrote on Instagram.
“Do you not think it’s anything to do with that 5G in these
towers that are going up?” The rumour has also been spread by
actor Woody Harrelson and talent-show judge Amanda Holden.

Magherafelt, Co. Derry

Pulling together: A company in Northern
Ireland that usually manufactures window
blinds is now making medical masks for
the NHS instead. Bloc Blinds has doubled
staff at its factory in Magherafelt to 200
in an effort to produce 500,000 masks a
week. Other small businesses that have
repurposed themselves to help the fight
against Covid-19 include Lancashire Textiles: it normally
makes pillows and mattresses, but is now also making masks.
Meanwhile Brompton, the London bicycle-maker, is committing
£100,000 of its production capacity to supply 1,000 bikes to
NHS workers.

Llandudno, Conwy
Herd immunity: In brazen defiance of
the lockdown, wild Kashmiri goats have
been congregating in groups in the Welsh
resort of Llandudno. The herds of shaggy
beasts normally live on the nearby Great
Orme headland, and only occasionally
wander into town. Now, however, the
goats have been taking advantage of
traffic-free streets to venture in large
numbers into the centre, where up to 120
have been gathering to feast on hedges
and flowers. “They run Llandudno now,”
said one local. “We just have to accept that as fact.”

The Cotswolds
Holiday hotspots: Fears that hordes of second-home owners London
fleeing the cities would spread Covid-19 to rural areas may have Drivers at risk: A total of 14 transport workers, including nine bus
proved well-founded, according to data from the Covid Symptom drivers, have died after contracting Covid-19, raising fears that
Tracker, a health monitoring app which almost two million such workers are not being properly protected from infection. This
Britons have downloaded. The experience of its users suggests week, the Unite union said many of its members were “scared”. It
an overall infection rate in the UK of 4.9%. Rural areas tend to warned that drivers in the capital do not have sufficient access to
report lower-than-average rates, owing to cases being clustered sanitising wipes, and that many driver cabins have yet to be fitted
© TWITTER @ANDREWSTUART

around cities. However, in the Cotswolds, the Lake District and with protective Perspex screens. Health expert Dr John Ashton
Anglesey – all areas where there is a high proportion of second said it was vital that drivers be given masks. “Public transport
homes – infection is running at an above-average 5%-6%. workers should be afforded the same protection as NHS staff,”
Professor Tim Spector, the app’s lead researcher, says there are he said. Last week, with passenger numbers at a fraction of their
also signs of the trend in coastal Cornwall and Devon too. Some normal level, the Government announced extra funding for bus
local authorities called for roadblocks over the Easter weekend. companies in England to keep services on the road.

11 April 2020 THE WEEK

 Europe at a glance NEWS 7
Dublin Stockholm Moscow
New doctor: Lockdown rethink: Sweden’s government Victory parade: Rehearsals for Russia’s
Ireland’s announced a new emergency law this Victory Day parade – involving up to
caretaker PM, week, after a steady rise in coronavirus 15,000 soldiers – took place at a parade
Leo Varadkar, has deaths intensified questions about its ground outside Moscow this week, despite
re-registered as a strategy of urging people to stay at home, a strict coronavirus lockdown confining
doctor and will but allowing bars, restaurants and most 12 million Muscovites to their homes.
work one shift a schools to remain open. As of Wednesday, The public holiday, on 9 May, will this
week during the there had been 687 Covid-19 fatalities year mark 75 years since Russia’s victory
coronavirus crisis. in Sweden. That’s 68 per million of over Nazi Germany, and the Kremlin
Varadkar, who population, considerably more than in insists it will go ahead as planned.
quit medicine neighbouring Norway (16), Finland (6) or Opposition leader Alexei Navalny this
seven years ago to Denmark (35). The government said the week attacked the “idiocy” of holding
go into politics, is the son of a doctor and law would give it “possibilities which are the mass rehearsals, and described them
a nurse, and his partner – as well as his at least close to those available to other as a potential “breeding ground for the
two sisters and their husbands – all work countries”. Last week, 2,300 doctors and coronavirus”. As a result of a package
in healthcare. Last month, Ireland’s Health academics signed an open letter calling for of new laws, violations of quarantine
Service Executive launched an appeal for a more hard-line policy. The PM, Stefan rules that result in other people dying
ex-clinicians to “Be On Call for Ireland”; Löfven, has continued to play down the carry a seven-year prison term.
Varadkar is one of tens of thousands who distinctiveness of the country’s response
have responded. As of Wednesday, Ireland to the virus, saying Sweden was simply
had recorded 210 deaths related to attempting to flatten the curve in a
Covid-19; that gives it a rate of 43 deaths “somewhat different way”.
per million head of population, a little less
than half that in the UK.

Vienna
Phased reopening: Austria, Denmark and
Norway have become the first European
countries to announce plans to start easing
lockdown measures. In Austria, small
businesses and garden centres have been
given permission to reopen next week.
Hair salons will be allowed to reopen from
the beginning of next month, and hotels
and restaurants from mid-May. However,
Chancellor Sebastian Kurz made it clear
that the lifting of restrictions depended on
citizens continuing to comply with physical
distancing measures, and staying at home
as much as possible until at least the end
of April. Austria entered one of the earliest
and strictest lockdowns in Europe. It
had reported 273 deaths by Wednesday
(around 30 per million of population). In
Denmark, which also entered lockdown
relatively early, primary and nursery
schools would reopen on 15 April. In
Norway, schools will reopen on 27 April.

Athens
Rome Virus reaches camps: Two migrant camps
Cases plateauing: There were signs this week in Greece have been sealed off, and placed
that the coronavirus outbreaks in Italy and under quarantined lockdown for 14 days,
Spain may have plateaued, and are now in an attempt to contain cases of Covid-19
beginning to ease. In Spain, the number of new diagnosed there. The Ritsona camp near
confirmed cases has been falling since 1 April, Thebes was locked down last week after
while the daily reported death toll peaked on 23 people tested positive for the virus, an
2 April at 961. In Italy, too, daily deaths have outbreak that was traced to a 19-year-old
been getting generally lower from a peak of 919 Cameroonian woman who’d been infected
on 27 March. “The curve has started its descent in a hospital in Athens, where she had
and the number of deaths has started to drop,” said the national health institute given birth. This week, the Malakasa
director Silvio Brusaferro. “If these data are confirmed [in the coming days], we will camp, about 25 miles north of Athens,
have to start thinking about phase two” – a reference to the easing of the country’s was also quarantined, after a 53-year-old
strict, month-long national lockdown. As in several European countries, Italy’s Afghan man tested positive. Around
government is making plans to use swabs and blood tests to determine who can 110,000 asylum seekers and migrants
return to work safely, in a phased process. are currently incarcerated in camps across
In Rome, Pope Francis inaugurated a “virtual” Holy Week with a Palm Sunday Greece; 40,000 of them are crowded into
mass held in an almost empty St Peter’s. “The tragedy we are experiencing summons insanitary centres on the islands of Lesbos,
us to take seriously the things that are serious,” he said – “to rediscover that life is of Samos, Chios, Leros and Kos – where the
no use if not used to serve others.” In Milan, the superstar tenor Andrea Bocelli said local health infrastructure is not remotely
he would be streaming an Easter concert from the city’s empty cathedral. adequate to cope with a serious outbreak
© AP

of the coronavirus.

Catch up with daily news at theweek.co.uk 11 April 2020 THE WEEK

8 NEWS The world at a glance
Washington DC Washington DC
“Pearl Harbor moment”: The President “was warned”: It has emerged that President Trump’s
US surgeon general warned trade adviser warned on 29 January that the coronavirus had the
the country to prepare for its potential to kill millions of Americans and derail the economy.
“hardest and saddest week” on Peter Navarro reiterated the warning in a second memo on
Sunday, as a predicted spike in 23 February. A China hawk, he suggested a travel ban from the
Covid-19 deaths approached. country, which Trump did partially institute. This week, Trump
“This is going to be our Pearl threatened to stop funding the WHO, complaining that it had
Harbor moment, our 9/11 “disagreed” with the ban at the time. The WHO has been widely
moment, only it’s not going to criticised for having accepted Beijing’s assurances – in December
be localised – it’s going to be happening all over the country,” and January – that the virus was under control, and was not being
said Jerome Adams. However, he also said that there was “light transmitted from human to human. Trump has also continued to
at the end of the tunnel”, as the rate of new infections in some advocate the use of the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine to treat
areas appeared to level off. There were 400,000 cases in the US Covid-19, although his senior adviser on the outbreak,
by midweek, more than in Italy, Spain and France combined, and Dr Anthony Fauci, says there’s limited scientific evidence to
there had been almost 13,000 deaths. support its use, and that it has potentially serious side effects.
On Tuesday, New York state recorded its highest daily death
toll yet, 731, bringing the total fatalities to 5,489. That’s a
rate of 280 per million people. The next worst-affected
states by that measure were New Jersey, followed by
Louisiana (where New Orleans is a hotspot) and
Michigan (with cases clustered around Detroit). In
several cities, it is becoming clear that the virus is having a
disproportionate effect on already disadvantaged communities.
In Chicago, for example, black people account for 30% of the
population, but 70% of Covid-19 deaths.

Mexico City
Murder rate surges: Mexico’s murder rate reached an all-time
high last month, as a stay-at-home order imposed as a result of
Covid-19 failed to stem gang violence. A total of 2,585 homicides
were recorded in March, putting this year on course to break last
year’s record number of murders. “It’s business as usual [for the
cartels] with a risk of further escalation, especially if at some
point the armed forces are called away for pandemic control,”
said Falko Ernst, an analyst at International Crisis Group. There
has been a particular surge in violence in the central state of
Guanajuato, where rival cartels are fighting over the profits of
illegal taps from oil pipelines; stolen fuel is a major source of
income for the cartels.

Annapolis, Maryland
Kennedy deaths: Two members of the
Kennedy family drowned last week
when their canoe was swept out to sea
in Chesapeake Bay. Maeve Kennedy
McKean, a 40-year-old human rights
lawyer, and her eight-year-old son
Gideon had set out in the canoe to
retrieve a lost ball that had fallen into
the water. The Kennedy clan has been
cursed by tragedies going back decades.
Kennedy McKean’s grandfather, Robert
F. Kennedy, was assassinated in 1968,
five years after the assassination of his
brother, John F. Kennedy; their sister, Kathleen (Kick) Kennedy,
was killed in a plane crash in 1948; and JFK’s son, John
F. Kennedy Jr, died in a plane crash in 1999.

Guayaquil, Ecuador Brasília

City in crisis: Ecuador’s largest city, the port of Guayaquil, has President’s appeal to faith: Brazil’s
emerged as a Covid-19 hotspot in South America. With local far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro,
authorities seemingly already overwhelmed by the crisis, gruesome called for a national day of fasting
images have been posted on social media, showing people leaving and prayer last Sunday, to “free Brazil from this evil” of
their relatives’ bodies in the streets, because no one is available coronavirus. Bolsonaro’s popularity has plunged recently, owing
to collect them. This week, the government distributed 4,000 to his refusal to take seriously the threat of Covid-19. However,
cardboard coffins, after wooden ones ran out. Officially, 138 he retains strong support among Brazil’s large community of
people have died so far in the city and surrounding region – evangelical Christians, and he has exempted religious services
almost as many as in the whole of Mexico. The real figure is from coronavirus lockdowns. Although brought up as a Catholic,
likely to be far higher. The city’s experience has caused alarm in Bolsonaro was re-baptised as an evangelical Christian in the
the rest of South America. It has also highlighted the virus’s ability Jordan River in 2016. “Brazil is in a serious crisis. The forces of
to spread even in stiflingly warm weather: the temperature has evil are rising against a God-fearing Christian president,” tweeted
been over 30°C in Guayaquil this week. Congressman Marco Feliciano, who is also an evangelical pastor.

THE WEEK 11 April 2020

 The world at a glance NEWS 9
Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh Singapore Tokyo
Looming catastrophe: A group of 165 Second wave: Singapore has closed Emergency
serving and former global leaders, schools, colleges and all non-essential declared: Japan’s
including Gordon Brown and John Major, workplaces for a month, urged people to PM, Shinzo Abe,
have warned that more than 1.2 million stay at home, and confined 20,000 migrant has declared a
people are likely to die of Covid-19 in workers to two overcrowded dormitory state of emergency
poorer nations in Africa, Asia and Latin blocks, in a bid to contain a second wave in Tokyo and six
America, unless members of the G20 of Covid-19 infections. The city-state surrounding
group take immediate coordinated action. experienced a first wave of infections in regions – an area
They called on governments to cancel debt January as the virus spread from China. covering 44%
repayments, and provide $150bn in urgent But it was contained via strict surveillance, of Japan’s
funding to help developing countries cope contact-tracing and quarantine measures – population – and called on people to
with the emergency. Aid agencies have and only six people have died to date. remain at home, after a surge in the
issued a series of stark warnings about the There has, however, been a sharp rise number of Covid-19 cases. Under Japanese
ability of states such as Yemen and Syria in new cases in recent weeks, the vast law, the government cannot enforce limits
to withstand Covid-19, and warned of majority of them believed to be in-country on citizens’ movements. However, the state
devastating consequences for people living transmissions whose origins cannot be of emergency means local authorities can
in refugee camps everywhere from Mali to traced. Singapore has around 1.4 million order the closure of facilities such as
Bangladesh, where hundreds of thousands foreign workers, of whom 284,000 are on schools and cinemas. Abe also announced
of Rohingya Muslims driven from “construction work permits”. The vast a vast fiscal stimulus package equal to fully
Myanmar now live. majority are from South Asia. 20% of Japan’s GDP.

Wuhan, China
No new fatalities: China
reported no new Covid-19
deaths on Tuesday for the
first time since January,
and only 32 new cases, all
of them in people recently
arrived in the country. As
a two-month lockdown
was partially lifted, some
citizens of Wuhan were
finally allowed out of the
city, but 45 residential
compounds there had
their lockdowns reinforced
following the emergence
of asymptomatic cases. In
addition, Beijing extended
its temporary ban on
foreigners entering
both the mainland
and Hong
Kong.

Boma, Chad Brisbane,

Push against Australia
jihadists: The Cardinal freed:
governments of Cardinal George
Chad, Niger and Pell, the former
Nigeria have joined financial
forces to mount a major offensive against controller of the
Boko Haram jihadists encamped in the Vatican, walked Sydney, Australia
vast, marshy Lake Chad basin. The free from prison Crew stranded: Around 15,000 members
announcement was made a week after the this week after of cruise ship crews were still stranded at
Islamist group launched a devastating Australia’s sea in Australian waters this week, amid
attack on a Chad military base in Boma, highest court growing anger in the country over the role
Lac province, on 23 March. According to quashed his of such ships in spreading Covid-19. In
Chadian officials, the jihadists surrounded conviction for sexually assaulting children. New South Wales, police have opened an
and overran the base, burning it to the In December 2018, a jury had found Pell, investigation into how 2,700 passengers
ground and killing 98 soldiers. In now 78, guilty of five charges relating to were allowed to disembark from the Ruby
response, Chad declared the area a war the abuse of two choirboys in the 1990s, Princess liner in Sydney on 19 March,
zone, embarked on a large-scale military a conviction that was upheld by the Court although some were exhibiting flu-like
operation called “Wrath of Boma”, and of Appeal. But on Monday, the high court symptoms; since then, 662 people with
asked the local population to leave – in Brisbane ruled that the jury had relied links to the ship have tested positive for
adding to the existing 169,000 internal too heavily on witness testimony, and that Covid-19. Thousands of other ships’
refugees in the country. his conviction was unsafe. crew are stranded off the coast of the US.

11 April 2020 THE WEEK

10 NEWS People
How Hearn got his drive Kemp was busy with his band.
You have to be fiercely “My heart was stretched to
competitive to make it as a breaking wondering where he
sports promoter. Eddie Hearn was and what he was doing,”
was trained to succeed by his she says. But they finally
father Barry – one of boxing’s married in 1988, and
most successful promoters. conceived their first child that
Barry started by putting his son night. “I got everything I’d ever
in the ring. “We sparred at wanted; married and pregnant,
15,” says Eddie. “We beat the on the same day.” After that,
life out of each other.” Barry, Holliman’s music career went
now 71, had to be tough: he on hold, while Spandau Ballet
was brought up on a council continued to sell millions of
estate in east London. But albums. “Did I give up my
thanks to the money his father career for marriage? Yes –
made, Eddie was brought up with absolutely no regrets.
in a stately home, and went to Years ago, people would ask:
private school. Barry called ‘What’s it like living in
him “silver spoon”. “He was Martin’s shadow?’ But I’ve
petrified that I’d become all the never been in his shadow. I see
things he’d hated,” Eddie told his light and I’m bathing in it.”
Alex Moshakis in The
Observer. “The kid at school My father, John Lennon
who’s a bit flash and brash.” Julian Lennon has fond
So he put Eddie to work, memories of growing up with
shining his shoes and cleaning his father, John, at their home
his car. “He made me his of Kenwood in Surrey. “I
hobby. His little project. ‘I’m probably saw some of the
going to build you in a way greatest musicians in the world Before the corona-crisis, Joe Wicks amassed an estimated £12m
where you’re going to be come and go through that fortune running online workout classes for adults; but since the
dangerous. You’re going to be house,” he told Joshua David lockdown, the 33-year-old has carved out a new role: keeping
good at what you do.’” Eddie Stein in The Observer. Ringo Britain’s children fit while they are off school and stuck indoors.
duly followed in his father’s Starr lived “down the road”, “I was in bed just after hearing schools were closing, when I just
footsteps, and he has certainly and John would take his son to had this idea pop into my head – PE with Joe, a live workout every
proved himself: he now see him on a mini-motorbike. day.” Hundreds of thousands of children are now joining in his
represents boxing’s biggest John was an attentive father: virtual sessions, often alongside their parents. And Wicks has
stars. But he knows that he’ll Julian remembers sitting on a become known as the nation’s PE teacher. “I can’t believe the
never be able to match his roof making a model aeroplane response,” he told Julia Llewellyn Smith in The Times. “It’s gone
father’s achievement. “One with him. He thought they completely gangbusters.” And yet, it makes sense. “We all know
thing I’m jealous of is that I were a happy family. But then how hard home schooling is, that kids might not take a workout led
never got to make it from John “disappeared off the face by parents seriously. But if it’s someone else leading them, it’s a
nothing. I believe I would have, of the planet” – or, at least, routine that starts the day off positively.” One of the reasons for
but I never got the chance.” that’s how it seemed. “He his success is that he exudes positivity. Yet his own childhood on
andd Yoko
Y k Ono O w were a Surrey council estate was “extremely dysfunctional”. His father
A pop star marrriage deeply and pub blicly was “in and out” of rehab for drug addiction, and family life was
Shirlie Holliman was
w in love. I felt aas if my pretty grim. “It was frozen pies and Wagon Wheels and no structure
only 20 when she met mum and I had been at all.” So being able to help families cope in the current crisis has
Spandau Ballet’s cast aside.” For a a particular significance to him. It “makes me so proud”, he says.
Martin Kemp in tthe decade, Julia an “I think it could be the most meaningful thing I’ve ever done.”
early 1980s – and she and John “baarely
knew at once she was spoke”. It wa as his
going to marry him. mother, Cynthia, Viewpoint:
She had already seeen who – deespite Farewell
a picture of him inna her hurt – Viral self-promotion Lord Armstrong of
magazine, “and mym encoura aged “It is a question a thousand publicists Ilminster, former
gut feeling was hee Julian nnot to are asking themselves: how to achieve cabinet secretary, died
looked really kindd”, give up on optimum client exposure in the time of 3 April, aged 93.
she told Caroline his father. corona? If you are Lady Gaga, you put Honor Blackman,
Scott in The Sundday So he made in a call to the director of the WHO. celebrated actress, died
Times. “Then I saaw overturees, and If you are Kate Winslet, you release a 5 April, aged 94.
him at a club: John wellcomed strange public health video. The star Manu Dibango, jazz
everything blurred d them. Then, in of Titanic took it upon herself to musician, died 24 March,
and he stayed in 1980, he w was release a handwashing guide, as she aged 86.
sharp focus. I justt shot dead. “Our had played ‘an epidemiologist trying
Eddie Large, one half
knew he was on relationshiip was to stop the spread of a hypothetical of Little and Large, died
my path.” Their getting better virus’ in the movie Contagion. This 2 April, aged 78.
© CAMERA PRESS/ANDREW CROWLEY

schedules kept theem before he diied. felt equivalent to the former hunk of
John Prine, folk and
apart: Holliman He wanted to t ER, George Clooney, rushing to the
country singer, died
(right) was a reconnect, no ot just front of the plane screaming, ‘Hey, I’m 7 April, aged 73.
backing singer forr with me but with a doctor’, or Meryl Streep booting
Wham!, then one the rest of hiss family. Boris Johnson out of No. 10 because Leonard “Nipper” Read,
Kray twins detective,
half of the pop duuo He never got a she had once played the Iron Lady.” died 7 April, aged 95.
Pepsi & Shirlie, an nd chance to do sso.” Camilla Long in The Sunday Times
Desert Island Discs returns later in the spring
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 Briefing NEWS 13

Spuds, veg pie and digging for victory

With all this talk of Blitz spirit – and fear about fragile food supply chains – is it time for a return to rationing?

Who wants a return to rationing? grey, mushy and unappetising, was

Tim Lang, a professor of food policy introduced to save wheat stocks). Fruit
at City University, for one. Lang thinks and vegetables were also exempt, but
that Britain’s food system is worryingly supplies were limited; people were
fragile. Only 53% of food eaten in this encouraged to grow their own to combat
country is produced here; the UK imports shortages (see box). Although allowances
£11bn worth of fruit and veg per year. fluctuated during the War, a typical
Thanks to panic buying in the current weekly ration for an adult was 113g of
crisis, retailers have already had to ration bacon (4 rashers), 227g of minced beef,
supplies; there is evidence that the poor 57g of butter, 57g of cheese, 113g of
and vulnerable are struggling to get margarine, 113g of cooking fat, 3 pints
enough. “Thirty years ago, the UK’s food of milk, 227g of sugar, 57g of tea and
retailers carried ten to 12 days of stock one egg. Other key commodities –
– now they have just 24-36 hours of including petrol (from 1939), soap and
stock,” warned Professor Erik Millstone, clothes (by 1942) were also rationed.
a food safety expert at the University of
Sussex. Professor Terry Marsden of How did it affect people’s health?
Cardiff University is concerned that Rationing was a great success; while at
supplies of fresh produce from hard-hit Londoners queuing for ration books least 20 million people died around the
Spain and Italy may dry up. All three world from malnutrition during the
experts wrote to the Prime Minister demanding a “health-based War, the British thrived. Most ate less, but everyone got essential
food rationing scheme to see the country through this crisis”. nutrients. Many less well-off people were much better fed than
before the war years. Special arrangements were made for young
How has Britain used rationing in the past? children and expectant and nursing mothers to receive cod-liver
Rationing was first imposed on civilians in this country near the oil, orange juice and milk. Infant mortality rates declined, and the
end of the First World War; sugar, meat, flour, butter, margarine average age at which people died from natural causes increased.
and milk were rationed in 1918 to mitigate the effect of panic The Ministry of Food gave advice about how to make the best of
buying. But it wasn’t until the Second World War that it became the food available – with carrot cakes, “mock crab” (powdered
a feature of life for a long period. In 1939, only around 30% of egg, cheese, salad cream) and Lord Woolton’s own vegetable pie.
everything the British ate was produced domestically – the rest
was shipped in from farmers and suppliers around the world: How did people get around it?
particularly Canada, the US, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand Restaurants were exempt at first, but this was resented because it
and the West Indies. In the late 1930s, experts began to think how meant the rich could bypass rationing. In May 1942, restrictions
Britain could cope if German U-boats crippled food imports. were imposed on eating out, and some 2,000 British Restaurants
were opened, offering large meals at low prices; the writer Frances
What sort of experiments were done? Partridge described one in Swindon, where “thousands of human
In late 1939, the Cambridge physiologists Elsie Widdowson and beings were eating an enormous all-beige meal”. A black market
Robert McCance began experimenting on themselves, devising a also emerged as people sought to find ways around the rationing
diet existing solely of British food: one egg a week; a quarter of a system, whether by forging coupons or stealing unused ration
pint of milk a day; 450g of meat; 113g of fish a week; no butter books. The black market was blamed on the “spivs” – but
(but 113g of margarine) and as much potato, vegetables and the system was abused by many who otherwise considered
wholemeal bread as they wanted. After three months, they were themselves law-abiding citizens. By 1945, there had been 114,000
fit and healthy, even able to handle heavy exercise in the Lake prosecutions for black market activities. Rationing continued until
District (though the increased starch 1954, because the UK didn’t have the
and fibre led to a “remarkable” The Garden Front foreign currency to pay for imports.
increase in flatus and the quantity By late 1939, the Ministry of Agriculture had
of their faeces). Their work became established its “Dig for Victory” campaign. The slogan Is rationing needed now?
the basis of the wartime austerity was first coined by Michael Foot, then a leader writer Probably not. After the initial shock
diet promoted by Lord Woolton, for the London Evening Standard, and it captured the of panic buying in March – super-
the former chief executive of Lewis’s imaginations of millions who saw a way of market sales jumped by at least a fifth
department store, who was made contributing to the war effort. It also proved crucial, as – food supply chains have shown
Minister of Food in April 1940. The food shortages were felt very quickly: official records themselves to be flexible; Tesco is
show that annual food imports had halved to 14.65
idea was that rationing would ensure million tonnes by 1941. Home Intelligence reports
supplying up to double its normal
an equitable share of scarce supplies. described food queues as a “bigger menace to public quantities of milk, bread, rice and
morale” than air raids. Across the country, men and pasta. Although the big chains are
How did rationing work? women were encouraged to grow their own food, with using the most basic form of
In January 1940, bacon, butter and leaflets giving people tips. A propaganda campaign rationing – the queue – warehouses
sugar were rationed. By 1942, meat, featured the cartoon characters Captain Carrot and are well stocked and most sales
tea, jam, biscuits, breakfast cereals, Potato Pete, with their own songs and recipes. restrictions have ended. That’s not to
cheese, eggs, canned and dried fruit, By 1942, half the civilian population was part of the say that there aren’t concerns ahead:
lard and milk were also “on the nation’s “Garden Front”, and 10,000 square miles of about food poverty, labour shortages
ration”. A national identity scheme land had been “brought under the plough”. Lawns, at harvest and other nations imposing
was introduced, and each person was flowerbeds and even flat roofs and bomb craters export bans. But there is, for now, no
across the country were converted to vegetable
issued a ration book; families had to prospect of the Government intro-
patches and, by 1943, the number of allotments in
register and buy their food at chosen Britain had roughly doubled to 1.4 million. Even the ducing rationing. Perhaps it should,
shops. A points scheme was intro- moat of the Tower of London and parts of Kensington though, given that the nation has
duced for non-rationed foods, such as Gardens were used to grow vegetables. arguably never, before or since, been
bread (the wholemeal “national loaf”, as healthily fed as it was in wartime.

11 April 2020 THE WEEK

BEDS, SOFAS AND FURNITURE FOR LOAFERS
 Best articles: Britain NEWS 15
In times of crisis, the natural instinct is to turn inwards, says
Daniel Hannan. And this pandemic has led to calls for us to stop IT MUST BE TRUE…
Don’t just put importing 50% of what we eat and be nationally self-sufficient in I read it in the tabloids
food. Some Tory MPs are also using it as a pretext to introduce
British eggs in more protectionism into our food sector. Henceforth, they want For more than a decade,
zookeepers at the Ocean
your basket imported produce to meet domestic rules not just on food safety,
but on animal welfare – a requirement no other major nation
Park zoo in Hong Kong have
encouraged two pandas to
imposes. But all of this is back to front. Relying on home-grown mate. Now, enjoying a
Daniel Hannan food makes you less, not more, secure, as it exposes you to locally period of privacy thanks to
specific shocks. The only shortages in this crisis, at least near me, the coronavirus lockdown,
The Sunday Telegraph have been in British produce – our soft fruit harvest, for example. they’ve finally done it.
Global supply chains have gone on much as normal: that’s the Following years of “trial and
advantage of not putting all your eggs in a single basket. As for learning”, Ying Ying and Le
Le mated earlier this week,
tighter restrictions on imported food, this would just narrow our
with officials expecting to find
range of suppliers while making it hard for our agri-food sector, out if Ying Ying is pregnant in
one of the world’s most innovative, to sell abroad. No, we should June. Although images of the
be pushing to free up the global trade in food, not restrict it. pair fornicating were largely
met with delight, one Twitter
The next time you stand at your window to applaud NHS staff user remarked: “[I] feel like
fighting the virus, says Nick Cohen, spare a thought for another they’re taunting us.”
Let’s hear it for embattled group that receives rather less attention: those working
The Czech Republic has made
in the care services. Even before the epidemic hit, life was tough
this nation’s enough for those employed by the myriad small firms that run face masks compulsory in
public – with no exceptions
unsung heroes residential and nursing homes, and provide domestic care workers
to councils. They have lousy job security; their average hourly pay
permitted. Police were called
to enforce the ban at Lázne
rates are below those of supermarket workers. Care workers do Bohdanec spa resort last
Nick Cohen a socially crucial job looking after the most vulnerable section of week after reports that
the community, yet most still haven’t received the kit they need to nudists without masks were
The Observer protect themselves or their elderly clients – clients who will often enjoying the spring weather.
be distraught and confused because, owing to the virus, they’re “Citizens can be without
no longer receiving visits from family and friends. In Spain, there clothes in places designated
for this purpose,” a spokes-
have been horrific stories of soldiers finding abandoned bodies in
woman said, “but they must
old people’s homes. We’re not at that stage, thank goodness, but have their mouths covered.”
no one should be surprised if Britain’s disjointed, underfunded
care system eventually buckles under the strain of this crisis.

Surveying the history of human disasters, one thing stands out, says
Matthew Syed. The more threatening the disaster, “the greater the
The lust that lust for a scapegoat”. So it is in this crisis. “The chorus of vitriol”

always rages directed at those trying to handle it – both ministers and scientific
advisers – is ugly to behold. Nigel Farage demanded the sacking
during a crisis of Matt Hancock while the Health Secretary was still in isolation.
But it’s not just politicians. The scientists, too, seem seized by what
we might call the “Piers Morganisation of public discourse”: using
Matthew Syed inflammatory language at a time of hysteria to raise their profile.
Just weeks after Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, had A Dalek has been spotted
The Sunday Times
warned against “fostering panic” over a virus of “moderate patrolling the streets of a
transmissibility”, he was damning the Government’s response as a Yorkshire village instructing
“national scandal”. The central truth is that nobody knows how residents to stick to social
this crisis will develop. In retrospect, we may wish we’d kept our distancing rules. “All
country open as Sweden has so far done: then again, Sweden may humans must keep indoors!
end up suffering a huge number of avoidable deaths without All humans must self-isolate!
mitigating the economic hurt. But the need to admit uncertainty in By order of the Daleks!”
trying to figure out what works is replaced by the lust to punish. the Doctor Who villain
The blame game is in full swing, and we should be ashamed of it. screeched as it zoomed along
the streets of Robin Hood’s
Is that it, then, for the old-fashioned office building? By forcing us Bay near Whitby. B&B
to work from home, has the virus helped us “slip the surly bonds”
Don’t say bye of our “glass and concrete cells” for good? That’s what many now
owner Louise Parker said
it was a “relief’’ to have
prophesy, says the FT. In the era of video-calling, team messaging
to office life and online document sharing, they argue, co-workers don’t need
the extraterrestrials on the
community’s side:
just yet to be in the same country, let alone the same building. And think
of the benefits of scrapping corporate HQs: no more vast rental A man who was caught
overheads, no more tiresome commutes. But hold up: what we’re speeding at 110mph on the
Editorial also discovering in this lockdown is that homeworking has big M1 in Leicestershire admitted
to police he was on a 240-
© MARTIN GODWIN/GUARDIAN/EYEVINE

drawbacks too. You can’t generate the same esprit de corps; you
Financial Times don’t get those surreptitious meetings from which creative ideas mile round trip from
Nottingham to London, with
often spring; video calls prove a poor substitute for face-to-face
his two children in the car.
conversations. The firms best able to run “virtual offices”, the big His reason for the journey?
US tech companies, are well aware of that. Far from shedding real He wanted to buy bread in
estate, they’ve invested in ever more luxurious campuses for their the capital, claiming it was
staff. We should follow their lead: rather than ditch our offices, we £1 cheaper there.
should think about how to make them more exciting places to be.

11 April 2020 THE WEEK

16 NEWS Best articles: Europe
The maverick doctor and the French love of conspiracy
One thing this crisis has achieved Le Figaro (Paris). Recipient of the
in France, said Charles Bremner 2010 Grand Prize from the French
in The Times (London), has been National Institute of Health and
the exposure of some of French Medical Research, he has made
society’s darker side. In towns up numerous discoveries relating to
and down the land, neighbours so-called giant viruses, and even
denounce one another for leaving given his name to two bacteria.
home too often in breach of the Peers describe him as a genius,
lockdown. In Paris, food shoppers but also as a megalomaniac and a
eye each other with suspicion. Even contrarian. A self-declared climate
nurses have been victimised: some change sceptic, he also has a
have been sent poison pen letters history of pumping out studies
by people who see them as carriers at unfeasibly high rates.
of the infection. And in a sign of
their deeply ingrained “distrust As for the evidence Raoult presents
of authority”, the French have Raoult: genius or megalomaniac? of the malarial drug’s effectiveness,
elevated to “hero” status a man that is patchy at best, said Chloé
who claims to have found “a treatment” for Covid-19, even Savellon on PourquoiDocteur.fr (Paris). His first trial was
though officialdom keeps insisting he has done no such thing. flawed: the 42 patients involved showed only mild symptoms
when treatment began. And in his second trial of 80 patients –
In a few short weeks, 68-year-old Didier Raoult has “become half of whom were under the age of 52 – twelve needed oxygen,
France’s best-known doctor”, said Elisa Braun on Politico three needed intensive care, and an 86-year-old died. That is
(Brussels). A microbiologist and self-styled maverick, Raoult almost identical to what you’d expect among a group of
triggered a global run on the antimalarial drug hydroxychloro- patients who had not received “the famed new treatment”.
quine by predicting in a YouTube video in late February that The red flags are obvious, said Robert Zaretsky on Slate (New
it spelt the “endgame” for the coronavirus. By combining the York). Raoult chose to announce his results “not in a scientific
drug with the antibiotic azithromycin, he claimed to have journal”, but on YouTube; and he failed to release the raw data.
accelerated the recovery of a group of Covid-19 patients at the Remarkably, the trial wasn’t even double-blinded: everyone
infectious and tropical diseases institute he heads in Marseille. knew they were receiving the drug. It’s a dangerous game:
His promotion of the supposed breakthrough, and his “free- we all “have much to lose if testing protocols are ignored”.
spirit attitude”, has attracted a huge online following, even
catching the attention of Donald Trump, who has described And now, sidelined by the establishment, Raoult has become
chloroquine as a “gift from God”. But his claims, made after a poster boy for conspiracy theorists, said Damien Leloup and
only two relatively small studies of 122 patients, have alarmed Lucie Soullier in Le Monde (Paris). Some claim his work is
the experts, who maintain they’re inconclusive and have yet to being suppressed because chloroquine is a cheap, established
be peer-reviewed. After clashing with the medical establishment, drug, so Jewish-owned Big Pharma can’t profit from it. Others
Raoult has now stopped attending meetings of President say the virus was spread from within as part of a plot to deliver
Emmanuel Macron’s council on the virus. “I’m too busy to France into the hands of multinationals. Another theory holds
spend two hours listening to this rubbish,” he says of them. that Jews within the French government, namely former health
minister Agnès Buzyn and her husband, immunologist Yves
With his long grey hair and shaggy beard, Raoult looks more Lévy, blocked distribution of chloroquine in a plot to kill off
like a “rocker” from the ’68 generation than the internationally the elderly. In France, perhaps even more than elsewhere, the
renowned scientist that he is, said Marie-Cécile Renault in coronavirus crisis provides a breeding ground for crackpots.

RUSSIA Where is Vladimir Putin? Where’s he gone? As Covid-19 sweeps the world, most leaders can be seen
addressing citizens on a near daily basis, says Vladimir Pastukhov. But Russia’s president seems to
Is Vladimir have disappeared. His only public address since the pandemic took hold was “uninformative” and
awkward: he framed the need for social distancing as a chance for a week-long holiday. Many took
Putin actually that literally, flocking to parks as the virus spread (the official case count of about 7,400 is thought
to be a drastic underestimate in a country of 146 million). Aside from the 2008 war with Georgia,
a scaredy cat? it’s the first national crisis in 20 years that Putin hasn’t personally managed. And with responsibility
delegated to mayors and governors, officialdom seems “paralysed”. Perhaps all this is a canny plan
MBK Media by Putin to let others take the blame as the virus takes hold. Perhaps it’s down to a pathological
(Moscow) dislike of sharing bad news. Either way, it’s fuelling rumours and questions over his leadership. No
doubt Putin will recover his nerve eventually, but these few weeks of silence “will not be forgotten”.

Is it too much to ask that rich countries such as the Netherlands help other EU members in their
THE NETHERLANDS hour of need, asks Carlijne Vos. Even before Covid-19 brought the world economy to its knees,
Where is EU southern European states such as Greece and Italy felt “abandoned” by Brussels. Thrifty northern
nations had already imposed “brutal” austerity measures on them after the eurozone crisis and left
solidarity when them to bear the brunt of the refugee crisis as migrants flooded their shores. Now, nine countries
(including France, Spain and Italy) have asked Brussels to create an emergency fund – dubbed
it’s needed? coronabonds – to help them deal with the pandemic’s economic devastation. But the Netherlands
and Germany, loath to underwrite other countries’ debts, rejected the plea – leaving their poorer
De Volkskrant counterparts to weather the storm alone. The Dutch response was especially “clumsy”, with Finance
(Amsterdam) Minister Wopke Hoekstra warning of the “moral hazard” of bailing out countries which had failed
to reform their economies. But the Dutch must understand that a global recession will hit us all;
having a first class cabin is no advantage on a sinking ship. It’s time the Netherlands and others
dropped this “selfish” attitude and showed the “solidarity” with EU allies which this crisis calls for.

THE WEEK 11 April 2020

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 Best articles: International NEWS 19

The “grand bargain” that the virus has secured in Israel

The coronavirus crisis has done for democratic Netanyahu, swearing that
Israel what three elections in the past he’d never serve with a man under
year failed to do, said Mati Tuchfeld in criminal indictment for taking bribes.
Israel Hayom: it has ended the curse of Yet now he has chosen “to degrade
a hung parliament by bringing together himself and crawl into Netanyahu’s
in a “grand bargain” Benjamin government”. That Gantz was elected
Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party Knesset speaker with Likud support
and the centrist Blue and White but without the backing of his own
alliance of Benny Gantz. Under the disillusioned bloc “demonstrates the
deal, Netanyahu will remain PM for 18 magnitude of the farce”.
months, then hand over to Gantz, who
in the meantime will serve as speaker What we desperately need is a leader
of the Knesset and possibly also foreign who thinks about issues beyond how
minister. As speaker, Gantz will be able they affect his own political survival,
to control the legislative agenda – and President Rivlin joins Netanyahu (left) and Gantz said Yossi Yehoshua in Yedioth
block any attempts by Netanyahu, who Ahronoth. But we won’t get that with
is facing trial on corruption charges, to grant himself immunity. Netanyahu still in power. The number of coronavirus cases is
surging in Israel – as of midweek there were some 9,000 cases
When Gantz announced the deal, many in his party abandoned and at least 70 deaths. And in such a war-like crisis, it’s the
him in outrage: he now commands only about half of the 33 security apparatus that should be given pole position: the
Knesset seats that Blue and White won last month. But on the Defence Ministry has decades of experience in requisitioning
upside, Gantz’s followers have been handed all the important and deploying ventilators and other medical equipment at
ministries in the new cabinet – including defence, justice and speed. Yet Netanyahu has repeatedly refused to transfer
finance. Let’s hand it to both Netanyahu and Gantz: they have authority from the Health Ministry to current defense minister,
made huge sacrifices to create “what we need: a true emergency Naftali Bennett; he has even ignored Bennett’s calls for early
government”. On the contrary, this is a terrible betrayal by mass testing. Why? Because he doesn’t want to give Bennett,
Gantz, said Haaretz. The ex-army chief had promoted himself his main rival on the right, the upper hand. Bibi may have won
all year as an honourable alternative to the corrupt, anti- “the political battle, but Israel might lose the coronavirus war”.

“My mother is not expendable. Your mother is not expendable. We will not put a dollar figure on
UNITED STATES human life.” Thus spake New York Governor Andrew Cuomo last week, says Maureen Dowd, in

The national one of the regular televised briefings he now makes to the citizens of his state, coolly explaining the
facts of the Covid-19 crisis and talking through the reasons for the decisions he’s making. On this
shrink soothing occasion, he was rejecting a suggestion made by Texas’s lieutenant governor Dan Patrick that older
Americans might want to sacrifice themselves for the good of their grandchildren’s economy. Across
all our fears America, people have been tuning in: Cuomo has become “a sort of national shrink, talking us
through our fear, our loss and our growing stir-craziness”. In one affecting moment, he described
The New York Times being cooped up alone with his dog and fretted about the isolation of single people like himself. The
irony is that over his decades in politics, Cuomo won a reputation as “a cold, calculating pol” who
ruthlessly worked the levers of government while bulldozing any opposition. He has now turned
down calls for him to stand as a last-minute presidential candidate for the Democrats, but he has
undoubtedly become the unlikely leader that America needs at this “horror-movie moment”.

Kenya’s slums are mobilising to protect themselves from the coronavirus, says Kennedy Odede.
KENYA I grew up in Kibera, the biggest slum in Nairobi, so I know first-hand how easy it is for illness to
spread there. I shared, with my parents and seven siblings, a tiny shanty made of “iron-sheet walls
“We shared patched with cardboard to cover the holes”, with a strung-up sheet separating the bedroom area
one toilet with from the kitchen area. There was “no concept of ‘personal space’ or ‘alone time’”, because we could
hear our neighbours a foot away in the next shack, and we shared one toilet with 50 families. That’s
50 families” why, aged 15, I founded Shining Hope for Communities (Shofco), an anti-poverty group that now
works in 11 informal settlements. Its members have set up hand-washing stations at every slum entry
Daily Nation point, and we’re going door-to-door distributing bleach, hand sanitiser and homemade soap. Shofco
(Nairobi) is now checking people’s temperatures, referring potential cases to the authorities and helping to
quash false rumours. But we shouldn’t have to do this all on our own. “We need to feel the presence
of the government, and the private sector, on the ground, working with us to combat this crisis.” If
we can’t keep the disease from decimating our poor, Kenya’s health crisis will turn into class warfare.

President Trump’s tendency “to trust his gut over the experts”, be it over vaccines or climate change,
UNITED STATES probably springs from self-regard rather than religious conviction, says Katherine Stewart. But he’s

The Christian “perfectly in tune with the religious nationalists who form the core of his base” nonetheless. Hostility
to science is a key feature of America’s religious Right, and that hostility is “crippling” our response
Right has put to the coronavirus. Listen to self-styled apostle Guillermo Maldonado, who hosted Trump earlier
this year at a campaign event at his Miami megachurch. “Do you believe God would bring his
us all in danger people to his house to be contagious with the virus?” he asked his flock last week, as he urged them
to show up for worship services. “Of course not.” Florida pastor Rodney Howard-Browne, who has
The New York Times been violating social distancing orders by holding packed church services, mocked all those worried
about the coronavirus as “pansies”. True, not every pastor behaves so recklessly, but Trump gains
politically by echoing those who do. He rose to power with the help of an evangelical movement that
disdains expertise, science and government. Now “we are reaping what that movement has sown”.

11 April 2020 THE WEEK

 Health & Science NEWS 21

What the scientists are saying…

Our tiny jellybean ancestor world, the latest one appears to have
A new human ancestor has been identified: several advantages – not least the ability
a jellybean-shaped creature, about half the to distinguish around 50 different types
size of a grain of rice, which lived around of cancer. Researchers developed the test
555 million years ago. The animals, whose by training a machine-learning algorithm
fossilised remains were discovered in the to recognise changes to the chemical tags
Australian outback, are the earliest within blood DNA that give rise to the
known examples of a bilateral organism – disease. They then used it to analyse blood
a creature with two symmetrical sides. The samples from 654 people with cancer and
emergence of bilateralism was one of the 610 without. The test correctly identified
defining moments in evolution: most 44% of cancer cases – ranging from 18%
animals today are bilaterians, not radially of the earliest, stage I cancers to 93% of
symmetrical, like jellyfish. The newly those in stage IV. And it had a “false
identified species, named Ikaria wariootia, positive” rate of just 0.7%. The harder-to-
was evidently bilateral because one of its detect the cancer was, the better the test
ends was bigger than the other. “This may seemed to work: for pancreatic cancer,
seem trivial, but that means it had a distinct for example, its stage I detection rate was
front and back end, which is the kind of 63%. Furthermore, in more than 90% of
organisation that leads to the variety of cases in which it successfully detected a
things with heads and tails around today,” Nightingales: heading for a one-way trip? cancer, it accurately predicted where in the
PNAS study co-author Dr Scott Evans, body it originated. “This blood test seems
of the Smithsonian National Museum of controlled by a single set of genes. to have all the features needed to be used
Natural History, told The Guardian. Pressures affecting one trait, the theory on a population scale,” said Prof Geoff
goes, can affect others in the “package”, Oxnard, of Harvard Medical School’s
Nightingale wings are shrinking leading to “maladaptations”. In recent Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
Nightingales’ wings appear to be getting decades, climate change has led to springs
shorter, threatening their ability to survive ending earlier in central Spain, shortening Long journeys in the ocean deep
their annual migrations. And climate the “window” nightingales have for Even in the depths of the oceans, fish
change may be to blame. Researchers breeding. The researchers suggest that this may migrate large distances. Researchers
from Complutense University in Madrid may have conferred an advantage on birds analysed 12,703 photos taken over seven
analysed data on two populations in which have fewer young to raise. If birds years from two ocean observatories that
central Spain, and found that the birds’ with small clutch sizes are favoured, it lie at a depth of 1,400 metres off the coast
wingspan relative to body size had may also push populations away from of Angola – and spotted that fish numbers
decreased significantly in the past two other traits in the “package” – hence the appeared to spike each year in late
decades. They also found that the shorter- reduction in wingspan length. November and June. This suggests a
winged birds were less likely to return after pattern of seasonal migration, says the
their first migrations to Africa. To explain A blood test for cancer team, from Nova Southeastern University
an evolutionary adaptation that seems to A new blood test for cancer has shown in Florida. They speculate that the fish may
confer a disadvantage, they cited the great promise in early testing, reports The be migrating in order to take advantage of
“migratory gene package” hypothesis, Guardian. “Liquid biopsies” assess the the death of organisms such as plankton,
which holds that various adaptations likely presence of cancer by detecting at the surface, when it sinks to the bottom.
related to successful migration – including fragments of DNA that tumours release But though some of the fish spotted in the
long wingspans and larger numbers of into the bloodstream. Although many photos are quite common, very little is
eggs per brood (clutch size) – are such tests are being developed around the known about these deep-sea dwellers.

Evidence of murder in Alpine ice Third reef bleaching

Analysis of the ice in an Alpine glacier has Aerial surveys have revealed that a new
shed unexpected light on the murder of mass bleaching has taken place on the
Thomas Becket, Henry II’s “turbulent Great Barrier Reef – the third such event
priest”, 900 years ago. Scientists from in the past five years. Bleaching occurs
the University of Nottingham have been when changes to the environment –
tracking historical levels of airborne typically a rise in sea temperatures –
cause coral to expel the algae living
pollution by analysing the chemicals that
in their tissue, from which they derive
were trapped in layers of ice as the Colle most of their energy. After the algae
Gnifetti glacier, near Zermatt, formed. is expelled, the coral turns white; and
Atmospheric modelling suggests that though it may recover from some such
during the 12th century, many of the incidents, repeated bleachings tend to
chemicals deposited in the ice drifted result in widespread coral death. Initial
over from northern England – a centre surveys suggest the latest event –
of mining and smelting at that time. believed to be the result of unusually
They found that in the period running up to Becket’s murder in 1170, levels of high sea temperatures in February –
is as severe as the one in 2017, which
lead in the air dipped significantly – the result, they suggest, of England’s bureaucracy
killed an estimated 22% of the shallow
(which was largely run by the clergy) being paralysed during Henry’s dispute with water coral along the 1,430-mile-long
the Archbishop of Canterbury. A decade later, there was a spike in pollution, as the reef. Last year, Australia downgraded
penitent Henry built monasteries and churches, which needed large amounts of lead its five-year outlook for the reef, from
for roofing, to atone for Becket’s death. Chief researcher Prof Christopher Loveluck “poor” to “very poor”, because of
described the discovery of these correlations as an “X marks the spot” moment. human-induced climate change.

11 April 2020 THE WEEK

22 NEWS Talking points
Beijing: did its cover-up cause the pandemic?
Donald Trump has been widely castigated to Italy’s exceptionally acute crisis. The irony
for referring to the “Chinese virus”; but as is that China’s economy is likely to bounce
Covid-19 sweeps the globe, “one fact is back from the pandemic quicker than most,
clear”, said Marion Smith in USA Today: said Edward Lucas in the Daily Mail.
“the Chinese Communist Party caused Unconstrained by human rights or privacy
this crisis”. From the moment the virus laws, it has been able to instigate stricter
emerged, “Beijing has acted in a way lockdowns than would be tolerated in most
that made a pandemic possible, and democracies; and as a surveillance state, it is
then inevitable.” The only way to stop a well set up to monitor any resurgence of the
sickness spreading is to spread the news disease. In Downing Street, there has been
about it even faster, giving health officials the bombastic talk of a “reckoning” with Beijing,
information they need to tackle it. Instead, but Britain is not in a strong position for
communist authorities cracked down on that. Owing to our thirst for the goods it
anyone talking about the brewing epidemic produces (around 70% of the world’s
in Wuhan. Li Wenliang, a “brave doctor” phones are built there), our economy is
who warned his peers about it online, was bound up with China’s – and untangling that
summoned by the police and forced to write Li: punished for sounding the alarm relationship would be difficult and costly. In
a “self-criticism”, before he died of Covid- any case, this is not the time for the UK or
19. News was censored; social media users, silenced. “Beijing did the US to be ramping up tensions with China, said Michael H.
everything in its power to prevent the outside world figuring out Fuchs in The Guardian. However appalling the regime may be,
what was going on.” The result was that other countries were we need to work together to fight this pandemic. If Washington is
lulled into a false sense of security: they believed that the virus troubled by China’s PR offensive in Europe, then it should focus
was under control, and that if it posed any threat to them at all, on actually helping its allies.
they had plenty of time to prepare for it.
The fact is, Beijing is successfully exploiting an “extraordinary
According to The South China Morning Post, the first case of the absence of global leadership from the US”, said William Hague
virus was reported on 17 November, said The Guardian. After in The Daily Telegraph. “President Trump has declined even to
that, cases were reported daily, yet the encourage US states to act together
Chinese made no mention of this new against Covid-19, let alone to
virus for weeks – it only confirmed the “We face a more divided, orchestrate any international response.”
first case on 8 December. And, even less cooperative world, with World leaders have looked on aghast as
then, it denied there was human-to- a more powerful China in it” he first dismissed the coronavirus as a
human transmission: that wasn’t hoax, and then made “conspicuous
publicly conceded until 21 January. efforts to redirect vital supplies” from
Meanwhile, said The Times, Beijing had started bulk buying America’s allies. Now, as countries look to intrusive new tech to
medical equipment: in January and February, China spent tens of stop Covid-19 and get their economies back to work, who will
millions of dollars importing surgical masks, ventilators and other be ready to provide the system, software and data for that? “Yes,
equipment from the US, Australia and other countries. There of course, China.” So we face a more divided, less cooperative
remains strong suspicion that it has continued to withhold data world, with a more powerful China in it. What to do about it?
about its infection and mortality rate, further hampering global
efforts to understand the virus; and only last month, its senior There are two truths that we should recognise, said Hague.
officials were peddling a conspiracy that the virus was imported Beijing does not play by the rules. Donald Trump was right –
to China by US soldiers who visited Wuhan in October. global companies are too reliant on China; “Western security
requires technological leadership of our own – not dependence on
Having caused this disaster, Beijing is now bent on claiming credit firms like Huawei.” But the second truth is that we cannot solve
for saving us from it, said Niall Ferguson in The Sunday Times. global problems without China. From preventing catastrophic
Since getting the virus under control in Hubei, it has been liberally climate change to averting a dangerous new arms race, we need
exporting testing kits to European countries. Most of them don’t China, and it needs us. That means standing up to totalitarianism
actually work, but such actions have played well with Italians at the same time as championing a global framework to solve
who have been less than impressed by their EU allies’ response global problems. Trump has done one, but we need both.

Honor Blackman, who has John Lennon was famously

Pick of the week’s died aged 94, was one of devoted to his Aunt Mimi, who
the best known of all James raised him after his parents
Gossip Bond’s love interests. And,
after playing Pussy Galore in
separated. He spoke to her on
the phone every week until his
Goldfinger, she revealed she’d death in 1980. But according to
Bernie Ecclestone, the 89-year- fallen for her co-star Sean a new book by Craig Brown,
old former Formula One boss, Connery for real. “He was the she didn’t support her nephew
has revealed that he and his sexiest man I’ve ever met,” she in all his ventures. When she
wife Fabiana, 44, are expecting said. “He had those twinkly saw the cover for John and
a child together, a boy. eyes and was great fun. If I Yoko Ono’s 1968 album
Although Ecclestone already hadn’t been married, I would Two Virgins – which featured
has three children, the oldest have gone there.” But she was a picture of the couple naked –
of whom is 65, the baby will not at all pleased when another she was less than impressed,
be his wife’s first. “I’ve got famous actor, Richard Burton, telling him: “It would have
grandchildren and I’m looking climbed into her bed after been all right, John, but you’re
forward to another baby,” he they’d met at work. “I kicked both so ugly. Why don’t you
told the Daily Mail. “I’m happy happening for quite a few him out,” she said. “You didn’t get somebody attractive on the
really for my wife. She’s been years, so I’m happy that she’ll want somebody in your bed cover if you’ve got to have
looking forward to this have someone after I’m gone.” quoting Shakespeare.” someone completely naked?”

THE WEEK 11 April 2020

 Talking points NEWS 23

Lockdown: testing the public’s patience Wit &

After three weeks of national
lockdown, said The Economist,
“families are settling into a
said Janet Street-Porter in The
Independent, particularly in light
of the officious way some police
Wisdom
timewarp that lies somewhere forces have sought to enforce “Politicians love to have
between the mid-21st century government guidelines. They’ve plans in fives. Four sounds
and the 1950s”. People are taken to stopping people in their too few and six sounds as if
working virtually and “binge- cars to ask them to justify their you aren’t thinking clearly.”
watching Netflix”, yet also journey. In the woods near my John Crace in
returning to old-school hobbies house in Norfolk, where I rarely The Guardian
such as bread baking, knitting encounter more than a handful “When stupidity is
and gardening. Board games and of hikers during an hour-long considered patriotism, it is
musical instruments are flying walk, they’ve festooned gates unsafe to be intelligent.”
off the shelves. Poultry breeders with ugly yellow signs asking Isaac Asimov, quoted on
have been bombarded with “Why are you here today?” It TheBulwark.com
requests for laying hens. For seems we can’t drive or have
those with gardens and decent- a restorative stroll in the “It is very strange that the
sized houses, this period of countryside, yet Eurostar is still years teach us patience –
self-isolation with their families running and flights are landing that the shorter our time,
Policing Brighton beach
is no great trial, said Christina at Heathrow. It makes no sense. the greater our capacity
Lamb in The Sunday Times. It’s a very different for waiting.”
story for people living in tower blocks. Take “Where did all these coppers even come from,” Novelist Elizabeth Taylor,
Reakha Begum, 40, who is cooped up in a asked Tim Stanley in The Daily Telegraph. quoted in Newsweek
two-bed flat in London’s Tower Hamlets with They’re everywhere. “I suppose that with the “That’s what children are
her four children aged 7 to 20. For them, she public now locked indoors, the police finally feel for – that their parents may
says, the lockdown is “like a prison sentence… safe enough to walk the streets.” But they should not be bored.”
If this goes on for months, the corona won’t kill be careful not to test the public’s patience too Ivan Turgenev, quoted on
us, the suffocation will.” much. The same goes for the Government: when The Browser
the Health Secretary threatened last week to ban
“Sometimes the absolute
The remarkable thing so far, said Neil Oliver outdoor exercise if more of us didn’t stay at
most positive thing you can
in The Times, is how well behaved people have home, he “came dangerously close to breaking
be in a boring society is
been. Some 3,000 may have descended on a the very social consensus that he’s trying to
completely negative.”
park in South London on Saturday, but most build”. For the past few weeks, the country
John Lydon, quoted in
are complying “without a murmur”, emerging has been holding a remarkable “experiment in
Rolling Stone
from their confinement just once a day for “the self-restraint”. Its legitimacy is “undermined not
equivalent of a stroll around the prison yard”. only by those who flout the rules, but also by “No man can think clearly
I’m amazed at how “docile” the public has been, those who enforce them” too strictly. when his fists are clenched.”
George Jean Nathan, quoted
in Forbes
Footballers’ pay: a PR disaster? “The arts are not a way to
make a living. They are a
“One of the great rules of British revenue.” Many clubs are putting very human way of making
life is that sooner or later, non-footballing staff on furlough life more bearable.”
everything ends up being blamed – having the state pay 80% of Kurt Vonnegut, quoted in
on footballers,” said Marina Hyde their salaries. So it seems only the Vineyard Gazette
in The Guardian. So it was no fair that the players, who earn
great surprise that, while he was an average £3.5m per year, should “Anyone can follow public
being grilled on the failure of the share some of the pain. But the opinion. The measure of
Government’s Covid-19 testing players’ union, the Professional leadership is to anticipate it.”
regime, Health Secretary Matt Footballers’ Association, Daniel Hannan in The
Hancock sought to deflect some rejected the Premier League’s Sunday Telegraph
blame onto “UK humankind’s proposal for a 30% pay cut – even “I’ve a mate who believes
oldest enemy: young men who play arguing that it would be wrong the cradle of civilisation
in the Premier League”. He called for them to be paid less because is located in Zagreb.
on top-flight footballers to accept the state needed their tax. “Oh He’s a Croationist.”
the 30% pay cut proposed by the right. So it’s in the interests of us Chris Heaton-Harris MP,
League while play is suspended – Rooney: an “easy target” all that footballers be paid as quoted in The Times
given, he said, “the sacrifices that much as possible so the tax take
many people are making, including some of for the NHS is as large as possible?”
my colleagues in the NHS who have made the Statistics of the week
ultimate sacrifice”. His comments caused a The situation is in stark contrast to that in other This week, air traffic the UK
backlash among players: Wayne Rooney countries, said The Times. In Germany and was down 92% on the same
complained that footballers were “easy targets”; Spain, players have accepted big pay cuts to save period in 2019; rail travel was
down 95%, and road traffic
Gary Neville tweeted that “Matt Hancock others’ jobs. “Footballers have always been an down 71%.
calling them out when he can’t get tests in easy target,” said Dean Ashton in The Guardian.
The Guardian
place for NHS staff is a f@@@@@g cheek!” The clubs’ owners are worth billions. Is anyone
asking them to take a pay cut? But I think, on 72% of UK doctors say they
can’t get hold of a mask
But Hancock had a perfectly reasonable point, this occasion, players have been badly advised;
when they need one; 77%
said Melanie McDonagh in The Spectator. “If the result is a PR disaster. They tend to have a report shortages of gowns.
football games aren’t on, then players can’t play, team mentality: they “follow the crowd”. This
Doctors’ Association UK
and club takings go down along with television time, it has left them looking “tarnished”.

11 April 2020 THE WEEK

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 LETTERS 25
Pick of the week’s correspondence
Silver linings Letter of the week precedents and could have
To The Times locked down from the start.
Among the very real and Dissecting cartoons I predict that in a week or
unfolding tragedies of the two, everyone in the UK with
coronavirus pandemic there is To The Spectator any concept of self-
a silver lining. Due to social I loved Nick Newman’s article about the universal cartoon preservation will be safely
distancing, many of the other (“Beyond a joke”). When we were compiling The Best of cowering behind their doors –
viruses that abound at this The Oldie Cartoons recently, my friend David Abberton including those bleating about
time of year are almost spent many hours squirrelled away in the archives, mining the erosion of their freedoms
nowhere to be seen. for comic gold. As part of his studies, he conducted a – while only brave hospital
Children’s hospitals, like scholarly investigation into the established themes of staff, carers, emergency
the one I work in in Leicester, cartoons. “The most obvious trope is the desert island, but service workers, volunteers
have seen a dramatic fall in there are others,” David says. “In no particular order, these and public servants will be
admissions due to other are wife-hating; the grim reaper; aliens; cats; the guru on the out risking their lives to help
respiratory viruses. Paediatric mountain top; Mexicans; heaven; mobiles and ‘How’s my the many.
emergency departments [insert theme]’. There are honourable mentions for Munch’s Florence Nightingale knew
around the country are also The Scream, giraffes, igloos and Excalibur (usually emerging about zero tolerance when it
much quieter. Traditionally from a lavatory).” came to the spread of disease.
the wards quieten down Why are these themes so universal? Part of the reason is The Government should listen
considerably during summer, their familiarity: we’re so familiar with Munch’s Scream that to her words: “To be ‘in
but at present we are seeing a clever play on it gets added chuckles. Or perhaps those charge’ is certainly not only to
the fewest patients we can familiar images are themselves innately funny. Who knows? carry out the proper measures
remember. The great Barry Cryer, who’s just turned 85, says: “As yourself, but to see that
It also suggests that given somebody once said, analysing comedy is like dissecting a everyone else does too.”
the omnipresent threat of frog. Nobody laughs and the frog dies.” Marika McGregor, Italy
encountering the coronavirus Harry Mount, The Oldie magazine, London
by coming into contact with The constant Queen
others, parents and families the clear sky with its stars, cities including Hartlepool, The Daily Telegraph
have become more self- Venus in the west and the Bolton and Stoke-on-Trent. It In 1978, Philip Larkin wrote
sufficient in managing Moon rising. Is it selfish to does not take great powers of these lines to commemorate
symptoms at home. Of say that I am loath for this deduction to link this to the Queen’s Jubilee:
course the NHS is and should part of our current situation decades of under-investment In times when nothing stood
always be there to provide a to end? in local transport and low But worsened, or grew
safety net, but this pandemic Christine Whild, Marcham, levels of social mobility. In strange,
has given lessons in greater Oxfordshire effect, our poorest regions There was one constant good:
self-reliance. have had isolation imposed She did not change.
Dr Sanjiv Nichani, consultant Potty-mouthed monks on them for some time now. Mary Barrett, Prestwich,
paediatrician, Leicester The Times Would it not be a good Lancashire
Children’s Hospital The first recorded use of the opportunity, in line with the
four-letter word was earlier Government’s aim of levelling Inauspicious birthday
Malaria vs. corona than the 16th century. Melissa up, to allow schools and The Guardian
The Economist Mohr, in her book Holy Sh*t: businesses in these areas to I scoured the paper looking
The International Monetary A Brief History of Swearing, reopen first? It would allow for an appropriate joke for
Fund and the World Bank quotes a late 15th century local industries to survive and All Fools’ Day and was
have made $62bn in funding poem written by the children to catch up with their despairing, until I got to the
available to combat Covid-19. Carmelite monks of the town more privileged peers. birthdays column and
Yet funding for malaria is of Ely. Put in modern English, Kate Williams, North Cave, discovered it is Chris
only half of the $6bn that the it reads: “They [the monks] East Yorkshire Grayling’s birthday.
World Health Organisation are not in heaven, because Is there a word for people
requests each year. I they f*** the wives of Ely.” Enforcing lockdown born on the appropriate day?
understand the fear of this Sheila Taylor, Pevensey Bay, The Guardian Mike Hoskin, Hinton
coronavirus, but malaria East Sussex I have sympathy for police St George, Somerset
infects 228 million people forces who have been
each year and kills 400,000. Essential workers under fire for what some
Perhaps if we rebrand malaria The Times see as overzealous
as a new phenomenon it will If people are to be paid interpretations of the
make the headlines and get according to how essential lockdown rules. Covid-19
the funding it deserves. their work is, then surely, is so contagious that I
Rachel Zweig, US refuse collectors should be believe an all-or-nothing
somewhere near the top of crackdown is the only
Clear skies the list. one that works, and I
The Daily Telegraph Terry Wilton, Wavendon, am disappointed that
Kate Humble quotes Buckinghamshire the media continue to use
Bill Bryson, who wrote: words like “draconian”.
“To connect with our own Levelling up? I live in Italy and can be
parts of the world, to see The Times fined s3,000 or slung in
them with fresh eyes, to notice The city of Kingston upon jail for up to three months
small joys.” Hull is in lockdown despite a if I leave my village
I take my daily walk in the reported infection rate of just without good reason. The
evening and I have been 0.00005%. Similar is true of UK, unlike Italy, had the
overwhelmed by the silence, other deprived towns and benefit of studying © PRIVATE EYE

● Letters have been edited

11 April 2020 THE WEEK

 ARTS 27
Review of reviews: Books
Book of the week by his ex-partner, Mia Farrow. Mia,
he alleges, decided to frame him for
molestation after discovering his sexual
Apropos of Nothing relationship with her adopted daughter
by Woody Allen (and Dylan’s older sister) Soon-Yi
Arcade 498pp £15.49 (ebook) Previn, who later became Allen’s wife.
It is impossible to determine the truth,
but aspects of Allen’s case are
Woody Allen’s memoir is “essentially “compelling”. He presents Mia as
two books in one”, said Dominic manipulative and cruel, and the details
Maxwell in The Times – “and it’s not about her “coaching her children” seem
always an easy join between the two”. “plausible in their specificity”. If you’re
The first is a highly enjoyable overview “100% convinced” of Allen’s guilt, this
of his life and career, full of “set-ups isn’t a book you’ll want to read, but for
and payoffs and sprinkles of self- “those of us who admire his career and
deprecation”. The second is a “vigorous can still muster an interest in it”, it is
defence” against the charges of sexual generally a “pleasure to read”.
abuse levelled against him by his adopted daughter, Dylan The real problem with Apropos of Nothing is its author’s
Farrow. Thanks to this “graver and more argumentative” “tone deafness” about women, said Dwight Garner in The New
material, the book has already generated considerable York Times. “Nearly every time a woman is mentioned, there’s
controversy. Within days of being announced, it was dropped by a gratuitous pronouncement on her looks.” In New York, Allen
its original publisher, Hachette, following a walk-out by some of chases “delectable bohemian little kumquats”; on the King’s Road
the firm’s US staff and a complaint by Allen’s son, Ronan Farrow, in Sixties London, he picks up “the most adorable birds in their
himself a Hachette author. Now, at a time when “troubled miniskirts”. When you meet Scarlett Johansson, he writes, “you
84-year-old comic geniuses are confined to their Upper East have to fight your way through the pheromones”; he slavers
Side town houses”, the book has been “slipped out” by a small over Penélope Cruz’s “erotic valence”. Even the dedication is off-
independent US publisher – and at present is only available in the colour: “For Soon-Yi, the best. I had her eating out of my hand
UK as an ebook. and then I noticed my arm was missing.” It is extraordinary that,
The essence of Allen’s rebuttal, said Peter Biskind in the LA in a book designed to rebut accusations of sexual misbehaviour,
Times, is that he is the victim of a sustained vendetta spearheaded Allen should so often “sound like our current president”.

The Gatekeeper
by Kate Fall Novel of the week
HQ 272pp £16.99 My Dark Vanessa
by Kate Elizabeth Russell
As David Cameron’s long-time deputy 4th Estate 384pp £12.99
chief of staff, Kate Fall sat directly
outside his office, “deciding who This debut, about a teenager’s relationship
could and couldn’t have access to with her middle-aged teacher, has been billed as
the PM”, said Ailbhe Rea in the New “the most controversial book of the year” said
Statesman. Cameron’s “gatekeeper” Holly Williams in The Observer. Yet it strikes
has now turned memoirist, providing “Chums”: Cameron, Fall and Osborne me as a “level-headed portrait” of the conflicted
a fluent and engaging account of her feelings that can attend sexual abuse. Narrator
time at No. 10. It’s a work, perhaps, that will do little to dispel the Vanessa is 15 when she develops a crush on her
“chumocracy” stereotype of the Cameron government. The drama plays out 42-year-old English teacher, Mr Strane. They
across a series of grand houses – London pads and official residences. The begin a sexual relationship, which she
protagonists continually socialise together, and become godparents to one experiences as a “grand romance” – a script she
another’s children. Yet Fall (who first got to know Cameron at Oxford) makes doesn’t even deviate from 17 years later, when
a convincing case that rather than simply entrenching privilege, all this actually she learns of an accusation against him from
“created a foundation for effective, smooth operations”. The sense of unity only another former pupil. “As a work of fiction,
dissolves in the run-up to the EU referendum, when Michael Gove’s decision to My Dark Vanessa is absolutely gripping” – a
campaign for Leave turns him from “clown to villain”, and sounds the “death “brilliant depiction of how grooming feels from
knell of the Cameron project”. the inside”.
Fall emerges from this “fast-paced” memoir as a “thoroughly likeable and I disagree, said Johanna Thomas-Corr in The
loyal person”, said Robert Shrimsley in the FT. Yet had she been less “devoted”, Sunday Times. The best fiction about sexual
her book would have been more interesting. This is a work that “preserves the harassment “revels in confusion and doubt”.
omertà of a group of friends who end up running the country”. Even so, her Here, Strane’s grooming of Vanessa is so
account captures “exactly what it was like” to serve in Cameron’s government, “straightforwardly creepy” that it’s clear exactly
said Julian Glover in the London Evening Standard. I myself had a “short and what you’re supposed to think. “Marrying
not very glorious spell” working for it, and Fall brings back the sounds and slushy erotica (‘I’m soft-belly vulnerable’)”
smells, the “dented decency”, the “pushy men and families juggling childcare”. with an opportunistic “eye on the commercial
The best books on government tend to be “written by those who can watch as zeitgeist”, this novel produces an “icky feeling”.
well as do”. This “compelling” memoir shows that Fall belongs in that category.
The Week Bookshop is temporarily closed owing to the Covid-19 pandemic
We will endeavour to fulfil all outstanding orders, but cannot take any new orders at this time.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank all our customers for their ongoing support.

11 April 2020 THE WEEK

28 ARTS
Podcasts... to make us happier
The Happiness Lab (multiple The Allusionist (all major apps)
apps; see happinesslab.fm) Laurie Right now, I am only listening
Santos is a Yale professor whose “to feel-good stories” and podcasts
course Psychology and the Good that “put a smile on your face”,
Life became the most popular says Fiona Sturges in the FT. One
class in the university’s 316-year that fits the bill is Helen Zaltzman’s
history – and whose Happiness “consistently excellent” podcast
Lab podcast has become a global about language, The Allusionist,
phenomenon, says Jonathan Fisher which has now returned for a series
in The Guardian. The first season, of “short, calming episodes” under
which wrapped in November, the banner Tranquillusionist. One
unpacks various “myths and episode, Your Soothing Words,
truisms about happiness”. Now, finds Zaltzman reading out words
in response to the pandemic, submitted by listeners that make
Santos has made six new episodes; them feel calm (liminal, loam,
in them, she discusses how to beat lodestar, loosen, loquacious, love)
“self-isolation loneliness, how to to a “gently strummed soundtrack.
emotionally process a crisis and And relax ...”
how to maintain focus”. They
are “an oasis of calm in a very Esther Perel: relationship advice for couples confined together Inside the Comedian & Dear
loud period”. Joan and Jericha (multiple apps)
These comedy podcasts should raise a smile, says The Daily
Where Should We Begin? With Esther Perel (all major Telegraph. Interview podcasts can be “earnest” and “luvvieish”.
apps) The Belgian therapist and author Esther Perel believes In Inside the Comedian, a series of interviews with well-known
that “the quality of our relationships determines the quality comics, David Reed “skewers the format”. In these exchanges
of our lives”, said Lydia Winter in The Independent. Her “the only rule is that every answer must be a lie” – and the
“groundbreaking” podcast provides fascinating insights into resulting conversations with the likes of Marcus Brigstocke
couples therapy – each one focusing on a recording of a real and Rufus Hound are “improvisational gold”. Also highly
couple (anonymised). The new series explores Couples Under recommended is Dear Joan and Jericha, a “filthy” spoof of
Lockdown. Let’s face it, said Patricia Nicol in The Sunday Times: advice columns in which Vicki Pepperdine and Julia Davis
“we may all crave therapy in the coming weeks”. These sessions play a pair of “agony-inducing aunts giving listeners the worst
are “moving and revelatory”. guidance imaginable”. It’s “not for the easily offended”.

Albums of the week: three new releases

Waxahatchee: Dua Lipa: Víkingur
Saint Cloud Future Ólafsson:
Merge Records Nostalgia Debussy,
£11 Warner Rameau
£12 Deutsche
Grammophon
£11

Containing songs that “nestle in heartache “Is it wrong, right now, to be as happy as “Everything the Icelandic klaviertiger
and bask in hard-won wisdom”, this Dua Lipa’s second album makes you?” At touches sounds freshly conceived,” said
stunning record is in my view the best a time when the whole world is weighed Hugh Canning in The Sunday Times. After
album of the year so far, said Ben down by worry, said Chris Willman in thrilling with Bach and Philip Glass, Víkingur
Beaumont-Thomas in The Guardian. The Variety, the 24-year-old Londoner has gifted Ólafsson now turns his attention to a
Alabama singer-songwriter Waxahatchee us “one of the best disco albums” since selection of Debussy’s piano works, and
(real name Katie Crutchfield) has dropped Donna Summer – a giddy “elation-maker” to Rameau’s Pièces de clavecin (pieces
the indie-rock of her previous collection, that is guaranteed to get you dancing. for harpsichord) – and the results are
Out in the Storm, and embraced the There are echoes of Chic, Prince and “exhilarating“. In Ólafsson’s hands, each
“Americana and country-rock” of her native Jamiroquai in Lipa’s funky, uplifting sound. piece “sounds like a brightly polished
region. The resulting songs, which measure If you’re on lockdown, you might want to jewel”, his fingerwork evoking the “plucked
up to those of Bob Dylan, are beautiful and listen on “corded headphones to keep you sound” of the harpsichord in the Rameau,
gripping – none more so than Ruby Falls, a tethered from dancing out the door”. and his “impressionistic flourishes in
“frank, poetic valediction” to a former lover. On her debut album, Lipa sang songs Debussy’s Préludes complementing each
I mean it as a compliment when I say about her recovery from a break-up; since other to perfection”.
that “there’s always something tempering then, it seems she has “bounced back and I enjoyed his Rameau pieces, said Andrew
the beauty” of this music, said Alexandra taken control”, said Neil McCormick in Clements in The Guardian. His “clarity, crisp
Pollard in The Independent. Crutchfield The Daily Telegraph. Don’t Start Now is rhythmic articulation and unselfconscious
offers “luscious melodies”, but they are a “fantastic put-down of a needy ex”; stylishness are all admirable”, albeit a
© RICHARD KOEK/REDUX/EYEVINE

undercut by “a lingering unease” – as is Good in Bed a “saucy celebration of a touch “relentless” on occasion. But I’m
“sentimentality by steeliness”. It recalls love-hate affair”. Even minor tracks such afraid I found his Debussy pieces much
Dylan but also Lucinda Williams. Written as Cool and Hallucinate are full of energy less convincing – “prosaic”, even. If you’ve
just after the singer decided to get sober, and sensual fun, while the “monsters”, listened to Debussy’s truly great interpreters
Saint Cloud “offers up a sort of gradual such as Physical and Pretty Please, are (such as Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli or
unmasking”. Lyrically and musically, it’s “going to have Gaga pulling her pop Krystian Zimerman), you’ll feel the lack of
a five-star triumph. socks up”. a “whole dimension” of colour and nuance.
The Week’s own podcast, The Week Unwrapped, covers the biggest unreported stories of the week (available on Apple and Google)
THE WEEK 11 April 2020
 Art & Culture NEWS 29

Armchair tours: from Machu Picchu to the Sistine Chapel

Five years ago, virtual reality (VR) other things, it touches on Machu
technology was advancing so fast, Picchu’s resident alpacas.
pundits wondered how long it might
be “before virtual tourism would Meanwhile there is a “whole
replace the need for physical travel series of virtual tours for armchair
altogether”, said Tim Bradshaw in travellers” of Israel, said Helen
the Financial Times. Despite the Coffey on The Independent. The
best efforts of the world’s tech SamsungVR.com tour of the old
companies, we haven’t reached that city of Jerusalem takes you from the
point yet; but now that millions of Western Wall and the Dome of the
would-be travellers are confined to Rock to the summit of the Mount
their homes, VR does offer at least of Olives. There are stunning 360º
a sense of escape to anyone with a panoramas and a “voice-over tour
reasonably good internet connection. guide” that explains the significance
On Google Earth, you can wander of some of the city’s sacred sites. But
the streets of all the world’s great Jerusalem isn’t the only holy city to
cities (and most of its lesser ones have embraced virtual tourism, said
too); and virtual tours have been Natalie Salmon in Harper’s Bazaar.
made available to a huge range The Vatican offers a “digital tour”
of places. The Swiss and Austrian that puts “some of Rome’s most
tourist boards, for instance, have spectacular architecture and historic
“overhauled their websites to monuments” within the reach
offer interactive Alpine panoramas of those stuck at home. On the
and 360º videos of hiking trails”, Vatican’s website, you can tour its
while Google’s Arts & Culture Machu Picchu: travelling without moving museums, and marvel at the frescoes
platform allows you to explore in the Sistine Chapel without having
everything from the Taj Mahal to a recreation of the interior to elbow your way through the crowds that in normal times flock
of the Hindenburg airship (a place that would be inaccessible to see Michelangelo’s masterpiece. Even viewed via a web
“even in normal times”). browser, the great ceiling is “breathtaking” to behold.

If you invest in a virtual reality headset (from brands such as Vive Closer to home, Stonehenge, Edinburgh Castle and Chatsworth
and Oculus) there are some extraordinary immersive experiences House are among the historic sites offering virtual tours, said
to be had, said Toby Skinner on BBC Travel. The Everest VR Lisa Walden in Country Living. And anyone stuck at home,
tour, for instance, is “an hour-long recreation” of a climb up the and pining for a glimpse of the sea, can even gaze at the beauty
world’s highest peak. You attend an incense-burning ceremony, of St Ives beach. Some London attractions allow online visitors
run through your kit at Base Camp and cross deep crevasses. The into spaces that are normally closed to the public, said Harry
ascent is so dizzying, you may be left feeling slightly queasy. But Fletcher in the London Evening Standard. No. 10 Downing
it’s remarkable what you can see and feel without expensive kit, Street, for instance, has an online experience that grants the
said Antonia Wilson in The Guardian. The panoramic views of public access to areas that are normally only open to the Prime
Paris from the top of the Eiffel Tower on Google’s Eiffel Tower Minister’s inner circle. On 360.VisitLondon.com, there are 360º
tour are fabulous; it also has a digital exhibition that explores the views of landmarks including Tower Bridge, King’s Cross station
structure’s construction. But even better is YouVisit.com’s virtual and the Royal Albert Hall. Londoners and regular visitors might
trip to Machu Picchu, the Incan city perched high in the Andes. think these sound a bit dull, but there is something to be said for
It has a voice-over guide that includes information on the site’s seeing, through the eyes of overseas tourists, the great buildings
architecture and history, and some intriguing details: among that in ordinary life, we have tended to take for granted.

Plague art: masterpieces inspired by fear and death

“This awful, eerie spring” has been pretty at a time when Spain ruled the artist’s
joyless, said The Guardian. But it is native Netherlands, and “suspected
generating an “intense kind of artistic Protestants were summarily tortured
energy”. Artists from Tracey Emin to and killed outright”, Bruegel’s vision of
David Hockney (who last week unveiled “precarious life and mindless death” was
a series of drawings created in lockdown) no fantasy, said Jerry Saltz in New York
have all been responding to the Magazine. It depicts the plague as
pandemic – showing that creativity burns a merciless leveller that spares neither
bright even in the darkest moments. And the wealthy nor the devout.
this is nothing new, said Andrew
Stephens in The Sydney Morning Herald. Other plague masterpieces are more
The plagues that struck Europe from the explicitly personal, said Jonathan Jones
14th to the 18th centuries inspired no end in The Guardian. Titian, for example,
of great art. Many painters created works inserted his own likeness into his Pietà
to “offer hope”: Matthias Grünewald’s The Triumph of Death: “precarious life” (1575-6), which he painted when Venice
Isenheim Altarpiece, for instance, was being “ravaged” by the disease. Half
portrays Christ’s wounds as plague sores – an image that would naked, he prostrates himself before Christ and prays that he and
have been a source of comfort to a fearful population. his beloved son Orazio might survive. In fact, both succumbed to
the disease soon afterwards. Macabre as these images may be,
Rather less redemptive is Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s The Triumph they help us realise that we have endured such crises before, and
of Death, which depicts an army of skeletons rampaging through give us “common cause” with the people of 500 years ago, who
an “apocalyptic landscape”, herding people of “all social back- had little understanding of what was befalling them, and no
grounds” into a sinister, “coffin-shaped contraption”. Created adequate means of treating it.

11 April 2020 THE WEEK

30 Streaming
Best TV series New releases to watch at home
As the third week of the Crip Camp
coronavirus lockdown begins, Dirs: James LeBrecht and Nicole Newnham
it’s high time for anyone who (1hr 47mins) (12A)
has not yet binged on a TV ★★★★
boxset or ten to relent and Premiered to great acclaim at Sundance earlier
indulge themselves. Here are this year, this inspiring documentary describes
five more recent examples how a “free-spirited” 1970s summer camp for
available to stream online. disabled teenagers in upstate New York became
a crucible for the disability rights movement in
Lemony Snicket’s A the US. Camp Jened was “a utopia for kids
Series of Unfortunate who felt alienated and sidelined”, said Benjamin
Events This is a great one Lee in The Guardian – a “rare haven” where
for parents to watch with they were neither judged nor discriminated
children. Daniel Handler against (the film’s title reappropriates “crip”,
wrote this adaptation of his an offensive American slang term derived from Camp Jened: the inspiration for future activists
own Gothic novels about “cripple”). Interviews with surviving alumni
three orphans terrorised by of the camp’s 1971 season are intercut with young redhead who is training to be part of
the dastardly Count Olaf – so fabulous vintage footage of the teens as they the national dance ensemble in Tbilisi, said
it perfectly captures their dark play, smoke, chat and flirt. The camp’s vibe is Simran Hans in The Observer. He waits
humour, their observations likened to Woodstock. For many, this was their tables to support his impoverished parents
about grief and their joy in first chance to discuss the “intricacies” of their and grandmother – former dancers themselves
language. And every scene experience, including their sexuality, and there – and struggles to please his bullying teacher,
is a steampunk work of art. is a delight in watching them bond. who warns him that he is too soft to excel at
Rated PG. On Netflix.
traditional Georgian dance – a “macho”
Inspired by their time in the camp, many of discipline full of “forceful military moves”.
Happy Valley Sally these children went on to become “nationally Enter new student Irakli (Bachi Valishvili).
Wainwright’s double-Bafta- visible” campaigners for disability, said Ben Darkly handsome and notably talented, he
winning, Yorkshire-set police Kenigsberg in The New York Times. And starts upstaging Merab – but their rivalry is
drama stars Sarah Lancashire the film’s second half includes a suspenseful charged with a frisson of desire, which is
as a police sergeant in a cat- account of the crucial 504 Sit-In of 1977. dangerous in a country where homosexuality
and-mouse game with a rapist Hearteningly, the disabled campaigners were is not illegal but nonetheless “strictly taboo”.
(James Norton). The world supported by other rights groups, said Robbie
this series depicts is bleak, but Collin in The Daily Telegraph: the Black A film about “unspoken desire and sexual
there’s humour in the writing Panthers volunteered to provide the catering, awakenings”, it is reminiscent of Call Me by
too – and it’s more original radical lesbians turned up with shampoo. The Your Name and God’s Own Country, said
than most dramas of its kind. film-making itself is more conventional than the Deborah Ross in The Spectator – but it’s
On BritBox and Netflix. subject matter, but it is “fluid” enough, and better than either of them. The dancing is
there’s a “moving” final sequence in which “electrifying”, Gelbakhiani’s performance is
Mum Lesley Manville is some of the campers head back to the site of “exquisite”, and Akin suffuses everything with
magnificent as Cathy, a Camp Jened (long since closed) to reminisce tension and longing, yet retains a light touch.
widow coming terms with about those days. Available on Netflix. The film was shot in secret in Georgia, and
her grief in this gentle family
there were violent protests when it was screened
sitcom. On BritBox.
in the country, said Clarisse Loughrey in The
And Then We Danced Independent. But as Merab begins to “explore
War and Peace Clive Dir: Levan Akin (1hr 53mins) (15) his identity” through other kinds of dance,
James, who said he spent ★★★★ his newfound joy is so infectious we feel “the
his life reading and rereading A gay love story set in Georgia, director Levan future belongs to him – and all those who dare
Tolstoy’s novel, declared this Akin’s excellent third feature stars real-life to live free”. Available from BFI Player (player.
2016 BBC adaptation by dancer Levan Gelbakhiani as Merab, a watchful bfi.org.uk) and Curzon Home Cinema.
Andrew Davies to be “not
half bad” – “lavish, sexy
[and] heart-rending”. On Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness
BBC iPlayer.
Since it launched on Netflix, fed her first husband to the cats in
The Good Place Created it feels as though the whole her profitable Florida sanctuary.
world has been talking about The story of their feud involves
by Michael Schur (who also Tiger King, a “deranged” another murder plot and plenty of
wrote Brooklyn Nine-Nine), documentary about big-cat other “piggy-eyed”, fame-hungry
this sophisticated comedy, owners in the “strangest corner tiger-owning “freaks” too, said
informed by moral of crazy America”, said Hugo Camilla Long in The Sunday
philosophy, is about a group Rifkind in The Times. Our hero, Times. “A little pussy gets you a
of people who find themselves Joe Exotic, is a polyamorous gay lot of pussy,” says one – the only
in a sterile afterlife for good zoo proprietor with a bleached “moment of any depth” in a
people, called The Good Place. mullet and extreme tattoos show that left me feeling “oily
The show starts to lose its who promises “Waco”-style and saddened”, as if I’d just
resistance at his property in binged on KFC. It’s certainly shot
charm eventually, but the first Oklahoma, should anyone try to through with horror, said Jan
two series are crackers – and expropriate his 200 lions and tigers. His Dalley in the FT – including footage of the
good to watch with children, nemesis is Carole Baskin, an animal-rights aftermath of a mauling, and the plight of the
though the show is rated 15 activist who wears only leopard-print clothes animals themselves. But with its jaw-dropping
for a reason. On Netflix. and who is accused by Joe and others of having plot twists, it is undeniably “addictive”.

THE WEEK 11 April 2020

 The List 31
Best books… Polly Toynbee The Archers: what
The Guardian journalist and broadcaster chooses her favourite books. Her happened last week
latest, The Lost Decade, 2010-2020 and What Lies Ahead for Britain, written Helping out at Brookfield,
with David Walker (Guardian Faber £10.99), is out now Josh spots a lambing ewe in
distress. Brian appears and
Postwar by Tony Judt, unlike The Observer, where might all live differently. Here is impressed to see Josh
2005 (Vintage £14.99). This Frayn worked. Evelyn Waugh’s is the irrefutable evidence that successfully deliver twin
magisterial sweep across Scoop runs a close second in shows “more equal societies lambs – and as Ian has had to
European history since 1945 the genre, but Frayn has the almost always do better” go away unexpectedly, there’s
sharper eye for social detail for all. Inequality damages lambing work available at
is a gripping read, reaching
Home Farm. At the hospital,
for the meaning of life in our of Fleet Street in the 1960s. everyone, rich as well as poor. Robert is trying to lift a
times. More than facts, Judt despondent Lynda’s spirits
shapes events. Bad Blood by Lorna Sage, Nickel and Dimed by when Freddie arrives. He
2000 (4th Estate £9.99). This Barbara Ehrenreich, 2001 tells her about Robert’s gift
A Room of One’s Own by is no misery memoir, but the (Granta £8.99). In this modern of the medal and apologises
Virginia Woolf, 1929 (Vintage fiercest and wittiest account classic of reportage, Ehrenreich for their argument before
£5.99). Woolf’s extended of terrible family dysfunction chronicled her attempts to live the explosion. She can’t
essay is the bedrock book ever written. Sage grew up on the minimum wage in three remember, but tells Freddie
with her grandparents, who American states; she struggled she’s in pain and feels
for women’s liberation,
hideous, and wishes he’d left
arguing for both a literal lived in a state of war. to survive. The US economy her to die. Later, she asks
and metaphorical space for Although pregnant at 16, as she experienced it is full Roy to tell Blake she forgives
women writers within a male- her verve and perceptiveness of routine humiliation, with him, in spite of his part in
dominated literary tradition. prevented an unhappy ending. demands as high as the the accident. Ben and Josh
rewards are low. Two decades come to visit, but Robert turns
Towards the End of the The Spirit Level by Kate on, her book still reads like them away; Lynda says she
Morning by Michael Frayn, Pickett and Richard Wilkinson, urgent news. doesn’t want visitors. Josh
1967 (Faber £8.99). The 2009 (Penguin £10.99). If is relieved to hear the police
every policymaker and voting For out-of-print books, won’t be charging him. Shula
funniest, sharpest book about
is planning for the Easter
journalists on a paper not citizen read this book, we visit biblio.co.uk Festival with help from Kirsty
and Fallon. At a meeting
The Week’s guide to what’s worth watching about rewilding income,
Justin suggests to Phoebe that
Programmes the rewilders buy two barns
to develop into office space,
The Great Mountain Sheep Gather with investment from him;
Documentary following Lake District shepherd Pip isn’t keen. Later, Gavin
Andrew Harrison on a journey across the fells implores Justin to re-employ
as he brings his flock down Scafell Pike for the builders for the work at
shearing. Mon 13 Apr, BBC4 19:00 (100mins). Berrow; impressed by Gavin’s
spirit, Justin agrees. Brian
Dolly Parton: 50 Years at the Opry Recorded tells exhausted Adam that
live at Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry, this special Josh has spotted a worrying
performance sees the tireless Queen of Country number of lame ewes and
says that they need a vet
perform hits from her long career, with star pronto. Fallon has a new
guests. Mon 13 Apr, BBC2 21:00 (75mins). idea for the Easter bonnet
Quiz, Mon 13 Apr, ITV1 21:00 competition. Elizabeth tries
Quiz Three-part drama about the “coughing to cheer up Freddie with
scandal” on Who Wants to be a Millionaire?. create their own artworks. He plans to curate an outing and suggests he
Starring Matthew Macfadyen and Michael an exhibition from the results when the crisis needs to talk to someone,
Sheen. Mon 13 Apr, Tue 14, Wed 15; ITV1 is over. Thur 16 Apr, C4 20:00 (60mins). but he won’t open up. Lynda
21:00 (60mins each). is pleased with a visit from
Films Kate, but Robert brings it to
an abrupt end. Johnny cajoles
Prue Leith: Journey with My Daughter Victoria & Abdul (2017) Lavish costume Freddie into a drink at The
The chef and her daughter Li-Da, adopted from drama, telling the story of the unlikely friendship Bull. Freddie admits he wishes
Cambodia 45 years ago, return to the country in between Queen Victoria (Judi Dench) and her he hadn’t visited Lynda, and
search of Li-Da’s biological family. Tue 14 Apr, young Indian attendant (Ali Fazal). Sat 11 Apr, returns Robert’s medal to him.
C4 21:00 (60mins). BBC2 21:15 (105mins).

Devs New atmospheric thriller series written Happy-Go-Lucky (2008) Mike Leigh’s Where to see...
by Alex Garland. In a Silicon Valley of the near Oscar-nominated comedy drama stars Sally Launched in 2018, the arts
future, a young AI coder is found dead after his Hawkins as a relentlessly sunny primary school and culture streaming service
first day on a new project at a shadowy tech teacher. Mon 13 Apr, Film4 22:45 (140mins). Marquee has come into its
company. Wed 15 Apr, BBC2 21:00 (60mins). own as lovers of live theatre,
New to subscription TV opera, ballet and dance look
Rebuilding Notre Dame: Inside the Great Save Me Too Lennie James’s acclaimed thriller for digital substitutes. The
Cathedral Rescue A year on from the fire, this returns for a second series. Seventeen months on, platform has performances
film follows the team struggling to save what Nelly (James) is still haunted by the disappear- from the Royal Opera House,
remains of Paris’s great cathedral. Wed 15 Apr, ance of his estranged daughter. On Sky Atlantic. the RSC, the West End and
BBC4 21:00 (60mins). the Bolshoi, and also features
Run This new show from Fleabag duo Vicky commentaries and interviews.
Grayson’s Art Club From his studio, Grayson Jones and Phoebe Waller-Bridge sees old college Marquee.tv; 30-day free trial,
Perry is leading art masterclasses, in the hopes flames reunite for a spontaneous trip across the then £8.99 per month.
that viewers will use newfound free time to US. From 15 April, on Sky Comedy.

11 April 2020 THE WEEK

32 Best properties
Stylish art deco properties
Surrey: 95

▲
Salisbury Road,
Worcester Park.
A unique art deco-
influenced Grade II
home, designed by
Connell, Ward and
Lucas in 1937. A
private, gated house,
this was originally
designed to be able
to be split into two
apartments. Master
bed with dressing
room, 3 further
beds, family bath,
shower, kitchen,
dining/recep,
1 further recep,
detached studio
room/summer
house, west-facing
garden, off-street
parking, shed.
£915,000;
Hamptons
International
(020-3369 4380).

▲ London: Westpoint, 39-40 Warple Way, Chiswick W3. This former photography
studio on the first floor of an art deco building is currently in the process of getting
residential status, and benefits from high ceilings and plenty of natural light. 1 bed,
shower, kitchen/dining room, recep, store room, guest cloakroom, lift access, intercom,
secure parking. £625,000 share of freehold; Hamptons International (020-8987 8444).

London: Dorset
▲

House, Marylebone,
NW1. A ground
floor studio
apartment in this
popular portered art
deco-style building
in Marylebone, close
to Regent’s Park and
Baker Street. The
341-square-foot flat
has been redecorated
throughout and has
wooden floors and
modern fixtures
and fittings, plus
direct access to
a communal
courtyard. 1 bed,
open plan kitchen/
recep, shower.
£495,000 leasehold;
Marsh & Parsons
(020-7935 1775).

THE WEEK 11 April 2020

on the market 33

Dorset: Harbour View Road, Lower Parkstone,

▲
Poole. A distinctive 1930s art deco home with
panoramic views over the treetops of Lower
Parkstone to Poole Harbour. Outstanding entire
top floor master suite with walk-in wardrobe and
full-length southwesterly balcony, guest suite, 3
further beds, family bath, kitchen/breakfast/dining
room, further double recep with conservatory
area, integral garage/utility, hall, cloakroom, rear
garden with a vine-covered dining area, garden
kitchen area and split-level deck, carriage
driveway, garden office, timber shed. £1m;
Hearnes via OnTheMarket.com (01202-377377).

London: Aubrey

▲
Walk, Kensington,
W8. Set over 4
floors, this modern
house in the art
deco-style was
created from
combining 2 houses
into a broad-
fronted residence
ten years ago.
Master suite with
anar s re: r ng recep and walk-in
▲

House, Biggar. A B-listed wardrobe, 7 further

house set in over 3 acres of beds, 4 further
beautiful gardens in a baths (3 en suite),
picturesque village. kitchen/recep, 2
6/7 beds, 6 baths, kitchen, further receps, hall,
3 receps, utility, pantry, lower ground floor
cloakroom, 2-bed cottage, indoor pool, sauna,
outbuildings, garden, tennis gym, bar and WC.
court. OIEO £650,000; POA; Savills
Rettie (0131-624 9087). (020-7535 3300).

Essex: The
▲

Round House,
Frinton-on-Sea.
A Grade II house
designed by
renowned British
architect Oliver Hill
in the early 1930s,
which has been
sympathetically
restored and has
views over the
seafront. Master
suite, 2 further beds,
family bath, shower,
kitchen/dining
room, 1 further
recep, hall, study,
veranda with water
feature, garden, ▲ London: Exeter House, Putney Heath, SW15. A bright and spacious
garage, driveway. ground floor flat in this 1930s art deco building on Putney Heath. Master
£950,000; Fine & suite, 2 further double beds, family, kitchen with doors onto the communal
Country (01206- gardens, double recep, hall, porter, estate manager, tennis courts, off-street
878155). parking. £725,000 leasehold; Chestertons (020-8246 5959).

11 April 2020 THE WEEK

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 LEISURE 35
Food & Drink
No “boom” for restaurant apps No delivery (and often collection), you “can
one doubts that the coronavirus pandemic still eat and drink like a gourmand”, said
is a disaster for Britain’s hospitality Holly O’Mahony on Culture Whisper. Try
industry, says the FT. But one sector, at the Supper London app for a range of
least, was expected to do well out of the delivery options in central areas. Pidgin, in
crisis. With a nationwide lockdown, and Hackney, is offering a three-course nightly
online grocery services overwhelmed with supper for collection (make sure to order
customers, conditions seemed ripe for a well ahead). For excellent produce, the
“boom” in delivery apps such as Uber Natoora app, which is normally trade-
Eats, Just Eat and Deliveroo. Yet the early only, is now delivering to domestic
signs are that this is not happening. In the customers.
first weeks of the lockdown, industry
insiders reported a significant fall-off in Chefs take to Instagram Chefs who
total orders – in some places, by as much have been forced to close their restaurants
as two-thirds. The slowdown may be are occupying themselves by offering
partly related to anxieties over infection: online tutorials, says Anna Berrill in The
“people are super-scared”, one executive Guardian. The “Instagram cook-along
reported. The virtual disappearance of Massimo Bottura invites you round craze” was kickstarted in Italy, by
lunchtime office orders has also hit the Massimo Bottura, of the Michelin three-
sector hard. But the biggest problem by the practical difficulties of delivering high starred Osteria Francescana in Modena.
far is thought to be the departure of the end dishes to the home – and realising, His nightly live streams – partly in English
well-known brands that until now have perhaps, that what people most crave in – of his family meal prep have attracted
provided the majority of the apps’ a crisis is comfort – various fine dining hundreds of thousands of viewers. Now,
traffic. Many larger chains, including establishments have reinvented themselves the London baking school Bread Ahead is
McDonald’s, Greggs, Nando’s and as providers of simple, homely fare. streaming tutorials on the platform at 2pm
Wagamama, have opted to close, rather Merienda, in Edinburgh, which normally daily. For pasta masterclasses, try Officina
than provide slimmed-down delivery specialises in “Mediterranean-inspired 00’s tutorials at 5.30pm (ingredients are
services. Smaller restaurants have rushed small plates”, is serving, on Wednesdays posted the day before). Natural fast-food
to sign up with the apps – but it will be a and Saturdays only, a “social distancing chain Leon (which has converted some of
challenge for them to fill the hole left by menu”, with aubergine parmigiana, bœuf its restaurants into mini-supermarkets) is
the big-name chains. bourguignon and other classics available in broadcasting live cook-alongs to inspire
portions of up to four. People in the Bristol week-night meals. And for those who
Delivery options in lockdown area craving Michelin-starred cooking can fancy a higher-level challenge, chocolatier
Restaurants aiming to keep trading have order from acclaimed pub The Pony & Paul A. Young is running a four-week
been forced to display considerable Trap: their chicken casserole with mash online course, The Art of Chocolate
ingenuity, said Alice Hancock and Antonia for four costs £28. In London, with many Making. Available via Learning with
Cundy in the same paper. Responding to more restaurants and shops offering Experts, it costs £29.

Saffron fruit loaf

This hybrid loaf – part cake, part bread – is the perfect thing to bake during these testing times, say Greg and Lucy Malouf.
Made mostly with simple store-cupboard ingredients (the saffron being the exception), it is equally delicious at breakfast or teatime.
It also keeps fairly well: we reckon it is even better a day after being made, toasted and slathered with butter and jam

20 saffron threads 300ml hot milk 500g strong (bread) flour 1 tsp salt 150g unsalted butter, diced, plus extra to grease
50g soft brown sugar 2 tsp dried active yeast (7.5g sachet) 60g currants 40g mixed dried fruit or mixed citrus peel
1 tbsp plain flour, for dusting 1 egg, lightly beaten

• Stir the saffron strands into the hot milk and flour, which helps to prevent it sinking to the
leave to infuse for 1-2 hours. bottom during baking. Add the fruit to the dough
• Combine the flour and salt in a mixing bowl. in two stages, kneading well after each addition.
Rub in the butter with your fingertips to form Grease a 20cm x 10cm loaf tin with butter.
fine crumbs. Stir in the sugar evenly then make • Transfer the dough to the prepared tin and
a well in the middle of the dry ingredients. cover with a tea towel. Set aside in a draught-
• Reheat the milk to blood temperature (there’s free spot for 1-1½ hours, or until doubled in size.
no need to strain out the saffron threads, as Don’t be tempted to speed up the proving time
they look so pretty). Combine a few tablespoons by sticking it on top of a radiator. Preheat the
of the milk with the yeast and mix to a slurry. oven to 180°C.
Stir in the remaining warm milk and then tip all • Once the dough has risen, brush with the
the liquid into the dry ingredients. Use your beaten egg and use a sharp knife to slash the
hands to work the mixture into a dough, then surface, if you wish. Bake for 50-60 minutes, until
transfer to the bowl of a stand-mixer. the top is golden brown. The base of the loaf
• Knead with the dough hook on a slow- should sound hollow when tapped. Remove
medium speed for 10 minutes, or until the from the tin and cool on a wire rack. Allow the
gluten has developed and the dough is smooth cake to rest for an hour before slicing and
and satiny. Toss the dried fruit with the extra serving with butter and home-made jam.
© ALAN BENSON

Taken from New Feast: Modern Middle Eastern Vegetarian by Greg and Lucy Malouf, published by Hardie Grant at £20.

11 April 2020 THE WEEK

 Obituaries 37

“Grandfather of allergy” who survived a Japanese PoW camp

Dr William Frankland, who he observed. Offered counselling on his
Dr William
has died aged 108, was a return, he said he’d just like to see his wife.
Frankland
pioneering immunologist He returned to St Mary’s, found work in the
1912-2020
known as the “grandfather allergy department – and for 65 years, declined
of allergy”. He worked with Alexander to talk about the War. “I just wanted to forget
Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin; came up about it and think of a new life that I was
with the idea of a daily pollen count to help going to lead, and not mope about the past
hay fever sufferers; and persuaded Saddam or hating the Japanese,” he explained later.
Hussein to quit smoking. He’d agreed to fly to
Baghdad in 1979, to treat the Iraqi leader for He became Fleming’s assistant in 1953.
an undisclosed allergy. But when he got there, Penicillin had gone into mass production in
he found that his patient wasn’t allergic at all. 1940, and Fleming was still being inundated
“His problem was that he was smoking 40 by letters from people whose lives it had saved.
cigarettes a day,” Franklin recalled. “I told Frankland recalled that even then, however,
him to stop and if he wouldn’t, I would refuse Fleming was aware that bacteria would become
to come and see him again.” resistant to it. At one point, Frankland wrote a
chapter for a book that Fleming was editing on
William Frankland – known as Bill – was born penicillin, and in it, he predicted some patients
in East Sussex, in 1912, the son of a parson. would be allergic to the wonder drug. Fleming
Two years later, the family moved to the Lake William Frankland: treated Saddam told him to take the line out. “He was wrong,”
District, where he befriended Titty and Roger Frankland noted. “But you can’t really argue
Altounyan, the models for the children in Swallows and Amazons. with a Nobel Prize winner.”
He was sent to St Bees School, said The Times, and went from
there to Oxford. Next, he moved to Queen Mary’s Hospital, Much of his research was into pollens, said The Daily Telegraph.
Paddington, where he qualified as a doctor in 1938. He enlisted in He and his colleagues ran trials that showed that antihistamine
the Royal Medical Corp the following year, and in 1941 – shortly tablets were ineffective against pollen asthma, and to facilitate
after marrying his wife, Pauline – he was sent to Singapore. On their work, he turned St Mary’s pollinarium into the world’s
arrival, he tossed a coin with a fellow medic, Lance Parkinson, largest pollen production plant. He argued that modern hygiene
to decide who would work where. Franklin won, and chose standards were behind the rise in allergies (he pointed to the
the Tanglin Military Hospital. Parkinson went to the Alexandra difference in levels between East and West Germany). He was also
Hospital, where in February 1942 he was bayoneted to death by a leading advocate of allergen immunotherapy, in which a patient
Japanese troops, along with 200 other patients and staff. Taken is given ever larger doses of an allergen to build up immunity.
prisoner, Frankland spent three and a half years on Pulau Blakang Studying insect venoms, he allowed himself to be bitten so often,
Mati – known as Hell Island. By the time he was freed he was so he went into anaphylactic shock and nearly died. “All I could do
emaciated, it hurt just to sit down. was hold up three fingers to indicate the doses of adrenalin the
nurse should inject me with.” Though he formally retired in 1977,
He was flown out of Singapore in a group of three Dakota he carried on working unpaid, and was still publishing papers in
aircraft, one of which crashed. “I am a hard person to kill,” his 100s. Pauline died in 2012. Their four children survive him.

Singer-songwriter who became an overnight star at 33

Bill Withers, who has died aged Rawls was being paid $2,000. “I was earning
Bill Withers 81, wrote some of the best $3 an hour.” He went out and bought himself
1938-2020 loved songs in the American a guitar, learnt to play it, and started writing
songbook, said The Guardian – songs between shifts. A demo tape reached an
from the soul wrenching break-up track Ain’t No executive at Sussex Records and he released his
Sunshine, to the “joyous” Lovely Day, with its debut album, Just As I Am, in 1971. A massive
“signature 18-second-long held note”. His only hit, it turned him into an overnight star at the
number one, however, was Lean on Me, about age of 33: its cover shows him at work at Weber
the power of friendship. It was performed at both Aircraft, holding his lunchbox. Years later, he
Bill Clinton and Barack Obama’s inaugurations, was still astonished by what had happened to
and in the US, has recently become an anthem him. “Imagine 40,000 people at a stadium
of hope and solidarity during the corona-crisis. watching a football game,” he told Rolling Stone
In a statement, his family said that Withers was a in 2015. “About 10,000 of them think they can
solitary and private man – but his “music forever play quarterback. Three of them probably could.
belongs to the world”. I guess I was one of those three.”
Withers: nine years in the navy
Bill Withers was born in Slab Fork, West Virginia But fame did not agree with him. He disliked
in 1938, the son of a maid and a coal miner. The youngest of touring, and after signing to Columbia in 1975 (Sussex Records
six children, he struggled with a bad stutter, and also endured having gone bankrupt), he became increasingly frustrated by the
extreme racism in the Jim Crow south. “One of the first things I industry. “I met my A&R guy, and the first thing he said to me
learnt, when I was around four,” he said, “was that if you make was, ‘I don’t like your music or any black music, period,” he
a mistake and go into a white women’s bathroom, they’re going recalled. He made his last album in 1985, and then retired. He
to kill your father.” Eager to get away, and avoid following his was rarely seen in public again. He could have made a fortune
brothers down the mines, he joined the navy aged 17. He spent from comeback tours, but he said he was rich enough, and happy
nine years in the service then settled in California, where he found to be at home with his family. “I’m not a virtuoso, but I was able
a job installing toilets in aeroplanes. He’d started singing in bars to write songs that people could identify with,” he said, on being
in the navy, but it was going to a nightclub where Lou Rawls had inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2015. “I don’t
been booked to perform that changed his life. He discovered that think I’ve done bad for a guy from Slab Fork, West Virginia.”

11 April 2020 THE WEEK

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 CITY CITY 39
Companies in the news
...and how they were assessed
Debenhams: I will survive
Filing for administration has become quite the norm at Debenhams, said Jonathan
Eley in the Financial Times. In a bid “to avoid legal action by creditors to liquidate the
business”, the ailing department-store chain – founded as a single London drapery store
in 1778 – has embarked on “its third insolvency process in a year”. Debenhams went
through a “pre-pack” administration last April, which resulted in its shares being
delisted and lenders taking control. It then used another form of insolvency – a company Seven days in the
voluntary arrangement – to obtain rent cuts and allow it to close the worst-performing Square Mile
shops. “They’re an optimistic bunch at Debenhams,” said Nils Pratley in The Guardian.
Management described this latest “lockdown administration” as being of the “light Markets, led by the US, seized upon
touch” variety – claiming “normal trading will resume when shoppers are allowed to news that the human health crisis might
be levelling off and continued their rally.
return to high streets”. Strange as it may sound, “Debenhams probably will live to fight
Capital Economics forecast that the UK
another day”. Most of its 22,000 staff can be put on the Government’s furlough scheme; could suffer a 15% drop in GDP this
“and, since even mighty Primark isn’t paying its rent, landlords can be told to go whistle quarter: the largest contraction on
for a couple of months”. Do not, however, “mistake survival for prosperity”. This is record. IHS Markit’s March survey of
“more akin to an exercise in financial damage limitation” for Silver Point Capital, the US Britain’s crucial services sector recorded
hedge fund now in control. For the hedgies, it’s a case of “roll the dice again, keep the the fastest decline since the survey
business alive and hope that something turns up”. began. The decline was even worse
in mainland Europe. Morgan Stanley
Plus 500: marvellous meltdown predicted the fall-out in the US would
be “more drawn out than previously
The market volatility over the past six weeks has created “a trading boom, with soaring
anticipated, marked by a deeper drop
daily trading volumes across global exchanges”, said Cat Rutter Pooley in the FT. One of into recession and slower climb out”.
the major beneficiaries has been the online spread-betting group Plus 500. The London-
The oil price made record gains,
listed financial betting platform has reported an almost 500% jump in first-quarter
jumping more than 35% to above $30/
revenues, year-on-year, to $317m – equivalent to 89% of its total revenue in 2019. The barrel, after President Trump tweeted
trading platform, set up by five Israeli friends, offers contracts for difference (CFDs) – that he had brokered a deal that could
bets on a price going up or down – on a range of stocks, indices and commodities, said see Russia and Saudi Arabia cut back
Jim Armitage in the London Evening Standard. The firm’s punters appear to be gluttons on production and end their price war.
for punishment: “on average, 80% of investors betting through the platform lose Tesco reported that panic-buying,
money”, yet “they keep coming back for more”. In the quarter just ended, “customers which drove UK sales up by a third, has
piled in and lost record amounts gambling against price falls”, generating a whopping subsided, but admitted it couldn’t meet
profit surge of 1,836%. Plus 500 points out that the firm “can lose as big as it wins if demand for online grocery shopping
bets don’t go its way” – it was badly holed, for instance, by the bitcoin bubble. Still, this despite increasing capacity by 20%.
time round, it has emerged as “the clear winner from the markets meltdown”. The Resolution Foundation predicted
that more than nine million UK
Angling Direct: tickled by tackle workers would be furloughed under the
Government’s scheme. Airbnb raised
“Keep calm and carry on painting” appears to be the mantra now adopted by plenty of more than $1bn from investors to tide
people facing the challenge of maintaining sanity under the lockdown. That’s a boon for it through the crisis. Rolls-Royce, the
DIY stores such as Kingfisher-owned B&Q and Screwfix, which have remained open aerospace firm, ditched its dividend for
during the coronavirus crisis. But the real “puzzler”, said Alistair Osborne in The Times, the first time since it was privatised in
is why Angling Direct is reporting such “robust” online sales. Does fishing really count 1987. Directors at WeWork launched
as daily exercise? It’s hard to imagine anyone getting away with that line, especially legal proceedings against the company’s
“with so many busybody coppers about”. So what can account for the retailer’s uptick? backer, SoftBank, for withdrawing from
“Are people just spending the day looking at their tackle?” a $3bn rescue deal.

Virgin Atlantic: a test pilot for a state bailout

Sir Richard Branson can call on some well- Atlantic’s policy of owning few assets means
placed friends when it counts, said The there’s “little to mortgage off” and, lately, the
Observer. Virgin Atlantic’s controversial airline (51% owned by Branson, 49% by the
£500m application for a state bailout “has US carrier Delta) has suffered hefty losses.
been backed” by a trio of aviation big guns –
Airbus, Rolls-Royce and Heathrow Airport – Over the years, Virgin Atlantic “has been
who have lobbied the Government, claiming a nice earner for Branson”, said John
that Virgin’s survival is “vital for the success Collingridge in The Sunday Times. Since
of a key industry”. Ministers should ignore 2015, he’s scooped £74m in royalties for the
the special pleading. “When overseas-based use of the Virgin brand. Yet it’s unclear how
billionaires beg for help beyond the much of his promised £215m the airline will
generous furlough scheme”, the response receive – it faces “competing demands” from
should be: “it’s your turn to put your hand in other troubled businesses in the Virgin group.
your pocket”. Branson: does he tick the boxes? In the meantime, Sir Richard has been
moving to protect other assets, noted
Having already pledged to inject £215m into the overall Virgin Benjamin Stupples on Bloomberg. In mid-March, he shifted
Group, Branson argues that he’s done his bit and the airline has part of his $1.1bn stake in the space-tourism firm Virgin Galactic
“ticked all the boxes” to qualify for state support, said Oliver Gill to the British Virgin Islands – his home tax haven. The move was
in The Daily Telegraph. Still, agreeing a bailout that doesn’t apparently “unrelated” to the plea for state cash to save his
“leave the British taxpayer at risk” is proving problematic. Virgin airline. The timing, though, looks unfortunate.

11 April 2020 THE WEEK

40 CITY Commentators
Banks run the risk of “appearing tone-deaf in their response to
Covid-19” – just as they did during the 2008 global financial City profiles
Can banks crisis, says Philip Augar. “Having initially appeared slow-footed”,
Asif Aziz
redeem they “must now deliver”. There has been tension with the UK
and US governments over the administration of state-backed loan
The stand-off over
commercial rents between
themselves? schemes. And their failure to take action on the vexed issues of
dividends and bonuses has been a further source of irritation. In
property owners and bars
and shops forced to close
Britain, it took “Bank of England pressure” to halt payouts to has led to angry scenes, says
Philip Augar bank shareholders. And, in contrast to companies in other sectors, The Sunday Times. But few
“scarcely a peep has been heard” about cutting bonuses – an landlords have taken quite
Financial Times such a “hardball approach”
emotive subject with the “potential to blow up again into a hugely
divisive issue”. This is a crucial moment for the industry’s reputa- as Asif Aziz – the “charming”
Malawian-born tycoon
tion: how the banks react is a test of the ethical “business with
behind Criterion Capital,
purpose” movement that gained momentum in 2019. The current which owns chunks of
tragic environment offers a chance for redemption. Lenders London’s West End,
should grab it. Unless they clean up their act – and put “public including the Trocadero
interest before self-interest” – they will remain “a pariah industry”. in Piccadilly. Aziz – who
“hit the property scene
In 2016, when “after months of navel-gazing” HSBC chose to in 1983, at the age of 16,
remain a UK-domiciled institution, the bank’s then chairman, when he bought a £1.9m
HSBC’s crazy Douglas Flint, declared the decision to be a “generational” one, property in Knightsbridge”
– is renowned for squeezing
says Nils Pratley. There’d be no more talk about moving to Hong
yearning for Kong. “But here we go again.” The Bank of England’s move to
every last penny. Nicknamed
“Mr West End”, he has been
bounce all big British lenders into cancelling their dividends this
Hong Kong year caused such “consternation among senior figures at HSBC”
threatening to serve non-
payers with winding-up
that some want to reopen the domicile question. “One can under- petitions. Some call him
Nils Pratley stand a few snorts of indignation”: HSBC makes most of its “Britain’s meanest landlord”.
money in Asia, and Hong Kong locals are big shareholders. But Aziz denies the charge,
The Guardian the idea of switching the bank’s legal home is absurd. “Have the claiming to be tough but fair.
grumbling HSBC executives forgotten what was happening on the “Landlords”, he insists, “are
not the nation’s bankers.”
streets of Hong Kong before the coronavirus struck?” The moral
should be clear. “An occasional dividend tickle from the Bank of
Cristian Fracassi
England is vastly preferable to permanent overarching oversight
by a Hong Kong regulator that could end up under the control of
the Chinese Communist Party.” HSBC’s current chairman, Mark
Tucker, should stamp out this nonsensical talk now.

“We have suddenly found ourselves with something that looks

like a wartime command-and-control economy, and we need to
It’s OK to be careful that it doesn’t encourage black-market spivs and profi-
teers,” says Matthew Lynn. But the public anger against anyone
make money making money during the lockdown is absurd. True, companies
and entrepreneurs should keep costs down where possible. “But
during a crisis the profit motive will play a vital role in helping both to fight this
epidemic and deal with its economic fallout.” Massive changes
Matthew Lynn are rippling through the economy. There has been a huge shift
in what we want to consume and what we should make and – A native of Brescia in
The Daily Telegraph as Adam Smith made clear in the 18th century – “we need price northern Italy, Cristian
signals” in a free market “to tell us where to direct resources”. Fracassi, 37, specialises
in “offbeat inventions” –
Companies shouldn’t be “pressurised” to give things away for
including “houses that can
nothing – it helps no one if they are bankrupted. And why should be built in six hours”, says
we begrudge them “incentives” to make new drugs, vaccines and The Times. But none gives
tests available faster? “It is the virus we should be fighting – not him the “intense pride” he
the businesses that are playing a role in bringing it under control.” feels about his latest: a small
plastic valve, produced on
The advertising sector is often described as the “canary in the a 3D printer, which can be
coalmine” – when ad spending falls, the good times are over for used to convert a full-face
Why madmen the economy. And agencies and the media are certainly feeling the snorkel mask into a hospital
oxygen mask. Fracassi
heat in the current crisis, says Liam Kelly. “The first casualty of
are the first to any crash is the marketing budget” and sometimes, indeed, the
came up with the idea to
help his local infirmary fight
people in charge of it. Both the budget airline easyJet and the bed
feel the heat retailer Dreams last week scrapped the post of chief marketing
a devastating outbreak of
the virus. But since making
officer – “a clear indication their priorities lie elsewhere”. For the design freely available
Liam Kelly now, former advertising customers can be roughly divided into online, it has been
two camps: those, like travel agencies, who have no need to downloaded two million
The Sunday Times advertise because demand has collapsed; and those, like food times. He recently spent
retailers, who are so “overwhelmed by demand” that they don’t his birthday in isolation. “I
thought it would be horrible,
need to drum up more. It’s still too early to know how big the
but a doctor rang from Brazil
drop-off in ad spending will be. According to some analysts, the to tell me that, thanks to the
industry could be looking at a 50% fall. “If that came to pass, it valve, 100 people he looked
would be the steepest, sharpest drop in history.” At least during after were breathing. That
the financial crisis, “people could go outside and spend money”, was a great moment.”
says one marketing chief. “Even McDonald’s is shut now.”

THE WEEK 11 April 2020

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 Talking points CITY 43
Issue of the week: the battle over “coronabonds”
The Covid-19 pandemic has reopened old wounds in Europe. Can the EU avoid another debt crisis?
“Fans of globalisation aren’t having a s400bn”. Countries in the opposition
very good crisis,” said Russell Lynch in camp, led by Germany and the
The Daily Telegraph. Every day seems Netherlands, are unwilling to back loans
to bring a new international row as to nations whose spending they can’t
“countries make an undignified easily influence. Sound familiar? The fear
scramble for vital supplies”. Germany is that, unless the EU takes “the step of
accused the US of “modern piracy” deeper integration” via coronabonds,
when it intercepted face masks bound there’s a risk of repeating the 2012
for Berlin. But Europeans are “scarcely eurozone sovereign debt crisis, which
in a position” to pass moral judgement. nearly sank the euro.
While the mortuaries were filling up in
Spain and Italy a few weeks back, “the “We all need to recover at the same
Élysée Palace’s mini-Napoleon, speed,” observed France’s finance
Emmanuel Macron, requisitioned minister, Bruno Le Maire. “Nothing
France’s stocks of surgical masks and could be worse for Europe than for some
equipment”. Bear this in mind the next “A moment of truth”: is the EU losing Italy? states, because they are richer, to get off
time you hear a lecture on solidarité to a quick start, while others, because
“from our European friends”. they cannot afford it, start slowly.” With 17,000 dead in Italy
“and an economy in freefall”, the stakes are certainly high, said
Still, as ever, the really big battle in Europe is over cash, said David Dawkins in Forbes. And political tensions are mounting.
Bruno Waterfield in The Times. At a key meeting this week, Indeed, there are already signs that Italian faith in the EU has
eurozone finance ministers failed to agree on how to fund a been damaged, said the FT. In a survey conducted by Tecnè last
coronavirus economic-recovery package – despite pleas to put month, 67% of respondents said they believed being part of the
“traditional divisions between the richer north and the poorer union was disadvantageous to Italy; meanwhile, “German-Italian”
south behind them”. The most divisive subject is the issuing of tensions are running high. The prospect of “Europe losing Italy”,
so-called “coronabonds” – allowing struggling eurozone states though still unlikely, has raised its head. The EU now faces “a
to fund themselves with debt guaranteed by the bloc as a whole. moment of truth”, according to Santander chairman Ana Botín.
Italy, Spain, France and six others are pushing for the EU to “The test is very simple: do all member states believe we are in
create a mutual “post-pandemic economic recovery fund worth this together? I hope the answer is ‘yes’. But the clock is ticking.”

Salary sacrifice: what the pundits think Have markets really

“additional capital”
● Anti-pitchforks
should “reconsider
hit the bottom?
As companies suspend
operations, scrap management’s Call it “the dawn of guarded optimism”,
remuneration”. Why stop said Michael Mackenzie in the FT. World
dividends and send
there? When “normality” stock markets rallied for two
employees home, “top consecutive days at the start of the
executives are facing eventually returns, the
week amid further signs that the
demands to make pressure to close pay
spread of Covid-19 may be slowing. On
sacrifices of their own”, ratios will be immense. Monday, the US S&P index jumped by
said the FT. “Some have The £5m-a-year chief 7% as optimism continued to build, and
acted in advance of the executive – a common the gains were matched elsewhere.
pitchforks” with sight in the FTSE 100 – Indeed, “close to 100 stocks on
voluntary pay cuts. Voluntary cut: BT’s Philip Jansen can hardly expect their London’s main market” have registered
pay package to receive “double-digit gains”, said Daniel Grote
Marriott Hotels boss Arne
the same “unquestioning nod of approval” on Citywire, with stocks that fell furthest
Sorenson is not taking a salary for the rest in the carnage “leading the rebound”.
of the year; his executive team are taking a now that our understanding of “key
The embattled cruise-ship operator
50% pay cut. BT chief Philip Jansen – one workers” has changed so dramatically.
Carnival “led the way”, jumping 23.5%.
of the first UK executives to fall ill – is
giving half his salary to the NHS. Overall, ● Ratchet, Ratchet & Bingo “It seems odd to be discussing how the
more than 36 UK public companies have Don’t count on it, said Alex Ralph in The global virus trend numbers continue to
already lopped top pay packages. More Times. “There are concerns that multiyear get better” while the Prime Minister is
are likely to follow suit on both sides of share-based schemes” – put in place during in intensive care trying to battle it, said
Deutsche Bank strategist Jim Reid.
the Atlantic, said DealBook in The New this year’s AGM season – “mean
“However, that’s where we stand.”
York Times. Twitter founder Jack Dorsey executives could reap large, highly inflated
this week “upped the ante” with a pledge rewards in future if stock markets rebound So have we really hit the bottom?
to donate $1bn – or almost a quarter of after the pandemic”. Indeed, if history is “Personally, I’m not convinced,” said
his net worth – to fight the virus. any guide, these cuts could be just David Stevenson on Citywire. One
temporary gestures, said Andrew Hill in hopeful sign is that market volatility
● City nudges the FT. For decades, a key rule of thumb “is at long last dying down... a bit”. But
Many bosses have already concluded that for CEOs has been that “their pay should shares still look overvalued when you
their pay packets “will have to take a hit”, never go down”. This is so entrenched that set them against emerging “flash
estimates” of corporate activity. “My
said Nils Pratley in The Guardian. the veteran US investor Warren Buffett
guess is that even these hastily revised
“There’s no harm, though, in big City nicknamed the pay consultants lubricating numbers on earnings are still too
fund managers aligning themselves with the remuneration merry-go-round generous, and we could see even
the message.” So Schroders deserves “half “Ratchet, Ratchet & Bingo”. Let’s hope sharper downgrades as the full horror
a cheer” for its “Dear UK plc” letter, that one beneficial legacy of Covid-19 is of what’s happened emerges.”
arguing that companies seeking “real reform”.

11 April 2020 THE WEEK

44 Marketplace



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 Shares CITY 45

Who’s tipping what

The week’s best shares Directors’ dealings
Anglo American Cranswick Moneysupermarket.com Ten Entertainment
The Sunday Telegraph Shares Group 500
The diversified miner’s This high-quality, vertically Investors Chronicle
balance sheet is in order and integrated pork and chicken A lockdown-induced recession Directors buy
400 759,900
its acquisition of Yorkshire producer has a sustainable could encourage punters to
potash miner Sirius Minerals agenda. Short-term, the firm’s tidy up their personal finances
is promising, with the potential strong export market and high – to the benefit of this cash- 300
to bounce back strongly. The returns should help it thrive generative price comparison
CEO has bought 100,000 through the crisis. Buy. £36.30. website. The 3.5%-plus yield 200
shares. Buy. £12.18. looks reliable. Buy. 292p.

SOURCE: INVESTORS CHRONICLE/MORNINGSTAR

LondonMetric Property
Berkeley Group Investors Chronicle Polar Capital Technology Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr
The Daily Telegraph This real estate investment Trust
Berkeley’s £1bn cash pile trust (Reit) has increased Investors Chronicle
should prove useful for buying exposure to the high-growth This tech investment trust The bowling operator’s biggest
shareholder, Harwood Capital,
land at distressed prices. When urban logistics sector and focuses on US-listed, high- whose CIO, Christopher Mills,
the economy normalises, diversified its tenant base after growth, global cloud firms. is a non-executive director at
demand for housing will buying rival A&J Mucklow. The sector is volatile, but Polar Ten, has participated in a share
return, triggering a rebound in The balance sheet looks robust, is a strong performer and placing. A host of other
prices and a transactions and rental values are rising. should benefit from the current directors, including the CEO
and CFO, joined in.
“boom”. Buy. £36.15. Buy. 163p. environment. Buy. £15.18.

…and some to hold, avoid or sell Form guide

Bunzl John Menzies Strix Group Shares tipped 12 weeks ago

The Times Investors Chronicle The Daily Telegraph Best tip
Falling revenues from the Already in a “downward The kettle control and safety Bioventix
hospitality sector have been spiral”, the aviation support devices maker has raised its The Daily Telegraph
offset by increased demand services group has axed 17,500 dividend as its 20 top up 16.62% to £38.90
for healthcare and hygiene jobs as it faces grounded flights customers resume production.
products. Bunzl has scrapped on an “unprecedented” scale. £13m cash offers protection Worst tip
its dividend, and trading could Emergency government against further outbreaks. Next
Investors Chronicle
worsen before improving. funding could be tricky to Hold. 150.8p.
down 41.18% to £40.48
Hold. £15.05. secure. Sell. 74p.
Zoom Video
Grafton Group Safestore Communications
The Daily Telegraph The Times The Times Market view
The builders’ merchant’s Self-storage is popular with Shares in the US video “This is a typical monster
bear market rally, except it’s
decision to axe its dividend individuals and small conferencing tech firm have
taken two weeks rather than
in exchange for long-term businesses and remains a soared, but the valuation is three months.”
financial solidity seems “highly attractive” sector in now “astronomical”. Zoom Luca Paolini, of Pictet
“eminently sensible”. It has the long term. The UK’s could suffer loss of renewals, Asset Management, is
more cash than debt and its biggest provider is performing and there are concerns about sceptical that the gains will
annual lease bill looks strongly and yields 3.1%. hacking and data protection. last. Quoted in the FT
manageable. Hold. 527p. Hold. 637p. Avoid. $146.12.

Market summary
Key numbers for investors Best and worst performing shares Following the Footsie
7 April 2020 Week before Change (%) WEEK’S CHANGE, FTSE 100 STOCKS
FTSE 100 5704.45 5671.96 0.57% RISES Price % change
FTSE All-share UK 3141.28 3107.42 1.09% M&G 130.05 +15.50
8,000
Dow Jones 23278.30 22421.62 3.82% Glencore 141.48 +14.28
NASDAQ 8025.53 7827.45 2.53% Intermediate Cap. Grp. 1023.00 +14.11
Nikkei 225 18950.18 18917.01 0.18% Intl. Cons. Airl. Grp. 242.70 +12.83
7,000
Hang Seng 24253.29 23603.48 2.75% JD Sports Fashion 514.80 +12.48
Gold 1648.30 1618.30 1.85% FALLS
Brent Crude Oil 33.12 26.37 25.60% Centrica 32.38 –14.97 6,000
DIVIDEND YIELD (FTSE 100) 5.05% 5.20% Whitbread 2654.00 –12.41
UK 10-year gilts yield 0.41 0.35 SSE 1157.00 –11.34
US 10-year Treasuries 0.78 0.69 Carnival 874.80 –10.86 5,000
UK ECONOMIC DATA Pearson 498.50 –9.79
Latest CPI (yoy) 1.7% (Feb) 1.8% (Jan)
BEST AND WORST UK STOCKS OVERALL
Latest RPI (yoy) 2.5% (Feb) 2.7% (Jan) 4,000
Tullow Oil 27.44 +155.85 Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr
Halifax house price (yoy) +3.0% (Mar) +2.8% (Feb)
Billing Services Gp. 0.60 –80.00
6-month movement in the FTSE 100 index
£1 STERLING $1.212 E1.116 ¥131.838 Source: Refinitiv (not adjusted for dividends). Prices on 7 April (pm)

11 April 2020 THE WEEK

46 The last word

Making space for nature

Brexit is about to bring enormous change to British farming. With UK agriculture at a
turning point, could Jake Fiennes be the man to show a better way forward? By Sam Knight

O ne day last summer,

Jake Fiennes was lost
in a cloud of butterflies. He
Fiennes lives in an old
blacksmith’s house a few
miles from Holkham with
was on a woodland path his partner, Barbara
near Holkham Beach, on Linsley, an agricultural
the north coast of Norfolk. historian. On the wall are
Every decade or so, ten the antlers of deer which
million painted lady Fiennes has shot and eaten.
butterflies – which are On a beautiful afternoon
orange, black and white – last September, he drove
migrate to Britain from me from his house to the
Africa. The hot summer grounds of Holkham Hall,
meant that it was a bumper which was built by the
year for native species, too, Coke family, who were
and the painted ladies ennobled as the Earls of
mingled with red admirals, Leicester by King George II,
peacocks and common blues in 1744. Fiennes turned his
feeding along the path. “Just Ford Ranger to face the
sat in a haze of flittering, gates and arrow-straight
fluttering butterflies,” drive leading into the park,
Fiennes told me later. and rolled a black cigarette.
“I was in awe. These flowers Jake Fiennes: “He’s got his eyes set on a bigger canvas” “This is the front door of
were just exploding.” Holkham,” he said. “This
is Coke of Norfolk saying, ‘This is how big my cock is.’”
Two friends of mine happened to be passing at that moment.
They saw a figure in the swirl. Fiennes, who is 49, has bright blue
eyes and a shaved head, except for an irregular flap of white hair,
which is jagged with grey. He is an arresting presence, with an
H olkham was one of the birthplaces of the agricultural
revolution. At the beginning of the 19th century, the estate,
which included some 70 farms, set new standards for food
abrupt, avid way of speaking. He combines the correct jargon of production, instituting regular four-course crop rotations, long-
the English countryside – hedges are flailed, ditches are grubbed, term leases, systematic breeding programmes, and the use of cover
the grass is the sward – with a lot of swearing. He starts sentences crops, such as clover, which fix nitrogen in the soil. Although
in the middle. He began to talk to my friends, at them, about the many of these techniques originated earlier, they were publicised
painted ladies, about how they floated on gusts from the Atlas to great effect by Thomas William Coke, a prominent politician.
Mountains; how they got tired flying over the sea, and sometimes Coke of Norfolk, as he was known, staged annual sheep shearings
rested on boats in the Channel. My friends stood and gawped for that drew hundreds of landowners to the estate. In July 1820,
a while. Then they carried on, leaving the butterfly man behind. Prince Potemkin of Russia, along with visitors from Baltimore
and Paris, learned about Arabian sheep, tricks to stop mice from
Fiennes is the conservation manager of the Holkham estate, one eating cornstalks, and the correct direction for drilling seeds
of Britain’s most important private landholdings. The estate (north to south). The “Norfolk rotation” was replicated across
covers about 25,000 acres and includes a nature reserve, which is Britain’s lowland farms and increased food production.
visited by almost a million people a year, and a farming business
that grows potatoes, sugar beets and barley. In 2018, Fiennes When Coke died, in 1842, a stone column with a wheat sheaf on
was hired by Holkham’s principal landowner, the eighth Earl of top was erected at Holkham. Fiennes drove his truck across the
Leicester, to bolster wildlife across the estate, from its intensively grass to show it to me. The pedestal is decorated with sculptures
farmed arable land to its wetland bird habitats. Fiennes describes of sheep, seed drills, and sayings apposite for our frightening
what he does as “multifunctional farming” or “environmental ecological age. “What I love is this,” Fiennes said, pointing at an
farming”. He believes that farmers in the 21st century must inscription below a plough. It read “Live and Let Live”. Fiennes
cultivate as much as they can on their land – fungi for the soil, told me to close my eyes. The monument stands in a corner of
grasses for the pollinators, weeds for the insects, insects for the Jane Austen-style parkland, a dreamlike England. “What can you
birds, pasture for the livestock – for the long-term goals of carbon hear?” Fiennes asked. I was struck by the silence. After a moment,
capture and food production. “How do we feed the nine billion?” I could make out the small sound of a couple of birds, singing in
he asked. “We feed them through functioning ecosystems.” the distance. During Fiennes’s lifetime, Britain has lost about 44
million breeding birds. “This has become a natural, day-to-day
Fiennes has spent his adult life in farming, but he is not quite of thing that is not there,” he said. “This is what it is.”
it. He is the twin brother of the actor Joseph Fiennes, and one
of six siblings in one of Britain’s best-known bohemian families The UK is a farmed country. Almost 75% of the land is given to
– the Twistleton-Wykeham-Fiennes, who choose to simplify their agriculture – compared to 45% in the US. After the Second World
surname. (Jake’s eldest brother is Ralph; his sisters, Sophie and War, the country joined a continent-wide push to banish hunger
Martha, are film-makers; his third brother, Magnus, is a music from Europe. Between 1935 and 1998, aided by chemicals, subsi-
producer; Ranulph, the explorer, is a cousin.) Fiennes is dies, heavy machinery and crop science, British farmers tripled
profoundly dyslexic and almost entirely self-taught. Last year, he their per-acre yields of wheat, oats and barley. Milk production
was an adviser to the UK’s first major review of its national parks doubled. The amount of chicken meat offered for sale increased
since 1947, chaired by the journalist Julian Glover. “There’s an by a factor of 25. Traditional methods, such as the Norfolk
element of Jake that looks like he could have taken up farming or rotation, fell away. Many semi-natural habitats were drained or
heroin,” Glover told me. “There’s no one else quite like him.” ploughed under. An estimated 97% of hay meadows were lost.

THE WEEK 11 April 2020

 The last word 47
Between 1990 and 2010, the area of second half of the 20th century.
crops treated with pesticides in the Fiennes loves hedges; he keeps
UK increased by 50%. The damage pictures of them on his phone. But
caused by Britain’s intensive September is the start of hedge-
agriculture has only recently been cutting season – and on either side
properly understood. In 2013, 25 of the road, harvested wheat fields
nature organisations published the were lined with brutally cut, square-
first State of Nature report. “Even topped ribbons of vegetation. “This
the most casual of observers may is hedges of no benefit,” Fiennes
have noticed that all is not well,” murmured. Then he slammed
Sir David Attenborough wrote in on his brakes in the middle of a
the foreword. Researchers studied straight section of road. “What the
more than 3,000 species and found f*** is that?” he yelled, pointing
60% in decline. Modern farming out of the window. A hawthorn
has been a nightmare for the hedge was cut back almost to its
familiar creatures – mole, rat, stumps. Some ivy clung on. Fiennes
toad and badger – of the British was beside himself. It was what he
landscape. The 2019 State of The Holkham estate: site of an agricultural revolution calls “Taliban farming” –
Nature report concluded, pointlessly hostile to the natural
“Farmland birds have declined more severely than birds in any world. “It’s been flailed within an inch of its life,” he said. “It’s...
other habitat.” Over half have disappeared in the past 50 years. what is it? Four feet wide? I’m sorry.” Fiennes stopped for air. “It
is just... what the f***? This is a completely f***ed landscape.”
As we drove away from Coke’s monument, Fiennes stopped
his truck. In front of us was Holkham Hall, a Palladian-style,
sand-coloured stately home, which is thought to have about
150 rooms. The seventh Earl used to migrate through the house
W hen Fiennes was about ten years old, he painted his face
white to blend in with the chickens that he kept in the
garden. His father, Mark, was a tenant farmer in the 1960s,
according to the seasons. A few tourists were wandering around. before turning to photography. His mother, Jennifer Lash, known
“Look at the sward,” Fiennes said. He had opened the truck’s as Jini, wrote her first novel, The Burial, when she was 19, after
door and was staring down at the immaculate, even lawn. running away from her family. Jake and Joseph were the youngest
“What’s in it? It’s shit. There’s of the couple’s six children.
nothing in it. It’s shit, poor (They fostered a seventh.) Mark
grass.” A pair of fallow “Sometimes I sit and contemplate what I am and Jini made money by buying
deer were watching us. doing and I think: isn’t this complete common and renovating houses in the
“The perception is ‘Wow! English countryside. Fiennes
This is amazing,’” Fiennes said. sense? Doesn’t everyone think like this?” went to 13 schools. He won’t
“But actually I’ve got farmed abide a romantic reading of
deer, I’ve got trees dying, and I’ve got a sward that has not even Fiennes family life. “Strapped for cash. Trying to put food on the
got clover in it. It’s got nothing. Because at some stage this sward table. Trying to educate. Leaning on close friends,” he recalled.
has been improved.” He sat quietly. “I would love to know what
this would have been like a hundred years ago.” Fiennes’s refuge and passion was nature. For several years, in
Wiltshire, the family lived opposite a traditional, mixed English

F or ecological and political reasons, UK farming has reached a

turning point. When the country became part of the EEC, the
forerunner of the EU, it joined the bloc’s Common Agricultural
farm. Fiennes kept slowworms, caught hornets and stored
roadkill in the freezer. “If you pull out any family pictures,
it’s Jake with jellyfish, Jake with insects,” Joseph told me. For
Policy (Cap), one of the world’s largest farm-subsidy programmes. Fiennes’s 16th birthday, Jini gave him a stuffed fox, which he
The Cap consumes s58bn a year, about 40% of the EU’s budget; keeps in his living room. I asked Fiennes once if he could explain
for decades, it has been criticised for its perverse incentives and why he took such a different path to his siblings. “Actually, the
environmental impact. In 2016, the Cap was among the bureau- other five were the odd ones out,” he replied.
cratic monstrosities of the EU that helped drive the vote for
Brexit. Leaving the bloc has led to the first reform of agricultural Fiennes dropped out of school at 16. He got a job doing PR for
policy in almost 50 years. “It is a reset moment,” Minette Batters, Limelight, a London nightclub housed in a deconsecrated church.
the leader of the National Farmers Union, told me. Beginning In 1987, when he was 17, he helped organise a party for George
next year, British farming will transition to a new system of Michael. Limelight flowed with drugs and money. “Maybe I
support, which will be linked to “public goods”, such as water should have pulled out when I found half a kilo of coke in the
quality and biodiversity. “We’re reinventing quite a lot of things reception drawer,” Fiennes told me. Both Sophie and Joseph
at once,” Tony Juniper, the chair of the conservation body described the teenage Fiennes as a species in the wrong habitat.
Natural England, said. “It does feel up for grabs.” “He needed to get out,” Sophie said. Fiennes had a huge expense
account; he developed eczema. “Lack of sleep,” he told me.
In this fluid moment, Fiennes’s ideas have attracted attention. “Stolichnaya on ice.” His parents arranged for him to dry out
Juniper described him as “one of the motive forces behind this at Knepp Castle, in West Sussex. Fiennes turned up to help out
new way of looking at the land”. Geoff Sansome, the head of for a week during lambing. He ended up staying for three years.
agriculture at Natural England, has worked with Fiennes for
years. “Jake’s current canvas is Holkham, but he’s got his eyes The Knepp estate, which covers about 3,500 acres, had recently
set on a bigger canvas,” Sansome said. “He’s on a mission.” been inherited by Charlie Burrell, a 25-year-old aristocrat.
Burrell’s girlfriend, a travel writer named Isabella Tree, had lived
Fiennes sees what he does as obvious. “Sometimes I sit and up the road from the Fienneses as a teenager. Soon after Fiennes
contemplate what I am doing and I think: isn’t this complete arrived, the three of them moved in to the castle, which had not
common sense?” Fiennes said. “Doesn’t everyone think like this?” been modernised since the War, when it was the headquarters
Late in the afternoon, we headed out of Holkham on a typical of the 1st Canadian Division. There were coal fires and blackout
Norfolk lane, lined with hedgerows of hawthorn and blackthorn. curtains. “You turned on a light and flew across the room,” Tree
Hedges delineate fields, and also provide invaluable habitat and recalled. During the day, Fiennes worked on the farm. He doesn’t
food for birds, insects, and plant life. But an estimated 250,000 read easily. He has acquired virtually all his knowledge through
miles of them – about a third of the total – were destroyed in the conversation and making connections for himself. At Knepp,

11 April 2020 THE WEEK

48 The last word
Fiennes befriended a woodman named Chris old trees and brought sheep to graze
Wagstaff. “A forester is looking at trees, and the lawn for the first time in 100 years.
he’s looking at income from trees,” Fiennes He removed more than 1,000 acres from
explained. “A woodman cares for the wood food production. But his yields increased,
and maintains it, enhances it... He knows cancelling out the difference.
the importance of the bats and the flora.”
Fiennes cycled through the departments While Fiennes modified the farming at
of the farm. He also became close to Burrell, Raveningham, his friends at Knepp Castle
who at the time was struggling with the stopped growing crops altogether. In 2001,
economics of the estate. “It was very good Burrell and Tree turned the estate over to
for me to have Jake around,” Burrell said. nature; Knepp is now one of the UK’s best-
“The responsibility was pretty crushing.” known rewilding projects. Through the
years, Fiennes and Burrell have encouraged
In 1994, Fiennes left Knepp to work as each other. But Fiennes does not associate
a gamekeeper at Stanage Park, in Wales, the recovery of the countryside with
which ran a commercial pheasant shoot. abandonment. “How can I engage with
Each year, the shooting industry releases up Coke’s monument: “Live and Let Live” 104,000 farm holdings in England and
to 50 million game birds – predominantly you’re saying, ‘Just let it go’? I can’t,” he
non-native pheasants – into the British countryside. By some said. “Everything has got to be managed.”
estimates, these birds account for a quarter of the UK’s avian
biomass. “It was industrial,” Fiennes told me. He lost an entire For years, Fiennes stayed at Raveningham, where he worked
hatch, 9,500 chicks, to rotavirus. He had to clear them out with 14-hour days and married an equine nurse. The couple had two
a shovel. “It wasn’t great,” he said. children, but the marriage foundered. He got alopecia, and his
hair grew back white. But slowly, the word about his methods
Fiennes’s father saw he was unhappy and, in early 1995, arranged spread. In 2018, nature writer Mark Cocker included a chapter
for him to meet Nicholas Bacon, a landowning Norfolk baronet on his work in Our Place, his book about the countryside.
who is a close friend of Prince Charles. Bacon’s family has owned Cocker believes Fiennes offers a middle way, of both growing
the Raveningham estate, southeast of Norwich, since 1735. food and restoring the environment. “He’s a radical in the sense
Bacon was a serious beekeeper. When he met Fiennes, who was this actually can be delivered,” he said.
24, there wasn’t a job opening. But he was struck by Fiennes’s
ideas. He took him on as a In January 2018, the then
junior gamekeeper at “Birds that had been absent – lapwing, snipe, environment secretary Michael
Raveningham, where his job Gove announced a new, 25-year
was to make sure there were marsh harrier – came rushing back” plan for the British countryside,
birds to shoot. Unusually, the based on the principle of
estate did not farm pheasants, instead relying on a surplus of wild “natural capital”, in which the nation’s air, water, soil and
game. Fiennes rose before dawn to check 250 traps – for biodiversity will be reimagined as an economic resource. The
predators such as rats, stoats and weasels – across the 5,500 acres plan is largely the work of Dieter Helm, the Oxford economist
of the estate, before walking the fields and hedgerows, inspecting who since 2012 has chaired the Government’s Natural Capital
nesting sites for pheasant chicks and sawfly populations that they Committee. Helm thinks it is possible that British farming, with
would eat. “He was a complete man of nature,” Bacon said. revenues of around £9bn a year, is currently worthless – once you
Fiennes tracked foxes by following the alarm calls of blackbirds. take away its subsidies and the damage it causes to waterways
He got drenched in the dew. and wildlife. But the benefits offered by new forms of agriculture
– including Fiennes’s methods – are potentially enormous. “I
During Fiennes’s first season, there were blank drives – times think the tide has gone out on the agricultural system we have,”
when there were no birds in the air. He noticed that the estate’s Helm said. “If you look at where the science is going, we have a
bags – its shooting records – had peaked in 1963, during the fabulous opportunity to use the land to much greater effect.”
country’s switch to intensive agriculture. The reason that so
many pheasants are released in Britain each year is that there is Brexit offers a chance for the nation’s farms to take a new path.
no food or space for them on modern farmland. Fiennes realised In 2021, the Government plans to begin a seven-year transition
that Raveningham’s game birds were in danger of disappearing. out of the Cap and into the new Environmental Land Manage-
“It was at the point where if you don’t do something drastic, ment System. Some farms will go bankrupt. The National Audit
you will lose something,” he said. Office has described the move as “complex, difficult and high-
risk”. The median age of UK farmers is 60. Some 42% of English
In the late 1990s, the farming operation at Raveningham went farmers rely on the Cap to break even. Fiennes himself voted
Taliban. A new estate manager shifted away from cereals to crops against Brexit, but has embraced its implications for farming.
which were more lucrative, but also more resource-intensive. The After the 2016 vote, he invited policymakers to Raveningham,
hedges were flailed. Fields were sown to the edges and doused in and has pushed for Holkham to become a test bed for the new
chemicals. Fiennes watched the bird and insect populations shrink policy. “The opportunity is phenomenal,” he said.
further. He despaired. “You don’t see it from the tractor cab,” he
said. “You see it on the ground.” Fiennes confronted Bacon about One afternoon last autumn, Fiennes took me to Holkham’s nature
what he was witnessing, and the new manager left. reserve, where he is planning to restore the old wetland landscape.
There were wigeon and teal and pink-footed geese – some of the

I n 2001, Fiennes was put in charge of the estate. Bacon

summarises his approach as “farming badly”. Fiennes prefers
“making space for nature”. In 2002, he took 140 acres that had
80,000 birds that wardens had the previous weekend counted at
Holkham. A line of bird-watchers, with cameras and telescopes,
had materialised at the edge of the parking lot. The light was
been drained to plant crops in the 1960s, and used earthmovers failing, and the wetlands were still. Without warning, a host of
to turn the area back into wetlands, which he used to graze cattle. lapwing took off on our right. “Look at that!” Fiennes called.
Birds that had been absent – lapwing, snipe and marsh harriers “F***ing clouds of them. Phenomenal.” The lapwing wheeled
– came rushing back. The marshes now have higher breeding rates against the sunset. Coke’s monument showed above the trees.
than surrounding nature reserves. “I want more edge. Everything
is about edge,” he told me once. Fiennes planted 25 miles of A longer version of this article appeared in The New Yorker.
hedges and thinned woodlands, bringing in light. He replanted © 2020 Condé Nast.

THE WEEK 11 April 2020

 Marketplace 49

        
 

  
 

     
     
    


  
  

     






   

  

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 Crossword 51
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7
ACROSS DOWN
8 9
1 Finance Department embraces 2 Conservative one to admit reckless
new meter gear (13) lie? Could be Johnson (5)
10 Type of seat I’ll get one on after 10 11
3 Exclusions from outsize housing
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22 23 24 25
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tight (5,3,5) eliminated (5) 26 27

28

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