MAGAZINE OF THE YEAR 16.01.21 WE ARE HERE BECAUSE YOU WERE THERE The Empire and me By Sathnam Sanghera MELANIE REID I’VE NEVER BEEN SO SCARED AS I AM NOW PERFECT PETER! BAKE OFF’S BABY-FACED ASSASSIN GUESS WHO’S MOODY (AGAIN) THE CORENS IN LOCKDOWN 16.01.21 24 38 5 Caitlin Moran Why women hate winter. 7 Spinal column: Melanie Reid I’ve never been so scared of catching Covid. 8 Men behaving… differently Free Swimmer Dude, Crafting Man – meet the pandemic’s new tribes. 12 The prime of Ms Emerald Fennell She’s 35, best friends with Phoebe Waller-Bridge, plays Camilla in The Crown and has just directed her first film. 18 Cover story Sathnam Sanghera The Times writer on why we’ll never eradicate today’s inequalities without understanding our colonial past. 24 Bake Off’s new prince Alex Renton talks to the latest winner, Peter Sawkins. Plus 27 Eat! Peter’s new recipes, exclusively for The Times. 38 The truth about QAnon A PR exec who had a breakdown after falling in with the conspiracy theorists reveals their methods. 44 The unusual suspect What turned a Devon teenager into a Robin Hood-style bank robber? 50 The Corens are back! There’s no putting a positive spin on Lockdown 3.0. 52 Beauty Tackling dark circles. 53 Men’s style The shoes to buy now. 58 Beta male: Robert Crampton Nonsense songs will get us through. FIVE BEST ALCOHOL-FREE TIPPLES ARIEL CAB SAV, £8.99 BROOKLYN BEER, £1 WILFRED’S APERITIF, £19.99 CALEÑO SPIRIT, £15 SCAVI & RAY PROSECCO, From Napa Valley. Called Special Effects because Winner of the best no-alcohol A zesty gin alternative made £8.99 Regularly tops de-alcoholised it tastes just like a regular spirit at the Great British Food from botanical extracts. Top Award-winning booze-free red taste tests (drydrinker.com) hoppy lager (waitrose.com) Awards (wilfredsdrinks.com) with tonic (sainsburys.co.uk) bubbles (wisebartender.co.uk) MONIQUE RIVALLAND CHOSEN BY EDITOR NICOLA JEAL DEPUTY EDITOR LOUISE FRANCE ART DIRECTOR CHRIS HITCHCOCK ASSOCIATE EDITOR SIMON HILLS ASSISTANT EDITOR TONY TURNBULL FEATURES EDITOR MONIQUE RIVALLAND CHIEF SUB-EDITOR AMANDA LINFOOT DEPUTY ART DIRECTOR JO PLENT DEPUTY CHIEF SUB-EDITOR CHRIS RILEY PICTURE EDITOR ANNA BASSETT ACTING PICTURE EDITORS LUCY DALEY, EITHNE STAUNTON CONTRIBUTING EDITOR BRIDGET HARRISON EDITORIAL ASSISTANT GEORGINA ROBERTS COVER: JUDE EDGINTON. PHOTOGRAPHED AT TAJ STORES, BRICK LANE, STORES, TAJ AT PHOTOGRAPHED JUDE EDGINTON. COVER: DOMINIC VALENTE GLOSSOP, JAMES E1. THIS PAGE: LONDON The Times Magazine 3 CAITLIN MORAN Why winter sucks (for women) Dark evenings. Sick kids. And don’t even start me on hat hair inter is the most Now let us consider the Work of Winter sexist season – it’s – for the coldest months bring us both the four months Christmas and viruses. With Christmas just in which it’s behind us, every woman has been freshly hardest to be a reminded of how the burden of labour divides woman. Although up, gender-wise. Research shows that women W it’s difficult to spend an average of 72 hours “doing Christmas believe that shit”, compared with men’s mere 29, which clusters of months involves things men genuinely find invisible, could foment animus towards human beings like “getting children to write thank-you cards” based on their genitals – How could they? and “cleaning the toilet on Christmas Eve, so Why would they? How is this part of nature’s it’s befitting the birth of Baby Jebus”. plan? – let me assure you I have applied the Virus-wise, meanwhile, even without the finest of science (a cup of tea and a think) immense f***ery of Covid-19, it has been a to this theory and found it still holds water. long-established fact that, in a family with two Let us consider the facts – and start with working parents, if a child vomits at 7pm on bosoms and feet. Of the two main genders, a Sunday night, it is almost certainly vomiting women tend to have much smaller feet and on Mummy’s working week – and not Daddy’s. also considerable mass in the bra area. In Ill children sneeze on feminism, cough in the the summer months, there are advantages to face of Mary Wollstonecraft and have terrible this arrangement – it allows us to wear strappy toilet problems on the suffragist movement in high heels and swimsuits, take part in beauty general. When you take a child’s temperature, competitions and, thus, marry millionaires. the thermometer should not read “101 degrees”, Men’s rights activists see this ability to “look but, “Mummy’s deadlines are buggered.” sexy and marry millionaires” as one of Hats. Can we talk about hats? Men, with women’s greatest unfair advantages – quite their short hair, need not fear a hat – because rightly, given that, in a global population men’s hair looks the same, at all times, no of 3.7 billion women, maybe over 6 of them matter what you do with it. Women’s hair, on successfully carry out this plan in any year. the other hand – with its length and volume In the winter, however, the onset of icy and predilection towards being “styled” – can pavements means our top-heavy, tiny-shoed essentially be killed by 20 minutes in a bobble bodies are far more liable to slip and topple hat. This may seem like a small thing, but over on, eg, the unexpectedly steep, luge-like obviously it isn’t, because, as Fleabag rightly alleyway by Harringay station, and smash pointed out, “Hair, Anthony, is everything.” It’s our knees up quite badly. During the winter difficult to maintain a cheerful disposition if months, you realise how useful a male partner your previously lovely, big, bouncy hair has is – when out walking in slippery conditions, been crushed into a rank, sebum-riddled mat. you can “take their arm” and essentially use The only real answer to Winter Hat Hair is them as a sentient walking frame, to stabilise to keep the hat on all day – never revealing your seasonally impractical combination of how awful the hair underneath is, but also, “trotters and massive wabs”. unavoidably, feeling a bit like a gnome. It is evidence of nature’s breathtaking If women can’t get out What else? Oh, millions of things. Standard cruelty that an otherwise bold, independent Comforting Winter Food makes women fatter single woman who has chosen to live with an of the house before than men – our metabolisms are slower. Four adorable dog will be at a double disadvantage out of five sufferers of seasonal affective during winter’s long misogyny. For not only 3 o’clock in January, disorder are female – perhaps because winter’s does she not have a man to stabilise her early sun-downs mean it’s more difficult for us perilous gait, but, additionally, as soon as we’re trapped inside to get out for a walk, or a run, because women the dog sees a squirrel, she will become “the can’t roam around at night. It’s dangerous! If unwilling screaming sledge” in an impromptu until Easter we can’t get out of the house before 3pm in lady-dog sledge team – quite possibly by the January, we’re trapped inside until Easter! unexpectedly steep, luge-like alleyway by As you can see, there’s no avoiding the Harringay station – and smash her knee up simple fact: winter hates women. As far as quite badly for the second time in a week. women are concerned, every winter is the ROBERT WILSON ROBERT So far, Winter 1, Women 0. winter of our discontent. n The Times Magazine 5 Spinal column Melanie Reid ‘The threat of the galloping virus has defeated me. I’ve never been so scared as I am now’ ravery is a concept edges of my sanity. As never I’ve always been before, my fear manifests itself suspicious of. I’m in physical weakness and pain. not sure it exists. I throw up in the night. I’m close Mainly, it’s what to tears much of the time. I B you do when there attempt to start two different isn’t really an antidepressants. They just make option to do me feel nauseous. anything else. Bravado, though, In as much as I’m able, that’s something else altogether; I pull up the drawbridge. Cancel a conceit, a performance. my cleaner (she’ll walk the dog Ever since my accident, instead). Cancel a much needed bravado has sustained me: a dental appointment. The broken pretence of bravery, determined molar – Dave’s toffees, lockdown positivity in the face of a comfort chomping – can wait a desperately shitty situation. From few months for the vaccine. It’s the word go, the only way I knew not an immediate threat to life. to survive was by playing “things Ditto my hospital appointments could be worse” every waking for complications in my throat. moment. Could be dead; could I grovel to the outpatients’ be brain-damaged; could be receptionist: I’m really sorry, unable to feed myself; could I’m scared to leave home. She’s be unemployable. lovely about it. I smiled the Pollyanna smile Because of course the and played the Pollyanna glad culmination of the nightmare, the game, which basically tells you to real horror at the end of the road, be grateful you got your fingers would be ending up in hospital crushed in a vice, because with Covid, stripped of all control. otherwise you’d never have Being a tetraplegic in a general known the bliss of having them ward under normal conditions freed.