Diary

The vocabulary of Brexit has passed into oblivion. Now there’s fresh work to be done. We all know about ‘flattening the curve’, but are you comfortable yet with ‘fomite’, a word my older son, a virologist, taught the family early on? It’s an object or surface on which an infectious agent like a coronavirus might

When two members of my family went down with what appears to be Covid-19, I felt concerned. What I hadn’t bargained on was the sense of wounded pride. As the patients, pale as veal, collapse into their beds for 16 hours of fretful, jagged sleep, I ask myself how the wretched virus could have penetrated

Week five… which is to say I’ve been self-isolating in the country since 6 March. Meanwhile, engagements which threatened a return to town have been falling over like a row of dominos. If it were not for the terrors surrounding us, this is the life I’ve always wanted — social distancing without social disapproval. My

‘How are you bearing up?’ ‘Is everyone terrified?’ ‘What’s the mood?’ These are the questions concerned family and friends are kindly asking about New York City which, according to my armchair epidemiology, is about ten days behind Italy and ten days ahead of Britain. It would be reckless to describe things as calm, not with

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

I have been trying to write about a great unpleasantness for some time: the trans debate that we don’t really have. Men go to Woman’s Place meetings. So do trans women, it’s not a separatist organisation. But for some godforsaken reason the Labour leadership hopefuls thought they might endear themselves to their lost ‘red wall’

‘Aren’t you meant to be in quarantine?’ the man in the cloakroom queue asks. I sense that his enquiry is motivated more by concern about his wellbeing than mine. ‘Don’t worry! I’ve not got the coronavirus,’ I try to reassure him cheerily. That’ll teach me to talk about my health on the Today programme. I

I made the mistake of saying I thought insects might help feed the world. They are high-protein, cheap to farm (they breed like rabbits and grow like Topsy), require little water and energy and probably wouldn’t mind being factory-farmed. Now my post is full of mealworm powder and cricket flour and invitations to champion bug

A doctor will tell you heart attacks may appear to come out of the blue, but if you look carefully, you can spot the telltale signs. The same is true of my prospects at last week’s cabinet reshuffle. Things seemed positive enough on Monday. I attended an event in London to celebrate the first same-sex

Exactly 50 years ago I drove, for the first visit of many, across country to Aldeburgh in Suffolk, following the Pied Piper, Benjamin Britten. I had been obsessed by his music, and indeed by him, since first hearing the ‘Sea Interludes’ from his opera Peter Grimes in a music appreciation lesson. His sound worlds, his

After I took the editor’s job at Today on Radio 4 nearly three years ago I had to answer to John Humphrys, in his kitchen, over monastic soup and cheese. He asked me if my hidden intention was to try for one of the top jobs at the BBC. I told him that editing the

I still live in the same house, in London, in which I lived as a baby. I walk my five-year-old son every morning to the same school, on the same route that I took 43 years ago, holding my father’s hand. We sing Gilbert and Sullivan in the same bedroom. I am whacked with a

I start the week by going through my iPhone to delete the numbers of former friends. It sounds depressing, but it’s actually quite cathartic. I suppose it all started with Brexit. I’m not a confrontational person, so it was surprising to find so many friends turning against me over their newfound devotion to a neoliberal

Washington, D.C. On 8 January, I tweeted about the Sussex-Markles: ‘Obviously the plan is to return to Canada, lead a revolt against British rule, and establish an independent Canadian monarchy.’ Two days later, the New York Times opened a story about the Canada-bound Duke and Duchess of Sussex: ‘Some have suggested they could become king