Society

Monday

Robert Peston Robert Peston

Coronavirus can help us confront the uncomfortable truth about death

In recent years, I’ve been thinking about the right way to die, having been with my late wife Sian Busby when she was in great pain from cancer at the end of her life, and been chairman of Hospice UK, the charity which campaigns – among other things – to improve end-of-life care. In normal times, few of us want to dwell on better or worse ways to die. But these are not normal times. The coronavirus crisis means we have to confront perhaps the hardest question any of us will ever face. For ourselves and for those we love most dearly, if a doctor told us that our chances

Steerpike Steerpike

The Kinnocks get a ticking off

Naughty, naughty. It seems the MP for Aberavon failed to follow the stringent lockdown rules over the weekend. Stephen Kinnock decided to pay a visit to his father to celebrate the former Labour leader’s 78th birthday. It seems Kinnock Jnr thought he was following the rules on social interaction when he decided to sit in an open-air spot, more than two metres from his parents. But his local police force in South Wales disagreed… Yes, the Welsh MP’s own constabulary criticised his decision, branding the trip ‘not essential’. Mr S has some sympathy with the Kinnocks however, as police forces across the country seem to disagree as to what the new lockdown measures actually include. Either way,

Nicholas Jubber

Why the coronavirus crisis is likely to bring Europe together

Solidarity usually suggests physical proximity: goodwill spreading with hugs and cosy chatter. But when you have a crisis with social distancing as an antidote, is that a barrier to comradeship? Far from it. On social media, videos of Italian flash-mobs singing to their neighbours have been shared, as well as petitions to test NHS staff and footage of the ‘Viva los Medicos’ (long live the doctors) mass shout-outs from Spanish windows. Online solidarity overcomes borders, all the more so during a global pandemic. But Europe, which has been described as the ‘epicentre’ of Covid-19, has its own particular flavour of solidarity. It was the growing outbreak in Italy that really brought

Sunday

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Let’s applaud mothers — the real key workers

Our daughter Clementine, 5, has just decided what she wants to be when she grows up. ‘A cleaner …. and a mother,’ she says, in that order. Her mother, my wife Taffeta, winces at Clemmie’s ambition. Middle-class rules dictate that we should try to knock such traditional notions out of little girls’ brains. It’s not feminist and therefore bad. But why? If this health crisis has taught us anything, it is that cleaning is one of the most important things human beings can do. And even in our horridly secular age, we all know deep down that motherhood is sacred. We need mothers now more than ever. The most key

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Police must be flexible when enforcing social distancing rules

One recognises the need for firm rules about social distancing and other measures to control the coronavirus spread; but one should also recognise the need to keep things going. We rightly hail the NHS workers. We should also applaud the tremendously efficient businesses which continue to supply grocers’ shops and pharmacies. Given the difficulties and sudden demands, I am amazed by how well these markets are holding up. What on earth would Covid-19 have been like if it had arrived in pre-internet days? The authorities should themselves recognise difference of circumstances and adjust the rules accordingly as things change over the coming weeks.  Take the construction industry. It is obvious

Rex Fisher

Britain’s hunts are a rural lifeline in the fight against coronavirus

Puppy shows cancelled. Point-to-points put on hold. Hound shows, team chases, skittles leagues, pony club camp – all have been axed from the countryside calendar. These are not announcements that tend to make headlines. What’s the cancellation of the Cattistock Countryside show when Glastonbury is grinding to a halt? Not that it’s a competition, but it’s a fact that rural areas get overlooked in times like these. In response, countryside folk are taking matters into their own hands. In my own village in Dorset – a village not big enough to qualify for a postbox – Sylvia, an ex-schoolteacher, has decided it’s essential we have a community pop-up shop for emergency rations. At 66,

Saturday

Douglas Murray

Audio Reads: Douglas Murray, Tanya Gold, and Mark Mason

17 min listen

The Spectator is meant for sharing. But in the age of coronavirus, that might not be possible. This new podcast will feature a few of our columnists reading out their articles from the issue each week, so that you don’t miss out. It’s a new format, so tell us what you think at podcast@spectator.co.uk. Douglas Murray asks, where do we find purpose? Tanya Gold writes on the Cornish revolt against second-home owners, and Mark Mason’s gives tips from history on working from home.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Salmond cleared, Olympics postponed and Britain told to stay home

Coronavirus Sunday dawned with 233 people in the United Kingdom dead thus far from the coronavirus Covid-19 (a week earlier it had been 21), and more than 12,000 in the world. Three days later it was 442 in the UK and more than 18,000 worldwide. About 107,000 of the world’s 410,000 cases detected had recovered. A billion people in the world were confined to their homes, joined from Sunday by a billion more in India, where confusion reigned. Testing was uneven, but, in fatalities, Italy, with 6,820 by Tuesday, had gone far beyond China (with 3,277). Iran admitted to 1,934 deaths and Spain had 2,800. China was reporting few new

Melissa Kite

How I fought the urge to panic-buy – and won

‘Get me Heygates on the phone! I need that order of pony nuts now, damn it!’ It was like a scene from a disaster movie, only at the country store. The owner’s son was yelling at staff. The car park was a seething mass of battered 4x4s. Men with walkie-talkies were corralling the panicking horse owners. Inside the main hanger of the store, women in jodhpurs were loading up nuts and chaff like there was no tomorrow. And indeed there would be no tomorrow, for a lot of ponies, if they didn’t stop bulk-buying horse feed. I heaved on to a trolley my usual sack of oaty mix, happily still

Jeremy Clarke

I am socially isolating in a cave in France

This Provençal village clusters around the base of a cliff 300 feet high and a kilometre wide surmounted by two crumbling look-out towers. The cliff is riddled with dry caves, used since time immemorial by troglodytes and fugitives. In the early 19th century a section of the rock face was walled and the caves used as a convalescent hospital for Napoleon’s wounded soldiers. An earth tremor largely destroyed the village’s medieval quartier in 1905. The stoutly built military hospice survived, as well as a few other ancient cave dwellings higher up the cliff. Catriona and I live in one of these. House and garden sit on a high ledge accessible

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

Dining in the time of pandemic: takeaways reviewed

I love eating while watching bad films like Battleship, so I love takeaway food from local restaurants. I am not rich enough to like the idea of takeaway from Simpson’s in the Strand and a plastic lid does not have the drama of a silver-plated dome. But eating takeaway food while watching Battleship is not my job, or at least it wasn’t until now, in the era of pandemic. The fine restaurants shuttered swiftly but the local restaurants offered takeaway, and I supported them. It is not indolence to order takeaway in the time of pandemic and, if you don’t, when this is over there will only be either Simpson’s

Dot Wordsworth

How ‘barley’ cropped up

‘Why can’t you write about something wholesome?’ asked my husband, in a flanking move. He was in a bad mood because his offer to come out of retirement to save the NHS had not so much been rebuffed as received with uneasy amusement. It so happened that I had been rereading something that might fit the strange category of wholesomeness demanded. It was The Shell Country Alphabet by Geoffrey Grigson (1905-85). Grigson really knew about the countryside, from the Stone Age onwards, and the writers who delighted in it, from Thomas Tusser to Cecil Torr. Anyway, Grigson’s entry for barns explains that the word derives from the Old English for

Toby Young Toby Young

How Oxford taught the no-platformers a lesson

Three weeks ago Amber Rudd travelled to Christ Church, Oxford, to speak to students about her experiences of being a female politician. She was there at the invitation of the UNWomen Oxford UK society, which had organised a number of events in the run-up to International Women’s Day on 8 March. But half an hour before she was due to appear, Rudd was told the event had been cancelled. Nothing to do with coronavirus, which had not yet swept the country. Rather, it was because a number of students had protested about the ex-Conservative MP being allowed to speak. Rudd had been no-platformed. The society published an apology on its

The Spectator

Letters: Civilisation will survive coronavirus

Covid questions Sir: I worry that Matt Ridley and others are trying to frighten us about Covid-19 (‘Like nothing we’ve known’, 21 March). The fact is that we do not know how deadly the virus is. We know that it is widespread; but that does not make it deadly. How long-lasting is the danger from Covid-19? Will it remain in the system after the pandemic scare is over? We do not know. But will civilisation survive? You betcha! I was called up to National Service in 1952 and while waiting for the train to take me to Aldershot, I bought a book at the station called Earth Abides by George

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: Can my marriage survive my husband working from home?

Q. Our son and his girlfriend have announced their engagement and we are delighted with his choice. Our problem is with what I regard as the misjudged tone of hilarity among some friends, many of whom we have not heard from for years, who have telephoned to congratulate us. It’s the emphasis on how clever our son has been and how thrilled we must be — the subtext being ‘because you’re all such snobs’ — which rankles. Yes, it’s a fact that our future daughter-in-law is a member of the aristocracy and has a bit of cash — but our son is, by any standards, an exceptional young man. Moreover,

Michael Morpurgo

Michael Morpurgo: Kale smoothies, writing, Pilates – my strict isolation schedule

Writers like me are used to long hours alone. I’ve never enjoyed that side of it. I don’t like the bleakness of silence. As I try to settle and gather thoughts on my bed, pillows piled up behind me — Robert Louis Stevenson did the same, and it worked for him — I must have birdsong, music, the murmur of voices, and I must be able to see the living world from my window. I need the reassurance that I am not alone. I get up from the breakfast table always reluctantly, knowing the hours of solitary work that lie ahead, often dreading to have to go to it. I

The Spectator

How much food have we really been stockpiling?

Time out When did British workers start being ‘furloughed’? The word furlough is first recorded in the English language in 1625, believed to be derived from the Dutch verloffe, meaning a leave of absence of a sailor from the navy. It seems to have come back into parlance in Britain thanks to it being used in the US prison system to describe temporary leave for an inmate. It was the title of a 2018 American film in which a female prisoner is allowed out of jail for the weekend to visit her dying mother. The film was later renamed Time Out, perhaps because not everyone knew what ‘furlough’ meant. But

Taki

How tennis went socialist

Desperately boring times but very healthy ones. No parties, no girls, not too much boozing, lots of smoking and reading very late into the night. And non-stop training and sport. What else can one do when locked in with one’s wife and one’s son and with nostalgic thoughts of a time when people gathered in groups? It seems very long ago but do any of you remember when people gave parties? Desperate times demand desperate measures and make for desperate columnists. Meditation might be good for philosophers and their ilk, but correspondents need to get out and get the story. The only thing to report nowadays are the sleeping habits

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The psychological and economic dangers of enforced idleness

‘Lourdes shrine closes healing pools as precaution against coronavirus,’ says a discouraging headline in the Catholic Herald. Jesus ‘made the lame to run’ and ‘gave the blind their sight’, but Christians are not like Jesus, however much they may try to imitate him. We lack miraculous powers; and so, in matters of life and death (though not of the afterlife), we must defer to the civil power. On Tuesday, our neighbour rang for my wife, who is a churchwarden, and asked: ‘Shall I open the church as usual this morning?’ After some rummaging on the diocesan website, she found that the answer, following Boris Johnson’s broadcast the night before, was

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

The power of children’s imaginations

Last summer, in the bc era, I took my then three-year-old to a new group play session: ‘Lottie’s Magic Box.’ Off we trooped in the usual north London fashion: child on scooter, imperious and unmoving, hauled along by mother in the role of husky. Micro, purveyor of scooters to the middle-classes, sell colour-coordinated leads especially for this purpose. It sometimes crosses my mind that they should also sell whips for the pre-schoolers to brandish. The map on the event website directed us to what looked like an office block in a park and as we opened the door, any wisps of hope that this might be an uplifting hour of