The problems of a sick prime minister

It is good of President Trump to offer Boris Johnson his best wishes and the best American pharmaceuticals (though no doubt Jeremy Corbyn would see this as a prelude to American takeover of the National Health Service). During the second world war, on Boxing Day 1941, Churchill had a minor heart attack after trying too hard to force open a window while staying at the White House. He had addressed the joint Houses of Congress earlier that day. Churchill’s doctor, Moran, did not inform President Roosevelt. In February 1943, however, when he knew Churchill had pneumonia, Roosevelt wrote to him: ‘Please, please, for the sake of the world, don’t overdo these days. You must remember that it takes about a month of occasional let-ups to get back your full strength. Tell Mrs Churchill that when I was laid up I was a thoroughly model patient, and that I hope you will live down the reputation in our Press of having been the “world’s worst patient”.’ Good advice for Boris, a similarly impatient patient. The problems of a sick prime minister are obvious, but his situation evokes sympathy and solidarity. In the strange drama of leadership, there is a power in bearing the woes of all. In religious form, this is the role of the suffering servant in Isaiah (Chapter 53), which Christians recall this week on Good Friday.

I now have several friends who have caught the virus. Some barely noticed; some nearly died. In the latter category is Nicholas Coleridge, doyen of the world of glossy magazines. He was taken to hospital in Worcester delirious (‘I got loonier and loonier’) and stayed for 12 days. A doctor gravely warned his wife Georgia, who also had it, of ‘the possibility of his demise’. The worst aspects, he tells me, are its speed, feeling very hot or very cold, and that ‘something invasive and dirty is finding its way into all parts of your body’.