Stephen Bush Boris David Hare on The end of certainty Johnson’s return surviving Covid Simon Kuper Why the new age of crises Sophie McBain on PhiI Whitaker on destroyed the confidence of economists how nature heals the testing fallacy

Enlightened thinking in dark times 1-7 May 2020/£4.75 The second wave How coronavirus could return with renewed force By Laura Spinney

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2020+18 The second wave.v4.indd 1 28/04/2020 16:46 20-17_ads.indd 7 20/04/2020 10:59:43 Established 1913

The question of national resilience

n his first Downing Street speech since recovering The dilemmas facing the government have rarely been from coronavirus, Boris Johnson declared: “Many peo- sharper. In this unenviable context, the best approach is can- ple will be looking at [Britain’s] apparent success.” The dour. The Scottish government, which published its provi- Prime Minister’s desire to project optimism is under- sional exit strategy on 23 April, provided a model response. standable, but if this is success one wonders what fail- It states that “our guiding values should be kindness, com- ure would look like. passion, openness and transparency”. IThe UK has recorded one of the highest death tolls from Since his near-death experience, Mr Johnson has sought to Covid-19 in the developed world (more than 21,000 people strike a more sincere and earnest tone. Having once called for have died in hospital and many thousands in care homes the introduction of NHS charges and described the service as and in the community) and one of the lowest testing rates a religion that is “letting down its adherents very, very badly”, (37,000 tests were carried out on 26 April, far short of the he now hails it as “unconquerable” and “powered by love”. government’s pledge of 100,000 a day). Health workers have Belated homilies to the NHS are no substitute for a nation- been imperilled by a chronic lack of protective equipment (82 al strategy, however. The NHS employees and 16 social care staff have died). These fail- Prime Minister was wise on ures should not be forgotten or excused. 27 April to dismiss calls for a The lockdown, by contrast, has proved a qualified success. swift end to the lockdown. It has reduced the number of new infections and has prevent- As the science journalist and ed the NHS from being overwhelmed. Against some expec- author Laura Spinney writes tations, support for this approach has endured across all voter in this week’s cover story on groups; social distancing has become an act of solidarity. page 24, the risk of a “second The policy, however, is not without negative consequences. wave” of infections is obvi- Children have been unable to attend school (research by the ous. But as the lockdown Sutton Trust found that two-thirds of pupils have not partici- persists, Mr Johnson must pated in online learning). Domestic abuse killings have risen explain how his govern- and the number of calls to the Refuge helpline has increased ment intends to mitigate its by 49 per cent. As reported by Anoosh Chakelian and Michael worst consequences. Rather Goodier on NewStatesman.com, many people have failed to than being uncritically applauded, or unthinkingly traduced, seek medical help for heart attacks, strokes or cancer symp- his administration should be relentlessly scrutinised. toms, creating the conditions for a future public health crisis. Even as they confront Covid-19, Britain and the world The economic costs of the lockdown will also become in- must prepare for the threat of future pandemics. As Robert creasingly apparent. The Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, was swift Skidelsky, JM Keynes’s pre-eminent biographer, writes on to intervene, offering to pay 80 per cent of the wages of fur- page 32, the West should end its “dogmatic reliance on global loughed workers (up to a maximum of £2,500 a month). But supply chains” as nation states seek to become more self- the Office for Budget Responsibility has estimated that un- reliant. Mr Johnson’s utopian vision of a freewheeling employment could rise to 3.4 million should full restrictions “global Britain” is of little use when the imperative is to continue for three months. As the 1980s – when unemploy- increase national resilience. ment exceeded three million – demonstrated, the long-term The shared experience of the pandemic is shifting our pri- cost of joblessness to individuals and the state is huge. No orities and altering our perspective. The United Kingdom will one should assume that a “V-shaped recovery”, as opposed emerge from this crisis a changed country – it is within the

DAVID PARKINSDAVID to a prolonged period of stagnation, will follow. government’s power to ensure that it is also a better one. l

1-7 MAY 2020 | NEW STATESMAN | 3

2020+18 003 Leader.indd 3 28/04/2020 20:28:37 Editor-in-chief Contents Jason Cowley Free thinking since 1913 Deputy Editor Tom Gatti International Editor Jeremy Cliffe Managing Editor Will Dunn Political Editor Stephen Bush US Editor Emily Tamkin Creative Editor Gerry Brakus Associate Editor Michael Prodger Senior Online Editor George Eaton Features Editor Kate Mossman Culture Editor Anna Leszkiewicz Special Projects Editor Alona Ferber Rationed: Robert Skidelsky on the Noah’s Ark problem 32 Critical thinker: Leo Robson interviews John Carey 34 Britain Editor Anoosh Chakelian Commissioning Editor Gavin Jacobson Up Front Observations The Critics: Books Culture Assistant Ellen Peirson-Hagger 3 Leader 12 In the Picture 44 Sophie McBain compares Special Correspondents 10 Correspondence 13 Comment: Troy Vettese three books about the link Harry Lambert Sophie McBain examines what the collapse in between the natural world Political Correspondents the price of oil really means and mental health Patrick Maguire Columns 14 Commons Confidential: Kevin 46 David Reynolds on Daniel W Ailbhe Rea Maguire gives the pick of the best Drezner’s The Toddler-in-Chief, Head of Production 7 Jason Cowley on mortality gossip from Westminster a portrait of Trump as a man Peter Williams and the philosopher Bryan Magee 16 Encounter: Sophie McBain driven by fear of boredom Chief Sub-Editor 9 Phil Whitaker on why talks to the religious historian 49 The NS Poem Pippa Bailey Senior Sub-Editor Covid-19 tests are of little use Kate Bowler about suffering “My Grandfather’s Measure” Indra Warnes without contact tracing 17 First Thoughts: Peter Wilby by Kieron Winn Designer 19 David Hare writes this on Zoom-hacking and the new 50 Simon Kuper on Radical Emily Black week’s Diary drive-through age Uncertainty, John Kay and Social Media Editor 21 Stephen Bush on Boris 18 Trends: Paul Warwicker Mervyn King’s examination of Eleanor Peake Johnson’s return to No 10 looks at the history of what to do when economics Digital Culture Writer 23 Jeremy Cliffe on why the the ventilator can’t be trusted Sarah Manavis Editorial Assistant pandemic is unlikely to lead to Emily Bootle the collapse of the EU 29 Emily Tamkin on the Articles Contributing Writers Republicans still standing by John Bew Donald Trump 24 Laura Spinney on coronavirus Chris Deerin 39 Megan Nolan on how, after and the threat of resurgence Matthew Engel weeks without touch, her body 30 David Ottewell on the Martin Fletcher John Gray feels like a stranger pandemic in numbers Shiraz Maher 42 Ian Leslie on why politicians 32 Robert Skidelsky on what the Paul Mason should not simply accept the West can learn from Noah’s Ark Sophie McBain advice of experts 34 Leo Robson interviews the Adrian Pabst distinguished critic John Carey David Reynolds 40 Andrew Hussey reports from Leo Robson Paris on unrest in the suburbs Brendan Simms Ed Smith Amelia Tait

Johanna Thomas-Corr New Statesman Vol 149, No 5518 ISSN Please note that all submissions to the letters page, our competitions and reader offers are accepted solely subject to our terms and conditions: details available on Erica Wagner 1364-7431 USPS 382260 request or on our website. Subscription Rates: (institutional rates in brackets): UK £120, Airmail Europe: €150; Rest of world Airmail: USA $192. Subscribers paying Rowan Williams by direct debit will, after any initial offer, be debited at the standard rate. Syndication/Permissions/Archive: Email: [email protected]. Printed by Walstead Peterborough Ltd, tel: +44 (0)1733 555 567 . Distribution by Marketforce. New Statesman (ISSN 1364-7431) is published weekly by New Statesman Ltd, 12-13 Essex Street, London WC2R 3AA, UK. Registered as a newspaper in the UK and USA

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2020+18 004 Contents USE THIS VERSION.indd 4 28/04/2020 20:24:34 Cover art direction Erica Weathers

Cover image David Parkins

Mind maps: Sophie McBain on why we need the wild 44 Eating out: Felicity Cloake on the joy of armchair travel 57

The Critics: Arts Back Pages What’s happening on Subscribe + newstatesman.com 52 Michael Prodger on the 57 Food Felicity Cloake Save simple, striking landscapes of 58 Down and Out How the UK’s care homes were Christen Købke Nicholas Lezard abandoned to coronavirus 50% 54 Film: Ryan Gilbey praises 59 Under the Influence Anoosh Chakelian on how The Assistant, a subtly powerful Sarah Manavis workers were placed in Subscribe to the #MeToo drama 60 School’s Out Alice O’Keeffe unacceptable danger New Statesman for 55 Television: Rachel Cooke 61 Crossword, Subscriber of just £4.75 finds a documentary about the Week and NS Word Games Why the Scottish government £2.31 a week. Matisse a breath of fresh air 62 The NS Q&A Diana Evans is an example to others Turn to page 63 55 Radio: Antonia Quirke on Nicola Sturgeon’s candour on for more about a dull new broadcasting trend: the lockdown is a landmark the offer, or go to: experts and comedians Artwork moment, writes Chris Deerin newstatesman.com/ subscribe Cartoons, photographs and The weakest cabinet Just £120 for a one-year print illustrations by Alex Brenchley, in living memory subscription – even cheaper for students! Chicane, Ellie Foreman-Peck, Martin Fletcher on how Boris Toby Glanville, Grizelda, Johnson’s team were exposed Subscription inquiries: Kristian Hammerstad, Rebecca digital.subscriptions@ Hendin, Jonathan McHugh, Ian The NS Podcast newstatesman.co.uk 0808 284 9422 “This is the longest McGowan, Martin O’Neil, David I have gone without Parkins and Matt Percival Each week, Stephen touch in my life” Bush and Anoosh Graphics by Dan Murrell Chakelian discuss Megan Nolan, page 39 the week in Westminster and beyond, and (try to) answer listeners’ questions about politics. Digital subscribers get an early, ad-free version of Head of Marketing each episode. Charlotte Mullock newstatesman.com/podcast 0808 284 9422 Marketing Manager Alfred Jahn

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2020+18 004 Contents USE THIS VERSION.indd 5 28/04/2020 20:26:54 HEALTHY BUILDINGS How Indoor Spaces Drive Performance and Productivity

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_ads.indd 3 14/04/2020 14:16:49 Jason Cowley Editor’s Note Bryan Magee and the candle of mortality, and what the BBC News at Ten is getting wrong

n recent days, as the death toll from is all around us now. The coronavirus pan- “nowness”, as McCrum would wish, is that Covid-19 has continued to rise remorse- demic has forced us not only to socially dis- we live with an acute sense of time pass- Ilessly, I’ve been thinking again about the tance from one another, and into lockdown, ing. The former Arsenal manager Arsène philosopher Bryan Magee, whom regular but also into a greater consideration of what Wenger put it well when he said, in an readers will recall I profiled in April 2018 psychologists call mortality salience. interview with L’Equipe in 2016: “The only after I visited him at a nursing home in In his book, Every Third Thought (2017), possible moment of happiness is the pre- Oxford. Magee had been seriously ill and Robert McCrum, who aged 42 suffered sent. The past gives you regrets. And the could not walk but he remained extraordi- a near-fatal stroke, writes with elegance future uncertainties.” narily lucid. That afternoon I found it fasci- and candour about the question of mortal- Every day my calendar pings me remind- nating to talk to him about his life and work ity salience. He is not a religious believer ers of what I might have been doing, of a as an author, broadcaster, politician and and, at the time of writing of the book, hav- shadow life I could have been leading, in populariser of philosophy (we had met once ing turned 60, he was feeling even more this world, at this time, in different circum- before at his London flat in 1997). physically vulnerable after one day he fell stance. Last week, for instance, I received Magee was a self-described agnostic and in the street and ended up in hospital. Mc- reminders of the Spurs-Arsenal north Lon- remained open to the possibility that death Crum is also tormented by regrets: the don derby for which I had tickets, a New was not the absolute end. “I do genuinely failure of his marriage, career frustrations, Statesman lunch with Julia Gillard in our believe the possibility that death might be missed opportunities. boardroom, and a Cambridge Literary Festi- total extinction,” he told me. “We may be “To me, the mystery of death and dying is val event to promote our book, Statesman- obliterated, annihilated, but it’s only a pos- only equalled by the mystery of life and liv- ship: The Best of the New Statesman. None sibility; something else might be the case, ing,” he writes. “Consoling narratives must of them happened. But they were scheduled and I generally believe that too.” be patched together from transient frag- to have happened – and so these remind- Throughout his life, even as a child, ments of experience. So why not celebrate ers, as I deleted them from my calendar and Magee had been tormented by the mystery ‘nowness’ and live in the present? Discover crossed them out in my pocket diary, felt of mortality, on occasion driven, as he put the joy of wisdom and experience. Cherish like signals from a lost future. it to me at our first meeting, “to the edge of your family. Celebrate the human drama in despair” by unanswerable existential ques- all its magical variety. In truth, there is no **** tions. “He’ll be remembered for many other sensible narrative available. Unless How should the BBC report the corona- things but, for me, nobody wrote more you believe in an afterlife – which I don’t – virus crisis? There has been much recent hauntingly about mortality,” the writer and this must be the only way forward.” criticism of what the commentator David columnist Matthew Syed said when Magee McCrum is interested in what in a dif- Goodhart calls the BBC’s “infantilisation died in July last year. ferent context the American writer David of the public discourse”. Simon Jenkins The closing paragraph of Magee’s book Brooks calls “post-traumatic growth”. Suf- agreed. “The BBC’s News at Ten has become Ultimate Questions (2017), his final philo- fering can be redemptive – in McCrum’s unwatchable for its vox pops of random sophical statement, is perhaps his most and Magee’s cases it was – but no one surely anguish, merely boosting the government’s haunting – because in it he grapples with willingly seeks to suffer in order to grow message: obey or die,” he writes. The BBC how he might approach the end of his life. spiritually. We should all wish that this News is in trouble, I think. Its viewing fig- “I can only hope that,” he writes, “when it pandemic had not happened. But the fun- ures are up but its quality is highly variable, is my turn, my curiosity will overcome my damental question now is this: what is the at times even risible. fear – though I may then be in the position virus and its effects teaching us about how The foreign coverage is particularly poor. of a man whose candle goes out and plunges we were living collectively and individually At the end of April there was rioting in the him into pitch darkness at the very instant before coronavirus and how we might live Parisian banlieues (see Andrew Hussey’s when he thought he was about to find what differently after it? What has been lost but report on page 40), but I saw no BBC cov- he was looking for.” also what might be gained? Will societies erage of it. The News at Ten should stop experience post-traumatic growth, as hap- soft-soaping the public, and concentrate **** pened after the Second World War, or re- less on sentimental human interest stories Humans do not like to think about death vert to the more destructive ways of before? and more on serious analysis and tough- – and certainly not as all-consumingly as minded reporting of the kind long-time Bryan Magee did – because it can lead to feel- **** medical correspondent Fergus Walsh does

IAN McGOWAN ings of hopelessness and terror. But death One of the challenges of celebrating so well. l

1-7 MAY 2020 | NEW STATESMAN | 7

2020+18 007 Editor's Note.indd 7 28/04/2020 20:05:12 20-17_ads.indd 9 21/04/2020 15:07:50 Dr Phil Whitaker Health Matters Without an army of contact tracers, Matt Hancock’s 100,000 daily virus tests will be useless

harlie was a definite Covid-19 case. He “Can you fix me up with one?” he asked. proven to have Covid-19. Community hadn’t had a test: his illness developed “What do you think it’s going to do?” testing will still miss at least 30 per cent of Cten days before community testing “Well, if it’s negative, it means I can get cases, but the overall effect of TTI in the became available in our area. But his pat- back to work.” population at large would be a substantial tern of symptoms was identical to countless I reminded him that simply getting interruption to the chains of transmission. patients who have consulted me in the past dressed to come to surgery had wiped him Charlie had been driven to surgery by his few weeks. The diagnosis was not in doubt. out, and suggested that a return to his social wife, Diane. After I had taken his blood, Being a 58-year-old obese diabetic with care role was still some way off. But his faith Diane said she was sure she’d had the same high blood pressure he was also at elevated in the power of testing was indicative of our illness in early February – her symptoms risk, so I sent him to a nearby “hot hub” current national confusion. had been identical to those that Charlie had when he first contacted me, on the fourth The testing that the Health Secretary now, and it had taken her seven weeks to day of his illness. The hot hubs were com- Matt Hancock is driving towards – 100,000 fully recover. This would have been weeks missioned with impressive rapidity just per day by the end of April – is for the pres- before community transmission was first three weeks ago, in response to modelling ence of coronavirus. It seeks to pick up trac- confirmed in the UK, and fits with model- that suggested we were going to be overrun es of viral RNA on swab samples from the ling from Oxford University that suggested during the Easter weekend. I’ve volunteered upper airways. The problem is, it performs the virus may have been in circulation for a for several shifts at my local one, located month before the first reported death. in a self-contained annexe at a neighbour- Diane may have had something like flu, ing surgery. It’s been refloored with wash- Charlie’s faith in testing of course. The only way to tell would be to able vinyl throughout; personal protective was indicative of our perform a different sort of test, analysing a equipment (PPE) is in good supply; and an blood sample for antibodies against coro- infection control practitioner cleans every national confusion navirus, which would confirm that she had consulting room between patients. At the previously fought off the disease. So-called end of each day, specialist contractors fu- very poorly. The best estimates are that it serological testing is the holy grail of pan- migate the entire facility with an anti-viral will correctly identify at most 70 per cent demic management. It is the only way we’re “fog” that settles on every surface. of cases, and even that is probably generous going to get any idea how many actual cases Fortunately, despite feeling tight-chested – hospital colleagues speak of barn-door (including asymptomatic, mild, and mod- and profoundly fatigued, Charlie’s oxygen Covid-19 patients returning multiple nega- erate) have so far occurred – and hence how saturations proved good at the hub. His tive results, only for viral RNA to be detect- close we might be to having sufficient pop- blood pressure was, however, shockingly ed on the fourth attempt. ulation resistance (the infamous “herd im- high, necessitating swift adjustment to A negative result is essentially worth- munity”) to protect against a second wave. his medication, which in turn required a less, and certainly shouldn’t be used to send Laboratory antibody tests have been de- blood test a week later to check his kidneys frontline workers back to the fray. If some- ployed in small-scale studies in the Neth- weren’t deteriorating. Blood tests are one of one has the clinical picture of Covid-19 then erlands and the US, and the UK is currently the few things the hot hubs aren’t set up to they need to be out of circulation whatever launching its own 1,000-household ver- perform. This was going to be down to me. their test result. Any value in RNA testing sion. The Dutch study suggested a depress- To keep our surgery site “cold”, Charlie lies purely in when it returns a positive. ingly low rate of herd immunity; those in remained in the quarantine bay in our car This should trigger exhaustive identifica- the US returned higher results, but their de- park. It must have made a curious sight, a tion and quarantine of recent close contacts sign probably led to overestimation. Cheap, PPE-clad medic crouched beside Charlie’s – the test, trace and isolate (TTI) approach quick, finger-prick kits would be of enor- passenger door drawing blood from his out- that has thus far controlled infection rates in mous value. But here, too, low true detec- stretched arm. Afterwards, I checked that South Korea, Germany and Singapore. tion rates are a significant problem. his oxygen levels remained fine. This was The UK was doing TTI in its initial “con- The only current option to get us out of now day 11, and although he still felt abso- tainment” phase, but abandoned the effort lockdown is a resumption of TTI. And that lutely dreadful, he’d made it past the danger once sustained community transmission will depend on the rapid recruitment and zone for serious deterioration. occurred. Hancock’s 100,000 tests a day training, from a standing start, of an army Charlie had also heard that commu- will be pointless unless we have the man- of contact tracers. Once again, the UK has nity testing for key workers had just been power and organisational structures to been found firmly on the back foot in its l IAN McGOWAN launched at a site about an hour’s drive away. do the necessary contact tracing for those response to Covid-19.

1-7 MAY 2020 | NEW STATESMAN | 9

2020+18 009 Phil Whitaker.indd 9 28/04/2020 20:14:58 Correspondence [email protected]

The 18th century’s greatest LETTER OF THE WEEK WHO’s to blame? poet, Alexander Pope, vividly I was disappointed to read dramatises a life narrative Lawrence Freedman’s article Consult the vulnerable plagued by a “long disease”. “The WHO’s failure on China Bob Ferguson been held with vulnerable Pope is a “self-creating” subject cost us dear” (Observations, (Correspondence, 24 April) patients in advance of the on his own account and in 24 April), which misrepresents raises an important issue, Covid-19 pandemic. “Windsor Forest” he is as the facts. Contrary to which is that decisions over The patients of mine who nostalgic about the influence of Freedman’s assertion, the resuscitation status and how did not already have advance place on poetic growth as any World Health Organisation aggressively to pursue active care plans in place have later poet. (WHO) did mention versus palliative treatment appreciated the opportunity At the other end of the possible human-to-human should always be made on to have these discussions scale, there is the story of transmission at a press briefing an individual rather than a with me, and to express their the self in “The Bastard”, on 14 January (please see Lancet blanket basis, and should wishes. As Bob Ferguson the famous autobiographical editor Richard Horton’s article involve discussion with points out, if one ends up protest poem by Pope’s of 25 April 2020). each patient. trying to make these difficult friend Richard Savage, the Professor Freedman implies There is, however, no judgements once a patient has dodgy companion of Samuel that the delays here in the US contradiction between become critically unwell, one Johnson’s early London and in the UK in preparing for this ethical approach and a has left it too late. days. The poem vents the pandemic are not really the systematic process to ensure Dr Phil Whitaker Savage’s resentment as the fault of these governments, these conversations have Norton St Philip, Somerset unacknowledged son of an but of the WHO. However, adulterous union, a conviction the severity of the situation he retained to his dying day. was already widely known worked against us in the recent perhaps, as he implies, they Bate devotes a large proportion by the end of January. While past will not be allowed to get may not exist at some future of his study to the Wordsworth the WHO certainly made away with it. point (Correspondence, of the 18th century. A more mistakes, the NS should not Steven Bligh 24 April). cautious account of how “The be part of this attempt to Plymouth However, nationalism was Prelude” is a “quite new” work lessen the blame on the US a political force long before in 1806 must look beyond and UK governments for their the 19th century: in England poetical autobiography for a unforgivable prevarications. Happy clappy it was strongly evident in mode of which no one at the Hans Weenink I agree with Jason Cowley’s Alfred the Great’s campaigns time had heard. Washington, DC description of the positive and propaganda, and those of Philip Smallwood aspects of the “magical his pre-Norman successors. Bristol mutuality” of applauding NHS Wars among the British Labour’s civil war and other frontline workers nations in the 1200s, for Peter Wilby mentions the (Editor’s Note, 3 April), but I example, were imbued with A plague of quacks leaked Labour Party report on wonder how many working in nationalism, although not Nicholas Lezard regrets losing anti-Semitism and expresses the sector feel supported. We caused by it. Matthew Paris, a his copy of Camus’ La Peste regret that any internal discord have had ten years of austerity well-connected contemporary because of its contemporary over this might detract from during which the NHS has chronicler, was extremely resonances (Down and Out, the fight against the Tories been negatively affected: there hostile to Frenchmen. 20 March). I’m just coming to (First Thoughts, 24 April). But are 40,000 nursing vacancies, The 19th century was the the end of Defoe’s A Journal the problem is that the report there has been an 8 per cent peak of nationalism, but it of the Plague Year and can has alleged that senior staff loss in wages, and hospitals was a political force long recommend it for many at Labour HQ, their salaries are working beyond 85 per before then. such resonances, despite the funded by members working cent capacity (95 per cent in James Simister nearly three centuries since its hard for a Labour victory, London). Do we, the public, Brighton publication in 1722. used their positions to feel good about ourselves by Defoe’s description of undermine us electorally for this public demonstration the fake news of 1665 – for dubious factional aims. That because participating does not Pope’s prelude example, how “a set of thieves thousands of members are really cost us anything? In her exuberant review and pickpockets not only going to be angry about this Michael Moore of Jonathan Bate’s Radical robbed and cheated the poor is inevitable. Loughton, Essex Wordsworth (The Critics, 24 people of their money, but If Keir Starmer wants a April), Kathleen Jamie writes of poisoned their bodies with united party in which we Wordsworth’s “The Prelude” odious and fatal preparations” all move together against Grand national that in 1806 it was “unheard – put me in mind of a certain the Tories, he needs to act Rowan Williams is right that of for a poet to explore his head of state. to restore the members’ nationality and nation states own self-development”. Tim Rose confidence that those who have have not always existed; This is an overstatement. Brighton and Hove

10 | NEW STATESMAN | 1-7 MAY 2020

2020+18 010 Letters.indd 10 28/04/2020 19:42:40 Rée’s account of Harry Rée’s Go figure Sophie’s voice extraordinary wartime Wear champions One of the most depressing Sophie McBain’s powerful experiences. I worked alongside In his final column of the aspects of this crisis has been article (“Criminal injustice”, Harry for some years at the season (The Fan, 3 April), the the irresponsible use of figures, 3 April) has restored my faith in University of York, where he wonderful Hunter Davies almost invariably cited out of nuanced reporting: accessible, was professor of education. mused that the football clubs context and couched in as insightful and factual, without In all that time he never that won the first division title emotive terms as possible. having an agenda. More, please mentioned the war, even on and FA Cup in the year of his The BBC and Sky News have – of Sophie McBain and this long car journeys together. birth, 1936, were still the top been especially culpable. type of reportage. Harry was kind, confident, teams of today. I was therefore Tim Kendall loyal and charismatic; never Were that only true. It seems disappointed to see your Brighton and Hove distant or superior. He shared peevishly pedantic in the own Leader (24 April) kick the pleasures of life and his current climate to point it out, off with another pointlessly philosophy with modesty and but the first division champions unsubstantiated and emotive Politics of division enthusiasm. A great man. in 1935-36 were Sunderland statement that Britain has In his review of David Daniel Mcdowell not Manchester City, who won one of “the highest mortality Lammy’s book Tribes, Stephen Ludlow, Shropshire in 1936-37. Rather than being rates from Covid-19 in the Bush notes the way that a top team, Sunderland have developed world”. What you identity politics has affected been in the third tier of English mean is the number of dead, politics (The Critics, 27 March). Only humanist football for two years and have not rate. Without knowing Identity politics highlights Joan Bakewell’s Diary (24 not been champions since the how many people have been the things that divide groups April) highlights the intensely year of Mr Davies’ birth. infected as a proportion of rather than what unites them. damaging effect of Covid-19 on Simon Turnbull, the overall population the Divisions based on identity our prisons, but also where Newcastle upon Tyne rate will elude us, as will distract from issues such as relief can be found. With a huge the ability to make any poverty, lack of influence and reduction in activities, National comparative judgement. health. If minorities spoke with Prison Radio is now the lifeline A Loughton lad If we are not to allow this a unified voice they would be a into prisoners’ cells. Audio clips I relished the touch of parlous situation to lead us powerful force for change. of poetry can truly provide Housman at the end of Peter into far more dangerous Richard Dargan comfort. The Humanist Group Wilby’s lament on the potential consequences, which include Old Coulsdon, Surrey has alleviated the loneliness felt state of cricket this season (First untreated other medical by those in prison, making not Thoughts, 3 April). Apt for conditions, mental breakdown, only their lives more bearable these strange times. domestic violence and the Local hero but also those of the amazing Alister Browne brutal impact of poverty, then Thank you for William prison staff. Palmerston North, New Zealand we need to keep level heads. Boyd’s great review of A Roma Hooper Guy de la Bédoyère Schoolmaster’s War (The Chair and Founder, l We reserve the right Grantham, Lincolnshire Critics, 3 April), Jonathan Prison Radio Association to edit letters.

SUSPENDED ANIMATION BY REBECCA HENDIN

1-7 MAY 2020 | NEW STATESMAN | 11

2020+18 010 Letters.indd 11 28/04/2020 19:43:35 IDEAS | PROVOCATIONS | TRENDS | PEOPLE Observations JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

IN THE PICTURE are laid out in the £1,000 for the Great Hall of Bedford NHS by walking More than 125,000 School. Moore, 100 laps of his cards addressed to whose birthday was 25-metre garden, Captain Tom Moore on 30 April, initially but went on to raise for his 100th birthday set out to raise more than £27m.

12 | NEW STATESMAN | 1-7 MAY 2020

2020+18 012 Obs lead oil.indd 12 28/04/2020 19:20:33 Commons Confidential Kevin Maguire offers his pick of the week’s best gossip from Westminster Encounter Sophie McBain talks to the religious historian Kate Bowler about suffering First Thoughts Peter Wilby on Boris Johnson vs Jacinda Ardern, skywriting and an FT furore Trends Paul Warwicker on how the ventilator became a life-saver

COMMENT How oil drowned itself What the barrel price collapse means By Troy Vettese

s the concept of “peak oil” or if there is a possibility of dead? Maybe, but not for them being transcended by a Ilong. What is happening renewable energy system. now already occurred 25 years Long before “greenwashing” ago. We are living through a existed to burnish zombie oil market, a return environmental credentials, of the oil era circa 1995, the capitalism ran on renewable last time demand was only energy: the first factory, 70 million barrels per day Richard Arkwright’s cotton- (bpd). Yet, unless the Covid-19 spinning mill in the Derbyshire depression is followed by Dales, used the River Derwent a rigorous transition to for its power. Yet investments renewable energy, peak oil in isolated valleys proved will return for a second time vulnerable to Luddite rage. In alongside its handmaiden, the the late 19th century, working- non-conventional oil industry. class movements wrested Much of the confusion over control of the coal-based “peak oil” stems from the system by shutting down the mistaken belief that the concept railways from mines to cities. refers to scarcity. Rather, Petroleum systems, which peak oil is the moment when moved by pipeline and tanker, conventional oil production needed fewer workers, thus can no longer be increased, creating an energy regime regardless of price. There conducive to capital. In the remain plenty of hydrocarbons, Global North, oil was essential but the world oil market has for crushing working-class changed over the past decades power – for example during the as non-conventionals’ share has 1984-85 miners’ strike when grown. They take novel hybrid dual oil-coal power plants industrial forms: bitumen strip- proved crucial to keeping mines, “steam-assisted gravity Britain’s lights on. drainage’’, and kilometre-long The shift to non- horizontal drilling to inject conventional oil production cocktails of water, sand and was unusual because it was unsavoury chemicals (fracking). not spurred by labour unrest, Non-conventional but by the inability of the technologies have opened up previous energy system to vast new reserves in areas far keep up with demand. The removed from the industry’s first tar sands mine opened in Middle Eastern heartland, but 1967, but non-conventional they are dirty, expensive and, production only took off at the as the recent crash shows, turn of the millennium. Total unstable. At the moment it is non-conventional production unclear whether the advance rose from 8 per cent of global of non-conventionals has been output in 2000 to 19 per cent in

merely temporarily halted 2019 – some 19 million bpd. t

1-7 MAY 2020 | NEW STATESMAN | 13

2020+18 012 Obs lead oil.indd 13 28/04/2020 19:20:34 OBSERVATIONS

t Much of this was produced Arabia, need only $13 a barrel, COMMONS CONFIDENTIAL in North America, with US even exceptionally cheap new frackers pumping 9 million non-conventional production bpd and the Canadian tar sands in the Permian Basin needs Grayling’s grey matter industry 3 million bpd. prices in the mid-$30s to break Kevin Maguire We may come to see even, while the rate at the tar conventionals as relatively sands is the mid-$40s. Hiding his intellect from MI5 A frontline job offer from green compared to the In 2019 the US Department and MI6, Chris “Failing” Keir Starmer and coronavirus destruction caused by fracking of Energy praised the fracking Grayling’s appointment as have combined to delay the and tar sands extraction. Non- industry for producing chairman of parliament’s latest project of South Wales conventionals produce more “molecules of freedom”, but intelligence and security Valleys renaissance man greenhouse gases, and their what form does this freedom committee would be the Nick Thomas-Symonds. chemical properties aggravate take? A volatile industry that most inappropriate posting The Oxford don, barrister, spills. In a region as dry as leaves devastation in its wake? since Caligula considered historian, author, Torfaen Texas’ Permian Basin, nearly Where the price has collapsed making his horse a consul. MP and now shadow home 20 Olympic-size swimming three times in the last dozen The coronavirus emergency secretary has postponed his pools of water are used per years? The compact that delayed Boris Johnson’s plot new biography of Harold well – and nearly 5,000 wells society has made with non- to reward his fellow Brexiteer Wilson for a year. Time isn’t are drilled every year. Water conventional capital – we give with the sensitive £16,000 the only enemy of the comp used during non-conventional them the Earth, and they give post, the Prime Minister boy with two well-received production is so polluted that twisting Tory arms to vote books on Attlee and Bevan it has to be removed from the for someone born on 1 April. on his shelf. Covid-19 has hydrosphere. The First Nations Conventional oil The mystery of why the locked down archives. in Alberta, home to Canada’s is green compared PM was so determined to tar sands industry, have risk a backlash by rewarding Starmer’s loyalty to old reported an increase in rare to fracking the man behind a no-deal friends prompted a snout to cancers. It would cost C$130bn £50m ferry fiasco was recall his surprise that the just to clean up the tailings us abundance – has not fared resolved by a Tory peer. That then shadow Brexit secretary ponds, which store material well. It is now clear that non- both backed Brexit is part of found time during the melée leftover from extraction, but conventionals give us neither the answer, obviously. The over Britain leaving Europe to firms have paid only C$1.6bn abundance nor security nor other is that Johnson attend the funeral of a into the provincial remediation freedom. They should be left wants Grayling school chum. The fund. Given that the non- to wither, with the state “taken care of” body of the BBC conventional industry often collecting assets to pay off after he struggled producer Paul struggles to make a profit, it will the industry’s gargantuan to land lucrative Vickers, 54, was never reconcile “the economy” environmental liabilities. outside interests – carried by old- with “the environment”. With the demise of the no firm risked the fashioned horse What’s more, non- non-conventional system we reputation damage and carriage to conventionals need fuel in can begin to imagine the end of having him on Clandon Wood order to extract fuel, which of the fossil fuel ancien régime. its letterhead. Johnny nature reserve in lowers their energy return on For the foreseeable future English, never mind Surrey, where it was investment (EROI). The EROI demand for oil will remain low, James Bond, could run rings given a natural burial. If trust for the tar sands industry is a giving time vastly to expand around Grayling. is earned, respect is given, miserable 4:1, far lower than the renewable energy systems. The and loyalty is demonstrated, 100:1 achieved by mid-century accompanying fiscal stimulus Keeping his head down over then the startled mourner US conventional oil producers. will help revive a moribund the coronavirus backlash reckons Labour’s leader This all adds up to an expensive, economy and ensure there will against China is David demonstrated the third of environmentally destructive be enough green energy once Cameron. The former PM set those in a field. and volatile energy system. demand picks up. First the up a $1bn UK-China Fund Much of the news has non-conventional transition promoting healthcare and No vacancy officially exists focused on how the price for will be suspended, and then the technology joint ventures and but a fresh name touted May’s oil futures collapsed conventional one too. However, enjoyed a flourishing Beijing as the next Labour general into negative numbers for before capitalism can return to bromance wih President Xi secretary is that of Simon the first time, but this was a its renewable roots, a rupture Jinping, sealed with a pint Fletcher, chief of staff to Ken North American phenomenon. will be necessary. The future of Greene King IPA in the Livingstone in City Hall and The world’s oil price, the post-carbon society cannot Plough pub in Cadsden near briefly to Jeremy Corbyn in “Brent” index set by North Sea promise endless abundance, but Chequers. Perhaps we haven’t opposition, plus, crucially, producers (rather than the West it could offer a freedom that will heard Dodgy Dave speaking a senior figure in Starmer’s Texas Intermediate – the US never be found in the Permian up for his Chinese chums campaign team. Pip-pip. l standard measure), remained Basin or in tar sands. l because he can’t get a signal on the right side of zero, Troy Vettese is an environmental after covidiots destroyed Kevin Maguire is the hovering near $20 a barrel. historian at Harvard’s mobile masts over Huawei’s associate editor(politics) While the lowest cost Weatherhead Center for 5G involvement. of the Daily Mirror producers, such as Saudi International Affairs

14 | NEW STATESMAN | 1-7 MAY 2020

2020+18 012 Obs lead oil.indd 14 28/04/2020 19:20:36 CORONAVIRUS CRISIS APPEAL

DR CHIARA LEPORA Our main job is to support the medical staff in the hospitals. We’re doing everything we IS MSF’S PROJECT can to keep the doctors and nurses healthy WHAT IS MSF DOING? COORDINATOR IN LODI, because, if they fall ill, there will be nobody Our medical teams are responding to the pandemic NORTHERN ITALY left to treat patients. We have a lot of experience on multiple fronts. In many of the countries where with infection prevention and control from we work in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, MSF our work in epidemics around the world. We’re teams are working with local health authorities to helping to create pathways and processes within prepare for the impact of COVID-19. the hospitals to ensure staff are protected from In Europe, MSF is providing support to health infection and people who aren’t infected don’t authorities in Italy, Spain, France, Belgium contract the virus. and Switzerland. Even during this crisis, we are determined to keep our regular medical programmes WORKING IN THE FACE OF DEATH running for the tens of thousands of patients we support in conflict zones, refugee camps and in We’re all on a steep learning curve with this disease areas with less developed health systems. and everybody here is working beyond their limits. It’s been incredible to see people working around the clock, trying to adapt, trying to learn, trying THANK YOU to collaborate to save as many lives as possible, We can’t do it without you. Please donate now MSF doctor Bastien Mollo treats vulnerable people at a makeshift all while working in the face of so much death. to help us respond to the coronavirus crisis. clinic in Paris. Photograph © Agnes Varraine-Leca/MSF There’s a small bakery near the entrance of Lodi can pay for protective plastic goggles hospital and yesterday I got talking to the baker £28 The new coronavirus disease, COVID-19, for four doctors there. She opens from five o’clock each morning has spread to more than 200 countries around so she can give a coffee and croissant to the £58 can pay for sterile gloves for 30 medics the world. MSF medical teams are assisting medical staff coming off the night shift. She told in a number of the affected areas. In Italy, can pay for five protective suits me that a lot of the doctors and nurses get their £110 we are supporting three hospitals at the first to keep health staff safe coffee and then go and sit in a corner and start epicentre of the outbreak, with teams working could provide a hand-held ultrasound used crying. They cry there so they can get it out of on infection prevention and control, remote £864 for detecting underlying health issues their system before they go home and care for patient care and outreach. their families, so they don’t show how hard it is. “We have a team of around 25 people working Outside the hospitals, MSF teams are doing here in the Lombardy region. The health system outreach work in communities and working here is very advanced, but the spread of the DONATE NOW with family doctors to treat people in their virus has outpaced all attempts to deal with the homes and in nursing homes. CALL 0800 055 7985 increasing number of patients. The hospitals are at their limit. There are now 80 beds in the We will continue to provide support here for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week or make your donation at: emergency room at Lodi hospital, but even with as long as we’re needed. We are also preparing that extra capacity, the only way to make space to respond in other areas and regions where msf.org.uk/pandemic for a new patient is if a patient recovers or dies. the outbreak is just starting.”

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20-18_ads.indd 1 27/04/2020 14:44:51 OBSERVATIONS

the answer to the problem of pain,” she told me when we spoke via the video-calling software Zoom. She observed how culturally we struggle to abandon the idea of progress. Many people believe that in the long run the pandemic will somehow make life better: we’ll be kinder, perhaps, or more grateful, or better prepared for the next public health crisis. “After always has to be as good as before, or else you’ve lost, or you’ve failed to learn the lesson. And it’s very pernicious to all the people who right now would have done anything to go back, because they’ve lost things that are irreplaceable,” she said. The Duke University professor hosts a podcast, Everything Happens, and has started posting daily reflections on Instagram. Her messages are framed by her Christian faith, but they have a broader resonance. As a historian she’s interested in how cultural scripts – the stories we tell ourselves – make ENCOUNTER it harder for us to manage fear and uncertainty. Many of her Instagram videos have been An anti-self-help viewed more than 10,000 times. “I have openly struggled true believer with how to communicate an anti-self-help message The religious historian with a tough message about suffering without people feeling they’re just supposed to go home By Sophie McBain and give up,” she said. “And then, all of a sudden, a global pandemic makes people realise: he religious historian Kate researched promised their Lies I’ve Loved, a reflection wait, maybe I don’t need to Bowler was 35 years old followers that if they worship on confronting death in a be sold journals that have me Tand had just published in the right way God will grant society that insists on positive writing endless positives, I her first book, Blessed, a them everything they wish; thinking, became a New York don’t need a water bottle that history of the American the US’s modern self-help Times bestseller. says: ‘You are the answer to prosperity gospel, when she culture promises that with the Almost five years after her your own problem.’” was diagnosed with incurable right attitude and work ethic, diagnosis, Bowler is witnessing Bowler has a warm, self- cancer. Forced to confront her anything is possible. Both share how this insistent optimism deprecating demeanour and a deepest fear that she might not the fundamental belief that life is shaping how we talk about gift for talking about morality live to see her infant son grow is ordered and fair, happiness Covid-19. “This is a culture of without moralising. On the up, and navigating an uncertain is earned and suffering is lessons. People want to learn wall behind her, dozens of and terrifying new world at minimum a teachable the lesson of quarantine, the coloured Post-it notes mapped of emergency surgery and opportunity. “At least…” lesson of the pandemic. And out her next book, The Anti- agonising scans, chemotherapy, we say to a friend on hearing we can find beautiful new Bucket List, which will explore medical trials, and six-figure their bad news, grasping for things: people are gardening, how to spend time when you hospital bills, Bowler became the silver lining. You may not other people are learning realise it is finite. “It’s very acutely aware of how society see it now, but it’ll work out that their gifts as a nurse are A Beautiful Mind in here, struggles to understand stories for the best. Bowler’s 2018 the thing that will define a because that’s the only way I such as hers. memoir, Everything Happens generation’s health. But none can have thoughts,” she joked.

The televangelists she for a Reason and Other of those things will ever be She was social distancing STEPHEN VOSS

16 | NEW STATESMAN | 1-7 MAY 2020

2020+18 016 Sophie McBain Encounter.indd 16 28/04/2020 19:14:38 OBSERVATIONS

with her son, now six, and her FIRST THOUGHTS husband in North Carolina. More than 1,000 miles away, in Minnesota, her sister, with Johnson talks while Ardern acts, whom she is very close, was ads in the air, and the FT’s media hacker about to have a caesarean. “I would do anything to hold her Peter Wilby hand right now,” Bowler said. She was thinking a lot about the importance of finding Boris Johnson returns with Covid-19C deaths rose from new ways to foster intimacy typically macho language: 555 to 1,408 and the UK went when the pandemic robs us comparing coronavirus to intoin lockdown. Of just 93 of physical closeness, of “an unexpected and invisible responses,r a large majority human touch. mugger”, he says “this is the werew hostile. When Bowler fell sick, she moment when we have begun The government will noticed how many people together to wrestle it to the ignore the consultation struggled to talk to her. They ground”. In March, before results as it usually does after wanted to know medical facts – his own hospitalisation, any consultation. But while how long had the tumour been Johnson spoke a little more travelling and even gettingtting youryour you hope that ministers can growing undetected? Had she confidently, promising to entertainment in a metal box? contain the virus, do keep an read this research paper? – but send the virus “packing” The English National Opera eye on what else they’re up to. were less curious about her by June. plans drive-in performances emotional experiences. She New Zealand’s Labour at Alexandra Palace in north Journo vs journo was noticing similar patterns premier, Jacinda Ardern, has London, with the audience Mass death is usually good now, as Americans grapple already done that. For several flashing lights or honking news for journalists. When an with the devastating human days, new cases have been in horns instead of clapping. aircraft crashes or a terrorist cost of a virus that has already single figures. The country Drive-in cinemas, ubiquitous strikes, newspaper sales soar. killed more than 50,000 people has had only 19 deaths among in 1950s America, could make But coronavirus turns this, in their country. its 4.8 million population. a comeback. So could drive-in like everything else, upside “Sometimes we don’t even Ardern achieved this not restaurants, with waiters on down. Readers can’t get out mean to rank people’s pain, but through the use of improbable roller-skates. Drive-through to buy papers. With recession it comes out when we say, how metaphors but through supermarkets and shopping approaching, advertising old were they? Did they have rigorous testing and tracing malls, anybody? Drive-in revenue disappears. any pre-existing conditions? of contacts, and setting sports stadiums? Welcome So it was nothing unusual Because we’re trying to decide out, clearly, publicly and in to the future. when the Independent (now how much their pain is worth. advance, four “alert levels” of online-only) announced And we’re also secretly trying measures to “eliminate” the Sky-high profits in a Zoom conference call to answer the question: why is disease. With R – the number Here’s another reason why that, with advertising down it you not me?” she said. “The to whom each infected person unblemished skies won’t last. 50 per cent in a month, answer is there will never be transmits the virus – now Grant Shapps, the Transport some employees would be a satisfactory response to the below 0.5, the country has Secretary, has announced that furloughed and all would problem of why one person just moved from level 4 skywriting and skytyping – take pay cuts. But staff were suffers and another doesn’t. to 3, allowing 400,000 to messages written by aircraft surprised to see an account “This is part of the problem return to work. emission trails, which have registered to ft.com (the with an airborne illness, we’re Ardern’s reward, despite been banned here since 1960 – Financial Times address) join heat-seeking causal missiles. one of the world’s most will be legalised. This follows the call. Despite its ejection, We want to figure out the severe lockdowns, is a public “public consultation”. another account, later linked invisible causality that runs approval rating of 87 per cent. You don’t remember being to the mobile number of an everything. And for most The UK government’s is consulted? Oh, yes, you were. FT media reporter, Mark terrible things in our lives, if 51 per cent and falling. A Transport Department Di Stefano, stayed in the there is a reason, we don’t get document explained the meeting. Details of the to know it, at least not in time Drive-through life economic benefits of allowing Independent’s plight were on to make different choices,” she The deep blue skies, the advertising and personal Twitter before the meeting said. If that sounds depressing, sweet-smelling air, the audible messages such as birthday ended. After complaints, the it shouldn’t be. It liberates us bird song: enjoy them while congratulations and marriage FT has suspended Di Stefano. from some of the shame we you can. Once the lockdown proposals in the sky. Since Who would have thought feel when life is upended. “We is eased, traffic noise and no message would last more that hacking, once rife in realise that bad things just sort pollution will be worse than than four minutes, visual the tabloid press, would be of happen, period. And when ever. Avoiding the perils of intrusion and noise would be revived by such an august they do what we will need is a trains and buses, people will “negligible”, it pleaded. organ as the Financial Times? whole group of people who are cocoon themselves in their The consultation lasted And that the victims would not treating us as problems to cars. What could be a better from 16 to 29 March, a period not be royalty or celebrities, be solved. They’re just trying to form of social distancing than during which hospital but other journalists? l figure out how to love us.” l

1-7 MAY 2020 | NEW STATESMAN | 17

2020+18 016 Sophie McBain Encounter.indd 17 28/04/2020 19:15:31 OBSERVATIONS

the Blegdamshospitalet, the a 12-year-old girl called Vivi city’s main treatment centre Ebert considered to be in the for communicable diseases. terminal phase of the disease. Within a month, however, the Ibsen began hand number of patients had reached ventilations through a cuffed an unprecedented 260. During tube surgically inserted into 19 weeks over 2,700 patients Ebert’s windpipe. She did not were affected, with 316 losing improve at first, and one by one the ability to breathe. The the watching physicians drifted hospital, and Denmark as a away. In a final bid to save whole, had one iron lung. the girl, Ibsen administered a The senior physician at general anaesthetic. With the Blegdams was Henrik Lassen. loss of consciousness, Ebert Feared and respected by stopped fighting the manual his staff, Lassen had risen ventilations and began to rapidly to be appointed chief improve dramatically. of medicine at the age of 38. The news spread fast. At a Yet even he had no answers, stroke, Ibsen had discredited and staff despaired. Mogens the iron lung, replacing it with Bjørneboe, Lassen’s deputy, a simple, cheap and readily urged him to call in help. He available form of artificial suggested an anaesthetist ventilation. None the less, called Bjørn Ibsen. That April, the logistics were daunting. Ibsen had helped Bjørneboe Each patient required four TRENDS to manage an infant boy people 24/7 for up to three with intractable seizures months. There were only 20 The birth caused by tetanus, using the anaesthetists in Copenhagen. paralysing agent curare. The Lassen’s leadership skills child was rendered unable now came into play. He called of intensive care to breathe without artificial up hundreds of medical and respiration. The “iron lung” dental students, who often How the ventilator became a lifesaver was unsuitable for such a received less than ten minutes By Paul Warwicker small infant, so Ibsen had training before being given proposed a treatment hitherto the responsibility for keeping only used for short periods a child breathing throughout in patients undergoing heart an eight-hour shift, day worldwide viral the iron lung. The patient was or lung surgery. It was called and night. By the end of the epidemic accelerating sealed from the neck down in a “positive pressure ventilation”. epidemic, 1,500 medical and Aout of control, a health metal tube, from which air was A tube was inserted into the dental students had put in over service on the brink, a critical sucked, causing the chest wall infant’s windpipe, and a team 165,000 hours of work. lack of breathing apparatus: to expand. This drew air into of doctors, working in shifts, The plan worked. The we’ve been here before. In 1952, the lungs through the mouth squeezed air in and out of his mortality rate of respiratory a polio epidemic led to the and nose in a process called lungs for more than two weeks polio in Denmark fell from birth of intensive care and the “negative pressure ventilation”. using a rubber balloon. 90 per cent to 20 per cent, modern ventilator. Mortality from polio remained In the 1950s, anaesthetists and the iron lung became a Poliomyelitis, or polio, is a high, but there was hope for were regarded as little more museum piece. The following paralysing infectious disease those whose breathing muscles than technicians. Lassen, year, the Swedish company caused by the poliovirus. it had paralysed. mindful of his international Engström invented a machine It most commonly affects However, the need for the reputation, was offended that pumped the ventilations children under the age of five. machines far outstretched by the idea that he take an mechanically. While it can be prevented – availability. From 1945 to anaesthetist’s advice. In 1954, the first polio billions of people have now 1949, Western countries saw As cases continued to rise vaccines were introduced into been vaccinated against polio an annual average of 20,000 exponentially, Lassen organised Denmark. The last polio case – there is no cure. In the first new polio cases. Countries that a senior staff gathering to with breathing problems was decades of the 20th century, could afford it bankrolled huge review new initiatives. He treated in 1958. there was little that could be suites of iron lungs, but in the agreed, reluctantly, to invite We all owe a debt to done to treat the most severely austerity of postwar Europe Ibsen. Ibsen’s forthright view Professor Bjørn Ibsen, the affected, who lost the ability to most countries went without. was that the iron lung was not father of modern intensive swallow, or even to breathe. In Copenhagen, the summer up to the job, and the confident care, who died in 2007. As the In 1928, the US medical of 1952 had begun like any presentation of his positive coronavirus pandemic pioneer Philip Drinker other. The city expected a polio pressure system won over the stretches healthcare systems demonstrated that patients outbreak and officials were physicians. Lassen grudgingly around the world, the same could be kept alive by a type of not surprised when, in late agreed to a trial – on the most inventiveness and dedication is

artificial ventilator nicknamed July, the first case presented at hopeless case in the hospital, needed once more. l H. ARMSTRONG ROBERTS/CLASSICSTOCK/GETTY IMAGES

18 | NEW STATESMAN | 1-7 MAY 2020

2020+18 018 Paul Warwicker.indd 18 28/04/2020 18:53:34 David Hare The Diary Surviving Covid-19, giving up drinking and the Guardian, and what Cummings gets wrong

ntering my seventies, I wanted some and country in China – but more and more into lockdown imagines it can lead us out. change. Admittedly, I had twice re- often, the ghosts of evenings past seemed to No one can explain why the same Keynesian Efused to appear on Strictly Come be winking at the new. socialism which was unequivocally right for Dancing. Too radical. I chose instead to give saving the world twice in the past 12 years is up three staples: the Guardian, theatregoing A very prescient abstinence unequivocally wrong as a more long-term and alcohol. Each has had mixed results. I The alcohol thing happened unintentional- remedy. Capitalists who turn to socialism miss the Guardian’s news pages but its arts ly. Last August I just stopped. A few months only in crisis are like those spiritual cowards coverage was driving me mad. I don’t mean later, I got ill, and every day I felt grateful who turn to God only when their lives are the critics. They are what they are, and al- that I wasn’t medicating with drink. The threatened, then revert to atheism when the ways will be. Far more dismaying was the abstinence, it turned out, had been a weird pressure’s off. absence of any featured analysis of what kind of prescience. It was my body telling Cummings likes to pose as an idiot sa- any work of art was actually about. For the me to prepare for trouble ahead. Then, in vant. He’s got the idiot bit down. It’s the Guardian, arts are purely an adjunct of life- March, I got Covid-19. Since I was unable to savant he can’t pull off. His childhood ob- style. They’re a box-tick. keep down a cup of tea or a biscuit, the idea sessions with the EU, the BBC and the civil Countless columnists loved advertis- of a glass of wine seemed far-fetched. service seem so last century. ing how on-trend they were by praising, Because I then spoke on Radio 4 about for instance, Killing Eve. It was when, after my experience, I received a lot of fascinat- Art with a touch of evil 25 identical articles in praise of Killing Eve ing feedback. I was laughing with my wife, One advantage of my new life is that I have there followed the inevitable article about Nicole, about one contact who told me of time to read fiction. When I finished Rachel why Killing Eve was overrated that, af- the delusions he had suffered during his Kushner’s The Mars Room, I couldn’t be- ter 55 years, I jumped ship. The first day I lieve there was any writer who could get so switched to the Times there was a two-page close to the despair of young working-class profile of Philip Glass. At the end – this is With Covid-19 I women in prisons. But then when I read a high compliment – I hadn’t even noticed couldn’t drink tea, let Anne Enright’s Actress, I thought nobody the journalist’s name, nor had they intrud- could get so close to how actors truly be- ed their opinions. The piece was all about alone a glass of wine have and feel. Glass, his music and nothing else. I also watch more television. Like most illness, when Nicole reminded me that I viewers, I enjoyed Succession, about a media Forgoing theatre had woken one fevered morning and, when dynasty. Who wouldn’t? The acting is gor- It was a defeat finally to buy a Murdoch asked how I was, replied: “One of my bod- geous, and the dialogue sublime. But some- newspaper. In 1985, Howard Brenton and ies is fine, but the others aren’t great.” I had thing important is missing. The writers I had satirised his conquest of the British gone on to explain that the virus had divid- don’t really hate Murdoch or his kind. They establishment in the play Pravda. Anthony ed me into several separate identities which think executives telling each other to eff off Hopkins had gripped a theatre audience as all slept in the bed together side by side. is funny. Funny, but not threatening. So al- tightly as anyone can. The authors vowed at Rightly, Nicole suggested that at that mo- though it’s less polished, the excitement is the time never to give money to a newspa- ment I forfeited the right to mock others. much greater in The Loudest Voice, a mini- per owner who was so proudly indifferent series about Roger Ailes who, before his to the misery he caused. The Keynesian solution disgrace, did so much to popularise delib- But then it was also odd to stop buying When I did come round from 18 days of hell, erately falsifying television. Its great power theatre tickets. It had nothing to do with I couldn’t believe that Dominic Cummings is that its makers really loathe Fox News. quality. Seasons that had delivered The was still banging on about Brexit. He’s like It’s Jonathan Swift to Succession’s Punch Jungle, The Lehman Trilogy and The Ferry- a pub bore who wants to buttonhole you magazine. Add in a couple of great perfor- man were as rich as any in recent memory. and tell you the Freemasons run YouTube. mances – Sienna Miller deeply disturbing as But I was no longer getting the buzz. There How can anyone so completely misjudge the definitive Wife-Who-Stands-By-Her- was a life-time of enthralment behind me, the public mood? Most of us don’t want Monster and Russell Crowe doing a mes- but patterns seemed to be becoming famil- to accelerate yet another act of harm to the merising physical transformation into a sort iar. Occasionally a writer would find a new economy. We want to address things that of huge, puffy, balletic toad – and you feel subject – Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig wrote a actually matter, like how a government that this programme has an element that lifts

IAN McGOWAN terrific play about inequality between town made such an indolent mess of getting us entertainment into art: a sense of evil. l

1-7 MAY 2020 | NEW STATESMAN | 19

2020+18 019 Diary revised.indd 19 28/04/2020 18:50:53 20 | NEW STATESMAN | 00-00 MONTH 2018

20-18_ads.indd 2 28/04/2020 15:52:44 Stephen Bush Politics Can Boris Johnson resolve the conflict between lockdown hawks and doves as the economic crisis deepens?

ne of the most important prime min- less migration and greater barriers. Or it to meaningless. It states that before the isterial functions is that of referee: to could have meant weighing up whether a lockdown can be lifted, the UK must have Omitigate disputes between depart- minister who is continually embroiled in “enough” personal protective equipment ments, or to solve tricky political decisions. fights with their civil servants is a talented and testing supplies to meet future demand. Downing Street tends to operate, as one reformer worth protecting, or a belligerent “Enough” is an entirely moveable target: by former staffer once gloomily described it, loose cannon in need of a demotion. But in one definition, it could have been met last as “a shit funnel”: gradually sucking up the age of coronavirus, it means resolving week; by another, it might not be met for every intractable problem in British pub- the row within the cabinet and the Con- years. Add in the fifth test, that the lock- lic life, only to deposit them on the prime servative Parliamentary Party on when, down can be lifted only when it is certain minister’s desk. how and whether to end the lockdown. a second peak of infections can be avoided, For Boris Johnson to be absent for the The debate is often presented as be- and the end seems some way off. best part of a month after he became seri- ing between two poles. At one end, are In reality, however, the five tests were a ously ill with Covid-19 was a double blow the lockdown hawks who believe that the victory for neither the hawks or the doves, for the government. Psychologically and government must persist with the social but were largely about delaying the moment emotionally, it was a traumatic experience distancing measures until it is absolutely of reckoning until Boris Johnson returned for many involved. But institutionally, it certain that the disease has been curbed and to adjudicate matters. It’s commonplace also deprived the government of its main the British state has acquired the necessary wisdom at Westminster that Johnson is an pressure valve by taking its ultimate arbiter infrastructure to test, trace and isolate new instinctive liberal, and MPs and journalists out of action. cases. The hawks’ leader in cabinet is the assumed that his return would mark a per- Dominic Raab, Johnson’s designated Health Secretary, Matt Hancock. manent shift of power to the doves. Instead, deputy, divides opinion at Westminster, the Prime Minister used his first statement and within the Conservative Party. Some since returning to work to reiterate the im- MPs saw him as an astute pick for the role You cannot “save lives” portance of avoiding a second peak – a re- of stand-in prime minister: he could take a by crippling large parts mark that seems to validate the hawks. fresh approach because as Foreign Secretary Does Johnson’s return mean that the he had been relatively uninvolved in the of the economy UK’s lockdown will go on for longer than government’s day-to-day arguments about supposed? The reality is that the debate how to grapple with the domestic outbreak At the other end, are the lockdown doves is not between two poles, but occurs on a of Covid-19. Plus, despite his reputation as a who believe that the consequences of the spectrum. You can no more “save the econ- free market ideologue and bruiser, Raab is a shutdown – for the public finances and for omy” by allowing a deadly pandemic to run more intelligent and effective minister than society, particularly in terms of school clo- through the country than you can “save he is given credit for. sures – mean that the lockdown must be lives” by shutting people indoors and de- Others thought him a smart choice for an ended as quickly as possible. That group stroying large parts of the economy. altogether different reason: as one Tory MP is well represented on the back benches, Ministers – both hawks and doves – have put it, “No one, no matter how bad it gets whose members have a daily flow of com- been impressed by a ConservativeHome for Johnson, will ever see Dom Raab stand- plaints and cries of distress from local busi- pamphlet by the veteran back-bench MP ing in at PMQs and think we’d be better off nesses. The leading doves in cabinet are the Bernard Jenkin, which concluded that the with him in charge.” Chancellor Rishi Sunak and Michael Gove, way forward was not for the lockdown to Whichever of the two camps was right – Johnson’s Whitehall fixer. be stopped or extended, but for ministers to and even his Tory critics concede that Raab During Raab’s time as substitute prime turn their eye to transition – to a period in did a better job than they had expected – any minister, the government unveiled five which we will have to live with anti-corona- understudy would have been incapable of tests that must be met before the lockdown virus measures and in which society and the taking on the Prime Minister’s role as the can end. These tests were, superficially, economy must adjust to thrive. government’s ultimate umpire. a victory for the hawks. The first three, That too appears to be the decision that In normal times, that role might have which relate to the medical capacity of the the Boris Johnson has reached – and while meant adjudicating between the business NHS, can be measured and achieved within it points to an easing of some restrictions, department, which tends to want more mi- weeks, but the fourth and fifth tests point to it also means that the United Kingdom will gration and fewer barriers to new entries, a much longer period of social distancing. likely be observing a form of lockdown for

IAN McGOWAN and the Home Office, which tends to prefer The fourth is so open-ended as to be close some time. l

1-7 MAY 2020 | NEW STATESMAN | 21

2020+18 021 Stephen.indd 21 28/04/2020 19:56:09 Enlightened thinking in dark times

Available in all good bookshops now £20

More than 100 years of great writing Published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson

20-18_ads.indd 3 28/04/2020 16:01:44 Jeremy CliffeWorld View The euro-gloomsters are wrong to use every crisis to predict the imminent collapse of the EU

nother crisis, another round of head- It is therefore tempting to predict the enough about the huge structural shifts lines suggesting the European Union EU’s failure. Yet today, as before, the euro- that were taking place, shifts that looked Ais about to disintegrate. Politico says gloomsters make three crucial mistakes. impossible beforehand and have changed that coronavirus “could break the EU”. First, they mis-categorise the enterprise. the EU utterly. Reaction, a news website, predicts “the The EU has fewer powers than a federal A similar dynamic is playing out today. looming collapse of the eurozone”. New state and more than an intergovernmental You can point to the absence of coronabonds York Magazine asks whether the pandemic organisation. Even valid criticisms of it and say that the EU is doomed. But far will “tear the EU apart”. The only thing as are exaggerated because they do not make more insightfully, you can look at the durable as the EU itself is the belief in its fair allowances for this hybridity. You other previously unthinkable things that imminent demise. can reasonably argue that national health it is now doing. The ESM programmes As early as 1953 the diplomat Robert policies should be pooled at an EU level in in its coronavirus rescue package will be Boothby told Tory backbenchers that the the future. But you cannot reasonably argue shorn of the intrusive conditions that European Coal and Steel Community that the EU, which has almost no power made them so unpopular in the eurozone would fail. His view was echoed not just by over member states’ health policies, “failed” crisis. The package also includes common Harold Macmillan in 1955 (who told MPs to properly manage responses to Covid-19. unemployment reinsurance, until recently a that the “Monnet concept” was “doomed That misreads both the function and the glint in federalist eyes. And the EU is almost to failure”), but also by Boothby himself scale of the EU’s powers. You might as well certainly on the path to a permanently and three decades later in 1981, when, as a peer, argue that your bottle opener “failed” to drastically higher budget; where weeks ago he warned the House of Lords that “the heat your flat properly. leaders were squabbling over fractions of EEC will collapse. It will break up of its percentages now there is talk of it effectively own accord.” More predictions of doom fol- increasing by half or more. lowed with Danish and French “no” votes The only thing as Even on the shibboleth of mutualised to further EU integration in 1992 and 2005 durable as the EU is the debt, the union is edging in the right respectively – and then with the eurozone direction. Angela Merkel may have stood crisis. In 2012 the respected CEBR think belief in its demise firm against coronabonds but she has tank put the chance of the eurozone’s col- departed from all German orthodoxy by lapse at 99 per cent and declared its survival Second, the euro-gloomsters subject agreeing to a milder version of that idea: the “a political impossibility”. Then came the the EU to standards that other polities European Commission issuing debt backed migrant crisis of 2015 (Europe’s “breaking are spared. Yes, EU leaders talk a lot about by the EU budget. And perpetual bonds – point”, according to the New York Times) solidarity and European values, sometimes debt with no maturity date – are now also a and the Brexit vote in 2016, which Nigel sincerely. But that does not mean they do serious part of the discussion in a way they Farage predicted would “trigger a domino not also have their own electorates and were not before. Big structural taboos are effect” leading to the EU’s collapse. national interests, just as leaders of the US being broken, in ways that will change the Coronavirus has unleashed the latest states proclaim their belief in their union future of the European project. round of doom-mongering. Borders have while standing up specifically for those There remain very many useful, press- gone up within the Schengen zone. The who elected them. Even as I write, US ing questions about the EU. Is the border- EU has not coordinated health policies state governments are trying to outbid one less Schengen zone sustainable in the age of in its member states. The economically another to buy medical equipment. Some Covid-19 or will we see a return to national strong have done too little to help the weak: have talked of closing their borders. Rich borders? Is the virus rescue package a small despite calls for coronabonds, or mutualised states have grumbled about payments to step towards the fiscal federalism that will debt, the EU is heading for a disappointing poorer ones. Yet no one asks if the US is give the union its best chance of a cohesive economic rescue and recovery package. about to “fall apart”. future, or is it a flop? Will disaffection in At their e-summit on 23 April, leaders Third, in their obsession with this countries such as Italy express itself in shift- agreed to support struggling economies binary scenario, the euro-gloomsters miss ing alliances within the EU? through the European Stability Mechanism a more interesting question: how are the All are so much more pressing – and, (the ESM, hated for imposing austerity complicated pressures on the EU changing frankly, interesting – than the easy, abstract, on southern Europe during the eurozone it? The same mistake was made in the clicks-driven question of whether the EU crisis) and some combination of grants and eurozone crisis, which prompted too many is doomed. It probably isn’t. Ask those

IAN McGOWAN loans issued through the EU budget. articles about the EU’s collapse and not questions instead. l

1-7 MAY 2020 | NEW STATESMAN | 23

2020+18 023 Jeremy Cliffe.indd 23 28/04/2020 20:00:08 ANTOINE D’AGATA/MAGNUM PHOTOSANTOINE D’AGATA/MAGNUM Locked down: the first hours of compulsory confinement on the streets of Paris, 17 March 2020

24 | NEW STATESMAN | 1-7 MAY 2020

2020+18 024 Laura Spinney.indd 24 28/04/2020 18:10:30 COVER STORY Caught in the second wave The risk of a deadly resurgence of coronavirus could change the way we live for years to come By Laura Spinney

n 15 March, just before Covid-19 It’s a fear shared by many doctors, and hit the Lariboisière Hospital in politicians too, as they try to find the sweet Paris, the head of its emergency spot of exit strategies – a combination of service was calm. “My team is measures that will resurrect the economy ready,” said Eric Revue. and liberate their citizens while sparing OThat team has now been operating at full health systems from a second wave of Cov- capacity for the past six weeks. It has lost 10 id-19 they are ill-equipped to manage. “Lift- per cent of its members to sickness (none ing restrictions too quickly could lead to a have died), those who remain are tired, and deadly resurgence,” said World Health Or- morale is flagging. In recent days the flow ganisation (WHO) director-general Tedros of patients has slowed and the team has Adhanom Ghebreyesus on 10 April. been able to catch its breath. Dr Revue is Pandemics of respiratory disease tend now worried about what will happen after to come in waves, and the 1918 flu pan- 11 May, the date Emmanuel Macron has set demic is often given as an example. After a for the beginning of the end of lockdown in relatively mild first wave, in the Northern France. “My fear is that the non-Covid-19 Hemisphere spring of that year, the illness patients who have stayed away until now gradually receded before returning with re- will arrive in a worsened condition, just as newed force from the latter part of August we’re dealing with a resurgence of the epi- (the date depended on where you were in

demic,” he says. the world). This was the far more deadly t

1-7 MAY 2020 | NEW STATESMAN | 25

2020+18 024 Laura Spinney.indd 25 28/04/2020 18:10:30 t second wave, which accounted for most to have to be the posture of humanity in the with sick people,” says Jonathan Quick, a of the estimated 50 million deaths in that foreseeable future,” he says. global health expert leading the Rockefeller pandemic. There was a third wave, in the How bad could a resurgence be? Wilder- Foundation’s pandemic response. early months of 1919, that was intermediate Smith is relatively optimistic. “Yes there One characteristic of Covid-19 works in in severity between the other two. will be a second wave, and a third and a humanity’s favour: it has a longer incuba- Based on their scrutiny of the genetic se- fourth and a fifth,” she says, “but hopefully tion period than flu. This means that there quences of the strains of the flu virus that they will be smaller each time, as we learn is more time to identify suspected cases caused the first and second waves of the to suppress them.” But there are bleaker and quarantine them before they pass it on, 1918 pandemic, scientists including Jeffery scenarios. Writing in the journal Sci- which in theory means that an outbreak is Taubenberger of the US National Institutes ence on 14 April, a group of mathematical easier to contain. A resurgence is preventa- of Health concluded a few years ago that the modellers – led by Christine Tedijanto and ble, says Yaneer Bar-Yam, the president of the virus mutated between those two waves. Stephen Kissler of the Harvard TH Chan New England Complex Systems Institute During the first wave, they believe, the pan- School of Public Health in Boston – high- (NECSI) in Boston – who is now applying demic strain lacked the ability to spread eas- lighted “the potentially catastrophic burden his physicist’s skills to Covid-19 – but only ily, and it therefore emerged in a limited way on the healthcare system that is predicted if we acknowledge that a pandemic is a com- through a background of milder but more if distancing is poorly effective and/or not plex problem that requires a combination contagious seasonal flu around the tail end sustained for long enough”. With the ca- of responses. With his NECSI colleague Chen Shen, Bar-Yam has published a nine-point plan for Scientists estimate that the risk could beating Covid-19. If a new cluster is identi- fied, they say, travel in and out of the af- persist until 2025, and social distancing fected area should be restricted, with 14-day quarantines for travellers and no-contact measures might be needed until 2022 protocols for essential goods and workers. Suspect cases should be systematically de- tected and tested. Confirmed cases should of 1917. The mutation the following summer veat that a model is only as good as the data be isolated, and their close contacts quar- rendered it highly transmissible, allowing it that feed it – and data on Covid-19 are still antined. Masks should be worn in shared to explode in August – by which time there patchy – they estimated that the risk of a re- spaces. Health workers should be given all was no more seasonal flu to dilute it. surgence could persist until 2025, and that the tools and protective equipment they Could this scenario be repeated with social distancing measures might need to be need, and essential services should be made Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19? employed intermittently until 2022. safe for employees and customers – through Coronaviruses behave differently from flu, curbside delivery, for example. People and from what scientists know about them, espite the relative stability of cor- should be advised on how to stay healthy, it seems unlikely. “The coronaviruses are onaviruses, Covid-19 remains a and convinced that what each of them does not prone to mutation which perhaps is formidable foe. On current data, makes a difference. their weak spot,” says virologist John Ox- it is both more contagious and This plan is based largely on the Chi- ford of Queen Mary, University of Lon- more deadly than seasonal flu, nese experience. The lockdown imposed don. Annelies Wilder-Smith, an expert in Dand unlike seasonal flu, nobody has any im- on Wuhan in Hubei province was not like emerging infectious diseases at the London munity to it – or at least they didn’t until a the lockdowns that have been imposed in School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, couple of months ago. Unchecked, therefore, the rest of the world, which are designed to agrees. So far Sars-CoV-2 has proved rela- Covid-19 outbreaks can grow fast and incur slow the spread of the disease. Wuhan’s was tively stable, she says, and if it were to mu- a terrible human cost. “The distinguishing essentially a cordon sanitaire that stopped tate, “We would hope that it would mutate feature of Covid-19 is its ability to crash in- the disease from spreading out of its epi- to be less virulent.” tensive care units and overwhelm facilities centre. And because that cordon was kept Unfortunately, that doesn’t rule out a re- in place for 76 days – Bar-Yam estimates that surgence. Unlike in China, lockdowns in five weeks, or two and a half incubation pe- other countries are being lifted before the riods, would suffice – the disease was also disease has been eradicated, mainly because stamped out inside it. Research has since of fears about the economic consequences of indicated that the Wuhan cordon did what keeping them in place. That means the virus it was designed to do. The Chinese also is still circulating in their populations, and imposed the wearing of masks in shared from what we can tell they are still far from spaces, and the science is now showing that achieving herd immunity (probably around this measure works, because it reduces the 60 or 70 per cent of a population needs to be risk of transmission by the mask wearer. immune to protect it as a whole). With no The key to an effective response, Bar- vaccine likely to be widely available for a year Yam says, is to do all these things together. at the earliest, the risk of further outbreaks Testing is useless if those who test positive is therefore high. David Nabarro, a public aren’t isolated; isolation without travel re- health expert at Imperial College London strictions is “like draining a bathtub with and the WHO’s special envoy on Covid-19, a running tap”. Those countries whose says he doesn’t think in terms of waves, so initial containment efforts worked, such as much as ever-present danger. “Coping with China, South Korea and Singapore, under-

the constant threat of re-emergence is going stood this – because they had learnt it the CHICANE

26 | NEW STATESMAN | 1-7 MAY 2020

2020+18 024 Laura Spinney.indd 26 28/04/2020 18:10:33 Desk job: students in the final year of middle school and high school in Chongqing municipality in China return to the classroom on 27 April

hard way, having lived through the Sars minimum, because each case is more costly Some countries have already changed epidemic of 2002-03 – but many countries than itself. “Pandemics kill in three ways,” tack. Quietly, Vietnam, Greece, Iran and have not. For Bar-Yam, those other coun- says the Rockefeller Foundation’s Jonathan others have turned the tables on the virus. tries have lost sight of the bottom line: “The Quick. “The disease kills, the disruption to After an embarrassing start, with its Covid- cost is totally determined by the number of the health service kills, and the disruption 19-positive deputy health minister mop- cases you allow to happen.” to the economy kills.” ping his brow at a press conference, Iran Though the present lockdowns in Eu- invited in a WHO mission and took advice istory seems to back him up. rope and elsewhere have not followed from veterans of the Chinese outbreak. A study published in March by the Chinese model, they aren’t wasted. According to Christoph Hamelmann, the researchers at the Federal Re- They are preventing the disease surge that WHO’s representative in Tehran, the rate serve and Massachusetts Insti- would overwhelm health systems, and of new infections has been decreasing there tute of Technology showed that, have bought time for building supplies and for two weeks, and the government has put Hduring the 1918 flu pandemic, US cities that knowledge about the virus when both of in place a sophisticated, graded system for imposed public health measures earlier and these were in short supply. But given that lifting the existing restrictions. The Indian more aggressively had lower mortality rates they have also nudged the global economy state of Kerala is another success story, using and recovered faster in economic terms. The into decline – the International Monetary technology to trace contacts – and, impor- problem, then as now, is knowing when to Fund (IMF) calls it the worst downturn tantly, providing social and economic relief lift the measures. If you lift them too soon, since the Great Depression of the 1930s – for those disadvantaged by the measures. you present the virus with a fresh pool of it is now critical that all countries adopt a susceptible hosts and trigger a second wave. more coherent approach. And that means echnology is going to be key to In 1918, there was no reliable diagnostic everyone embracing a new normal. Califor- the next phase, especially apps test for flu. We have a reliable test for Cov- nia’s governor Gavin Newsom put it well on for contact tracing. Anxieties have id-19, and it will be central to containing the 12 March: “Changing our actions for a short been expressed about the threat inevitable flare-ups after lockdown ends, period of time will save the life of one or these could pose to civil liberties, while scientists work on developing bet- more people you know… That’s the choice Tbut from a purely technological standpoint, ter treatments and a vaccine. The ultimate before us. Each of us has extraordinary they needn’t. “Decentralised” models work ZHOU YI/CHINA NEWS VIA GETTY SERVICE IMAGES aim has to be to keep the number of sick to a power to slow the spread of this disease.” by keeping sensitive data on a person’s t

1-7 MAY 2020 | NEW STATESMAN | 27

2020+18 024 Laura Spinney.indd 27 28/04/2020 18:10:37 t phone, for example, and governments in public places so people don’t have to get know yet – potentially makes those people could demonstrate their good faith – that close in order to hear each other. more vulnerable to Covid-19. An outbreak they are not going to exploit these circum- Above all, strong leadership will be in Zimbabwe would be disastrous, and pose stances to increase their powers of surveil- needed, because without a proactive strat- a threat to its neighbours, not to mention lance – by supporting the development of egy Covid-19 will get the upper hand again. – once airlines are flying again – countries such models. Many low- and middle-income countries further afield. “This isn’t over anywhere They could also invest in better antibody will follow the lead of wealthier ones in lift- until it’s over everywhere,” says Peter Piot, tests, which will be needed for establish- ing lockdown, since they can afford the eco- director of the London School of Hygiene ing levels of immunity in populations – and nomic damage even less. The consequences and Tropical Medicine. hence the risk of further outbreaks – and for many of them, if the transition is mis- better mathematical models for determin- handled, will be worse than in richer parts oordinating a global response is ing how an outbreak in one state or country of the world. crucial. The WHO has tried to might impact on others. They could stop provide leadership internationally. discussing borders in purely ideological On 14 April, it published a “play- terms, as gates that must be either open or In today’s polarised book”, not too different from Bar- closed, and start thinking of them as another CYam’s plan, for countries to use as a guide world, the WHO tool in their box – a means of intelligently when easing lockdown. But in today’s po- controlling the movement of the virus. And clearly lacks authority larised world the WHO patently lacks au- we need imaginative proposals for how we thority. Nabarro and others have called for a might observe the new normal as painlessly Take Zimbabwe, which is under a strict Pandemic Emergency Coordination Coun- as possible. Researchers at the University of lockdown and has had very few cases to cil that would unite the heads of the United Cambridge, for example, have identified 275 date. Its hospitals don’t always have water Nations, WHO, IMF and World Bank, and non-pharmaceutical approaches to reducing or electricity, it has high levels of food inse- provide that much needed authority. But transmission, from virtual schools to online curity, and 12.7 per cent of its adult popula- the appetite for such a council has been queues telling people when to go to a shop tion is HIV positive. HIV dysregulates the lacking among world leaders. In the leader- or surgery, and banning background music immune system, which – though we don’t ship vacuum, some regions have started to coalesce from the bottom up, including in South-East Asia and to some extent in Eu- rope, while the governors of some US states are forming regional alliances. Nabarro fears it’s not enough. “I encour- age all leaders to find ways to collaborate for the sake of humanity, quickly,” he says, “because the challenges are too great to be dealt with by countries pursuing separate agendas.” Governments have to be able to trust each other to abide by the same rules as they move out of lockdown – and perhaps even sanction those that don’t. If there is one playbook, and it’s transparent, it will also be easier for people to embrace the new nor- mal, knowing that it will only be temporary. There has been a narrative in the West that what the Chinese did in Hubei couldn’t be done in democratic countries. It echoes a message from history that democracy is un- helpful in pandemics. But there’s no logical reason that we can’t be pragmatic while de- fending hard-won democratic values. It will require the right assurances, a lot of trust and setting aside imagined ideological ob- stacles, but it can be done. Dr Revue hopes it will be done, for the sake of his patients and his team. He agrees with Albert Camus, who wrote in 1947 that humanists were always the first to pass away in a plague, because they didn’t believe in it and failed to take their precautions. “They fancied themselves free,” wrote Camus, “and no one will ever be free so long as there are pestilences.” l Laura Spinney is the author of “Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How it Changed

the World” (Vintage) PARKINSDAVID

28 | NEW STATESMAN | 1-7 MAY 2020

2020+18 024 Laura Spinney.indd 28 28/04/2020 18:10:47 Emily Tamkin Inside America Americans are drinking bleach because of Trump – and still Republicans stand by the president

“ peaking of Mitch, what’s gotten into Other high-profile Republicans, such as that is not enough to inspire Republicans to him?” Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the Arkansas senator Tom Cotton, spent part of attempt to stop him from running for a sec- SHouse of Representatives, said on 24 their weekend on television trying to draw ond term in office, what will be? April, in reference to the Senate majority attention to the threat of Chinese students. Yet to think that, one would have to pre- leader, Mitch McConnell. “The president “If Chinese students want to come here tend Trump’s first term went differently. is asking people to inject Lysol into their and study Shakespeare and the Federalist That senior Republicans had intervened lungs and Mitch is saying that states should Papers, that’s what they need to learn from when the president initially spent weeks go bankrupt.” America. They don’t need to learn quan- downplaying the danger of Covid-19, even Remarkably, this was not an overstate- tum computing,” Cotton said on Fox News, after the World Health Organisation de- ment. In a press briefing on coronavirus the suggesting that US universities should not clared it to be a global emergency; and that day before, Donald Trump said, “And then allow Chinese students to study science or they had spoken out when people were be- I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out technology. Leaving aside the fact Shake- ing kept on a cruise ship because Trump in a minute. One minute. And is there a way speare wasn’t American, the reality remains didn’t want the number of cases in the US we can do something like that, by injection that Cotton, in the midst of a global pan- to increase. Or that they hadn’t said that the inside or almost a cleaning? Because you see demic, was animated enough about the dan- problem was that Trump couldn’t properly it gets in the lungs, and it does a tremendous ger posed by Chinese students to discuss it prepare for the coronavirus pandemic be- number on the lungs. So it would be inter- on television networks. There are legitimate cause he was distracted by impeachment esting to check that. So you’re going to have proceedings. Or that they hadn’t argued that to use medical doctors with – but it sounds it wasn’t impeachable conduct for Trump to interesting to me.” Trump claimed the next As always, they insisted attempt to withhold military aid to pressure day that he was being sarcastic. Evidently, that the problem is Ukraine into investigating Joe Biden. this sarcasm, which the president himself One would have to imagine that, after described as “clear”, was not apparent to anything but Trump a pipe bomb was sent to CNN, or after the everyone: in New York City there was a newsroom of the Capital Gazette was at- spike in residents ingesting cleaning fluids. risks posed by US universities’ dependence tacked in Maryland, Republican senators Some Republicans – such as Will Hurd of on Chinese money – some have reportedly had made a principled stand to stop the Texas, who is not running for re-election – allowed Chinese students to be in effect sur- president from calling on his supporters to gestured at rebutting Trump’s statement. veilled on their campuses – but none of that attack the media as “fake news”. Or that, “Nobody should drink disinfectant,” Hurd was addressed by Cotton. when faced with a riot featuring neo-Nazis said on MSNBC. “I think that’s pretty clear, What Cotton’s argument does, however, and chants of “Jew will not replace us” in and we should be listening to doctors and is change the terms of the debate. Instead of Charlottesville, Virginia, and a president scientists on this issue. I’m not listening to focusing on the Trump administration and who talked about the “very fine people on any politician on health-related issues.” its various failures, we are debating the mer- both sides”, Republicans had said that no But for the most part, the Republican its of barring Chinese students from coming number of conservative judges or tax cuts or leadership did not appear to focus its energy to the US to study technology. McConnell’s elections won with the help of Trump sup- on countering dangerous claims. Instead, comments do something similar; they put porters could justify this display of hate. Republicans largely did what they’ve spent the onus back on the individual states. It But they didn’t do any of that. the past four years doing, which is insisting creates an argument, a fight, and a reason Some Republicans may privately remark, that the problem is anything but Trump. to focus on something other than Trump’s as McConnell reportedly has, that they are As Pelosi said, McConnell floated the idea incompetence and recklessness. smarter than Trump, and some may pub- that states should go bankrupt instead of re- Perhaps one might think that now, with licly express disappointment before vot- ceiving more federal money; a CNN report the US exceeding one million known cases ing along Trump’s lines. But Republicans claimed that Republican senators are largely of coronavirus, the urgency of focusing on have not, in any meaningful way, stood up in agreement that there should be a pause on the health and safety of Americans would to Trump when he has repeatedly endan- new state funding. McConnell is apparently snap Trump’s Republican allies and protec- gered Americans. concerned about the national debt, despite tors back into reality, where the president Why would they now? The reality of a having been able to put aside such concerns himself is posing a danger to his citizens. spike in the ingestion of cleaning products when passing tax cuts for the wealthy earlier We have people ingesting cleaning supplies, is the truth that Republicans now hold to be l IAN McGOWAN on in Trump’s tenure. seemingly at the president’s suggestion. If self-evident: it’s Donald Trump’s party.

1-7 MAY 2020 | NEW STATESMAN | 29

2020+18 029 Emily Tamkin.indd 29 28/04/2020 18:21:07 FACTS AND FIGURES A flattened curve The number of daily Covid-19 deaths – using a seven- day rolling average – is now definitively falling in most countries except the US.

Covid-19: 3,000 a 8,000 Global UK US pandemic in Italy Spain numbers France Coronavirus is a human story, but one where numbers as well as words have a crucial role in explaining events. David Ottewell and our new data journalism team highlight some of the key statistics behind the global crisis

A global pandemic? New York: the epicentre of the epicentre Five countries account for nearly three- New York City has more Covid-19 deaths than any state in the US, and more than quarters of Covid-19 deaths… most countries in the world (Italy, Spain, the UK and France are the exceptions).

Connecticut Illinois Massachusetts Michigan New Jersey NY City NY State

(1,924) (1,933) (2,899) (3,315) (5,938) (17,280) (22,269)

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Spain (11.2%)

… but just 7.5% of the world’s population.

Donald Trump’s approval ratings hit an all-time high of 47.5% at the start of April, Economic predictions have been revised from growth but have to severe recession in just two months since dropped On 1 March the NS’s parent company GlobalData predicted the US economy would grow by to 45.8%, 2% across 2020. It now predicts shrinkage of 5% – a level unseen since the Great Depression. including one poll 2 taken after his 0 comments about disinfectant.

-6 1 March

30 | NEW STATESMAN | 1-7 MAY 2020

2020+18 030 David Ottwell.indd 30 28/04/2020 17:54:54 London: the Covid-19 capital London accounts for 13% of the UK population – but 23% of the UK’s Covid-19 deaths.

London (2,961)

Birmingham (316)

Liverpool (161)

Wolverhampton (109)

County Durham (102)

Leeds (86)

Coventry (85)

How much lockdown? n New Year’s Eve 2019, China Personal movement data from Apple Maps on the notified the World Health days after lockdowns were imposed shows Londoners Organisation of a cluster of remained more mobile than people in other capitals. unexplained pneumonia cases in Wuhan in the province

%-100% 0% Oof Hubei. This was Covid-19; the first London case would eventually be traced to New York City 8 December. Since then, more than Amsterdam 207,000 people have died of Covid-19. Paris We know of at least three million cases. Dublin The number who have had the virus is likely many magnitudes higher. The death figures are more certain – but even here there are gaps in what we know. Despite Covid-19’s origins in China, Europe and the US have borne the brunt of the devastation. Nearly three- quarters of deaths (72 per cent) have been in just five countries: the US, Italy, Spain, France and the UK. In recent days 7 days 14 21 28 35 42 the average number of new deaths has started to fall slightly, with a peak being The death gap reached around 17 April. The US – which has recorded nearly twice as many deaths The UK government tally only counts deaths in hospitals; as anywhere else – appears to be taking we can widen this by counting death certificates, but the longer to turn the corner. scale of deaths remains unexplained. The social effects in the UK will Deaths in average year Covid deaths: government tally become clearer as more data emerges. We Extra Covid deaths: by death certificate Unexplained extra deaths know that claims for Universal Credit are rocketing, mental health is suffering, 15,000 and routine health services are at a near Deaths per week Universal Credit claims standstill. The first big wave has hit, were registered in the UK in but the ripple effect on our lives will

the four weeks to 13 April – 5,000 continue for weeks, months and even up from roughly 150,000 a years to come. l month before Covid-19 struck. *All charts use latest data as of 27 April Jan Apr

1-7 MAY 2020 | NEW STATESMAN | 31

2020+18 030 David Ottwell.indd 31 28/04/2020 17:55:01 he Covid-19 lockdown has got me thinking about Noah’s Ark. Re- member the original: God vowed to destroy mankind with a great flood because of its wickedness, Tbut told Noah and his family to self-isolate themselves in an ark – a substantial building with three storeys – with enough food for a long stay; to bring in two specimens of eve- ry living and creeping thing; and to stay put till the flood had subsided. Noah and his clan isolated themselves sev- en days before the flood started. The flood peaked in 40 days. As the waters receded, the lock-up instructions were gradually re- laxed and, in a further two months, it was safe for Noah and his family to go out again and resume their normal lives. Everyone and everything on land that had the “breath of life” had died. Leave aside the striking parallels, which will convince all Jehovah’s Witnesses and religious fundamentalists that it’s “all in the Bible”. Leave aside the fact that, so far, coronavirus is much more for- giving than the biblical deity; most of us will survive this particular flood of germs. Nevertheless, the Noah’s Ark problem recurs whenever rising demand presses on a fixed supply. In the biblical story the short- age was in the supply of salvation, which was strictly limited to the righteous Noah and his family. In today’s secular version, there is a fixed (in the short run) supply of medi- cal goods: most notably protective clothing, tests, ventilators, hospital beds, and so on. So these items have to be rationed. On what principle? The free-market solution is to ration by price. The price of goods in short supply goes up, leaving only the rich able to afford them. If we had a free market in healthcare, they would be able to buy up the lion’s share of scarce medical goods. Eventually the quantity of medical goods would rise to meet the increased de- mand, but in the meantime the poor would have to do without. The socialist solution is SPECIAL REPORT ration books or queueing. In the first case, everyone is allocated an equal share of the scarce resource; the second works on a “first come first served basis”. The people at the Why the West head of the queue get what’s in the shop, and the rest get nothing. Long queues, with nothing in the shops to buy, were a feature of late communism. has to change But as soon as we think of the problem in terms of life-threatening viruses and medi- What Noah’s Ark teaches us about our dogmatic cines, we see that neither the free market nor the socialist solution can be made to work. reliance on global supply chains Any attempt to apply the free market to medicine would lead straight to revolution. By Robert Skidelsky Socialism has severe problems, too. Some medical supplies, such as masks, can be suc- cessfully rationed, with everyone receiving

a fixed number. But hospital treatment can’t JONATHAN MCHUGH

32 | NEW STATESMAN | 1-7 MAY 2020

2020+18 032 Robert Skidelsky.indd 32 28/04/2020 17:23:24 be rationed, as meat and eggs were during explanation for our lack of preparedness is to be stockpiled and quickly deployed”, the Second World War, because it can’t be the business philosophy of “just in time”. but a prototype commissioned by the US divided up into individual portions. For As global health expert Alanna Shaikh put government was aborted in 2012, after the example, it would make no sense to allo- it: “Just-in-time ordering systems are great company concerned was acquired by a large cate a tenth of a ventilator to everyone. Ul- when things are going well. But in a time of producer of conventional ventilators, which timately, although testing can be done on a crisis, it means we don’t have any reserves. are “expensive, immobile, highly technical, random basis, treatment cannot be random. If a hospital or a country runs out of face difficult to use” and suited only to a rich Evidently, some different principle of masks or PPE equipment, there’s no big market. This kind of suppression of useful selection is needed. This takes us back to the warehouse full of boxes where we can go medical tools is little short of criminal. biblical story. God saved the virtuous; we to get more. We have to order more from a A final cause of unnecessary shortages is have decided to prioritise the economically supplier, we have to wait for them to pro- the West’s dogmatic reliance on global sup- useful. The old, the sick, the infirm, those duce it, and have to wait for them to ship it, ply chains. It is obviously more “efficient” to with “underlying health issues”, will be mainly from China.” have something produced in a cheap labour left to live or die as they may under condi- This criticism applies to much more than location than by more expensive domestic tions of lockdown; the overwhelming share medical procurement. It challenges the labour. But what happens when supplies of scarce medical supplies will go to those just-in-time orthodoxy generally prevalent from China are interrupted, because of sud- with a viable future. Utility replaces virtue in business. Reserves, the argument goes, den increased demand in China? (As report- as the highest value. cost money. Efficient markets don’t re- edly happened in the case of surgical masks.) Since we have got ourselves into this par- quire firms to have inventories, just to have The Noah’s Ark problem can never be en- ticular shortage trap, it is hard to see what enough “stock” to satisfy the consumer at tirely avoided because extreme, unexpected other principle of selection is available. the point of demand. To hold financial re- events will always occur. But we can be bet- Allocating scarce medical supplies to the serves against a rainy day is also wasteful. In ter prepared for the next pandemic. medically and economically useful is clear- efficient markets there are no rainy days, so Key measures would include, first, stock- ly the only sensible thing to do. But it sits firms should be leveraged up to the hilt. piling. Billions of dollars are spent stockpil- uncomfortably with another principle to This is fine, provided there are no unex- ing weapons of mass destruction. The same which the liberal world is committed: that pected events. Upon a “shock”, such as the logic should be applied to stockpiling weap- each life is of equal value. It is in the name of 2008 financial crisis, the whole efficient- ons of mass salvation. For example, a world equal rights to “life, liberty and happiness” market model collapses, and with it the authority could be tasked with maintain- that we ban all forms of discrimination economy. Something of this kind has now ing a strategic reserve of medical supplies against particular individuals and groups. happened to our medical services. Bed oc- needed to support the life of everyone on But in the situation we face today, someone cupancy is as high as 98 per cent in our mar- Earth for three months for a limited range must decide that some lives are more valu- ketised NHS, meaning there is no longer a of drastic events. This should be financed by able than others. Some people will be select- reserve, and we are not self-sufficient in taxes levied on states in proportion to their ed for the ark, while others will be left to face doctors and nurses; we expect other coun- national incomes. Such stockpiling could the future as best they can until we develop tries to train them. also be done nationally or regionally: the EU a vaccine or the virus has done its work. The conclusion seems clear enough. Since we have no ethically accepted principle of No patent laws should apply to medical choosing between who is to live and who to die, we should take exceptional pains to innovation. Public contracts and prizes ensure that we do not face acute shortages of life-preserving equipment. It is a scan- should be the only incentive dal that the developed world was caught so short of tools to deal with the pandemic (some countries more than others). For this We need to restore what used to be called would be an ideal place to start. If this was there are a number of reasons. “the precautionary principle”. In all those accompanied by multilateral disarmament, situations in which we can rationally antici- it might even be possible to reduce taxes. he first is the policy of auster- pate a severe, life-threatening event, “just- Second, no patent laws should apply to ity, which now shines forth in its in-time” thinking needs to be replaced by medical innovation. Public contracts and full wickedness. The evidence is “just-in-case” thinking. prizes should be the only incentive. Third, strong, as the Sunday Times re- But this is not all. A major fault lies in the countries that can afford to should retain ported, that “pandemic planning attitude of neoclassical economists and their enough spare domestic capacity to scale up Tbecame a casualty of the austerity years”. political followers to “innovation”. The medical production rapidly if needed. This As a result, our government faced a very general idea is that nothing will be invented would be in addition to stockpiling. Part of poor trade-off between medical interven- unless companies are given extended mo- this spare capacity should be automatically tion and “herd immunity”. The situation nopoly rights (patents) over the invention available to counter medical crises in the may even be worse than thought: recent to enable them to recoup their investment. developing world. The logic of globalisation research has questioned the degree of im- This is not only historically wrong (most in- does not apply to “essential” services. munity, and a higher number of deaths may novation has been done or financed by gov- A final thought: we don’t know how to follow. Broadly speaking, the shorter we are ernment), it can also have the effect of keep- increase the supply of virtue, but we can in- of medical resources, the more drastic the ing life-saving inventions off the market. crease the supply of ventilators. l lockdown will need to be. Shamel Azmeh, an international develop- Robert Skidelsky is a cross-bench peer and But austerity is by no means the only ment expert, has written that it was possi- emeritus professor of political economy at culprit. A second and more fundamental ble to develop ventilators “simple enough the University of Warwick

1-7 MAY 2020 | NEW STATESMAN | 33

2020+18 032 Robert Skidelsky.indd 33 28/04/2020 17:23:24 John Carey, photographed at his home in Oxford by Toby Glanville for the New Statesman in February 2020

34 | NEW STATESMAN | 1-7 MAY 2020

2020+18 034 Leo Robson meets John Carey.indd 34 28/04/2020 19:37:02 THE NS PROFILE The last public critic A distinguished Oxford academic and newspaper critic, John Carey has been a cultural influencer for 50 years. He is a high-establishment insider – and yet has never forgotten the social slights he experienced as a young man By Leo Robson

hen I was on the cusp of of English at Oxford University, and spoke idea of a poet making a “point”; and, finally, adulthood and trying to with especially memorable force and clar- crucially, the reference to a divided mind. cobble together a literary ity on the epic, a subject I was notionally In his new book, A Little History of Po- education, one figure tow- studying for the majority of that time. etry, Carey emphasises that Milton was a ered above all others in Asked how Paradise Lost related to the republican who married a royalist and the Wappearing to light the way. This was John epic tradition, Carey talked for exactly two author of a Christian poem whose hero is Carey, who during the years I spent as a minutes. He started by calling the poem “an Satan. Carey’s criticism has always set about sixth-former, a “partner” at John Lewis and anti-epic”. Milton’s project, Carey main- mapping the fissure in a writer’s psyche. a first-year undergraduate chaired the juries tained, was – like that of Marx and Freud His writing on DH Lawrence is concerned of both the Man Booker Prize and the Man – to ask “the really important question: with how “hotly” Lawrence disagreed with Booker International Prize and published what’s wrong with human beings?” Mil- himself. In his 1981 book on John Donne, his widely debated 2006 polemic What ton’s answer was that they trust passion, Carey wrote: “His insistence that ‘no man is Good Are the Arts?, a loose sequel to his and not reason – “it’s quite a good point”. an island’, taken together with the egotism anti-elitist classic The Intellectuals and the But Carey also conceded that Milton wor- of his writing, illustrate both his urge to Masses (1992), which I had devoured in the shipped Homer and Virgil. After all, he said, blend and the inescapable selfhood which John Lewis canteen. how does good overcome evil at the end of prompted and frustrated it.” The char- In the same period he wrote more than Paradise Lost? “With a chariot.” acter of Quilp in The Old Curiosity Shop 50 pungent pieces for the Sunday Times, on A great deal of Carey is present in those becomes, in Carey’s stereoscopic vision, topics including the novelist Anthony Powell two minutes of speech: the contrarianism; “Dickens’s way of avenging himself” upon (“He had no ideas”) and the biographer Peter the swiftly plucked quotations and perti- his own sentimentality. Ackroyd (“Surely Shakespeare’s life cannot nent left-field references; the elastic, tremu- Carey is himself a strange mixture – have been as boring as this”); and appeared lous vowel sounds; the tone that the critic avuncular but deadly, amiable yet formida- several times as a guest on the Radio 4 dis- and broadcaster Mark Lawson describes as ble, the donnish author of an essay called cussion programme In Our Time, where he “slightly amused”; the generic, possibly “Down with Dons” that ends with a trib-

was introduced as an “emeritus” professor faux-humble use of “it seems to me”; the ute to a famous don. He is a champion of t

1-7 MAY 2020 | NEW STATESMAN | 35

2020+18 034 Leo Robson meets John Carey.indd 35 28/04/2020 19:37:02 t high literature who has limited enthusi- literature. In his A-level year he was so said that his model for diligence was the asm for the major work of James Joyce and desperate to achieve a scholarship at Ox- historian Keith Thomas, a colleague at St Virginia Woolf, and a lifelong inhabitant ford that, to help him stay up reading, he John’s in the 1960s: “You’d see him in the of what he has dismissed as “the sheltered procured amphetamines from a doctor’s library from first thing and he’d have a great islands of the scholarly, the professionally son he had met at Church Youth Club. The pile of books.” And while it’s possible that bookish and the metropolitan”. And his results were “phenomenal”. Carey was able Carey felt inspired by Thomas’s immersion professional activities were driven by op- to work through the night, passed the exam, in past epochs, his working habits were al- posing impulses. In his memoir The Unex- and has remained in Oxford ever since, with ready firmly in place. He knew his A-level pected Professor, he recalls that he spent the the closest he has come to a radical move be- texts more or less by heart (“I’m afraid I was second half of the 1960s working his way ing a change of colleges. like that”) and spent virtually all his time as through Victorian literature, writing the He taught at Balliol (which he loved), an undergraduate in the library. “I read the chapters on Renaissance prose for Chris- Christ Church (which he loathed), Keble, whole of Wordsworth,” he said. “Amazing topher Ricks’s history of English-language and St John’s, before taking up the Merton thought.” (In his memoir, he says that much literature, translating and annotating De Professorship, arguably the most distin- of it was “ponderous”.) Doctrina Cristiana for Yale University guished literature chair in England, in 1975. Carey’s wife, the academic Gill Carey Press’s Milton’s project, and editing every- Frank Kermode claimed that Carey had – they met as undergraduates more than thing apart from Paradise Lost for the se- been “the very model of a Merton Profes- 60 years ago – said that he is “addicted to ries “Longman Annotated English Poets”. sor”. It wasn’t a view universally shared. His work”. All of his lectures are scripted, and He also started contributing book reviews predecessor – and D.Phil supervisor – Helen he takes notes on almost every book he for the New Statesman and producing a Gardner, hadn’t wanted him to get the posi- reads. He told me he would consider it “dis- short guide to Milton, which he hoped tion, and he was loathed by many of his col- honest” to write the introduction to a book would be lucid and funny. leagues. A Private Eye article claimed that if he didn’t know the author’s work. When These days, Carey, who is 86, knows the favourite song at English faculty par- I asked if he felt any trepidation before em- where his priorities lie. “I more and more ties was the theme tune from 2001: A Space barking on ambitious projects, he said he feel: what’s the point of writing a book that no one’s going to read?” he told me in Feb- ruary, during a four-hour conversation at Frank Kermode claimed Carey had been his house, just outside Oxford. His latest book – the first in 50 years that hasn’t been “the very model of a Merton Professor”. published by Faber and Faber – is part of a Yale series that originated with EH Gom- It wasn’t a view universally shared brich’s history of the world for younger readers. At one point, his editor suggested that Carey should think of a ten-year-old. Odyssey because that was the year Carey didn’t. “I blush a bit to think that.” “I did question that.” But he imagined teen- was due to retire. “They thought I was a The poet Ian Hamilton, an undergradu- agers. “They wouldn’t want any theory, or kind of upstart,” he said, “which I was.” ate at Keble in the 1950s, said that Carey notes, and they’d like personal anecdotes Carey isn’t the most reliable witness to was “full of life, vigour and ideas, clever as about the poets so you’d see them in a hu- his Oxford career. He pointed to his friend hell”. He pushed his students to work hard man light.” Carey told me that people often Christopher Ricks as the kind of “terrify- – harder, Carey has written, “than many of “sneer” at biographical criticism, but apply- ing” academic who would “make no pre- them had supposed anyone could”. Nigel ing the life to the work is, he says, “more in- tence” of thinking that someone’s lecture Smith, who points to Carey’s “schoolmas- teresting than ignoring” it. was any good. But the Princeton professor terly quality”, said that on arriving in Ox- Nigel Smith told me that Carey would fre- ford as a graduate student, Carey gave him ohn Carey was born in Barnes, south- quently “pillory” the guest speakers who a test on the continental Renaissance – “the west London, in 1934. His father had appeared at his Merton seminar. Carey also only time that’s ever happened to me”. Car- worked as an accountant at a French ey recognises that he could be “very mili- fabrics company, Godde, Bedin & Cie. tant”. He rejected Martin Amis’s applica- JCarey’s older siblings were privately tion to St John’s on the grounds that he had educated, the house was full of paintings no second language, and he still grumbles and antiques, and the family had a live-in that colleagues such as John Bayley, Terry maid. But after Godde, Bedin went into Eagleton and Richard Ellmann didn’t care liquidation, his father lost his job and a lot enough about modernising the syllabus. of money. (Carey remembers being shown When Eagleton raised the possibility of bundles of worthless shares.) Carey admired resigning his professorship, Carey encour- his parents, and has written with fondness aged him to leave. (Eagleton, for his part, about what he considers his ordinary stolid might be described as a qualified admirer – background, characterised by gardening, he wrote in the New Statesman that Carey visits to the parish church, compassion and is “a relentless debunker of pious guff and hard work. (His brother suffered from men- portentous rhetoric” who too frequently tal health problems, which Carey suspects “smacks at straw targets”.) may have included autism.) Carey’s discipline is combined with a Carey was sent to Richmond and minimum of fuss. One of his sons, Leo, who East Sheen Grammar School for Boys, works as an editor at the New Yorker maga-

where he discovered his love of English English dogs abroad zine, referred to his father’s approach: there LEIGH GEORGE

36 | NEW STATESMAN | 1-7 MAY 2020

2020+18 034 Leo Robson meets John Carey.indd 36 28/04/2020 19:37:15 Plain-speaking: Carey was inspired by Orwell’s essays to keep his writing spare and accessible

Book of Records is that animals must try harder.” Of Martin Amis as a critic: “He is never dull.” The masterly thing about the style of the Protestant reformer William Tyndale, Carey wrote, “is its not seeming to be there” – an Orwell-like, or perhaps Carey-like, quality. Central to Carey’s vividness is a gift for subtle observation. Leo Carey recalls that when he was studying for his A-levels, he pointed out to his mother that in “To Autumn”, Keats makes no mention of dead leaves. A voice was heard from another room: “That’s very good! Very good to see what’s not there!” At the time, Carey had recently published a new edition of The Violent Effigy to make good what he realised had been missing – a study of a single novel’s structure. And when he came to describe Dickens’s Bleak House, he used the imagery of omission, suggesting that the novel comprises two books, one about Lady Dedlock’s illicit sex life, the other about the machinations of the Court of Chancery, neither of which Dick- ens was able to write.

arey has a lifelong hatred of snob- bery. As a young don, he was ap- palled by Christ Church. In his is, he told me, “never any sense of agon, no contributing to Ian Hamilton’s New Review memoir, he describes an incident tearing out of hair”. When his father was and continuing to write for the NS, under at high table when the economist required to empty his college rooms, he literary editors Claire Tomalin and Mar- CRoy Harrod, asked by a guest who Carey simply got on with it: “Having to discard tin Amis. In 1973, he published The Violent was, replied, “Oh, that’s nobody.” Carey has all this stuff, which to many people would Effigy, perhaps his best book, a study of called his politics “dogmatically republican be a great wrench, he turned into a task that Dickens. And in 1977, recently ensconced as well as socialist, edging on communist”. one could do well.” as Merton Professor, he took the position (He has almost certainly refused a knight- Carey has moved, if not with the times, of chief book reviewer of the Sunday Times, hood.) Reviewing the 1983 election mani- then with certain literary fashions. Leo a job he retains to this day. festos in a piece headlined “The Strange Carey referred to the idea that his father Gill Carey, who “vets everything”, recalls Death of Political Language,” he argued that doesn’t “quite seem to have dated in the that after Carey started writing journalism, the Conservative one was “easily the best same way that other people have – people his style, which she says had been “long- written”, but reflected that this was “not at who are on the London literary scene and winded”, grew suddenly sharper. Leo Carey all what I’d hoped to find”. He squares his get sort of associated with a period of it”. recalls that “being really interesting was politics with writing for a Rupert Murdoch- Though he started as a Renaissance schol- something he almost set about”. owned newspaper on the grounds that he ar, he has been engaged with modern and One writer in particular helped to forge is – indeed like Murdoch himself – reflex- contemporary subjects since the Oxford his style. Carey told me that he recently ively anti-establishment and a passionate syllabus expanded and he began writing looked at his own 1987 collection of reviews egalitarian, convinced of the virtue of writ- for the New Statesman. “I remember being and journalism, Original Copy: “I thought ing for a general readership. terrified,” Carey said. “You’re writing for an a) this is extremely good, b) it’s just like Some believe that Carey’s populist al- unknown audience!” Orwell.” When, exactly 50 years ago, Pen- legiances have come at a price. The Intel- Working with the literary editor Karl guin brought out four volumes of Orwell’s lectuals and the Masses prompted derision Miller – a minatory presence – did little to Essays, Journalism and Letters, Carey was, for connecting the modernists’ disdain for put him at his ease. Gill Carey, as a prank, he tells me, “completely captivated”. From ordinary people to the Final Solution. The once wandered into the garden to say that Orwell, he drew the lesson that you should critic James Wood, who once complained Miller’s secretary was on the telephone, not only acquire a lot of knowledge but that Carey tends to stoop to the journalis- simply for the pleasure of watching him go “make it accessible to a big audience”. tic occasion, has written that he is a man “in pale. After Miller moved to edit the BBC Carey gets remarkable mileage from whom a philistine is trying to escape” and magazine The Listener in 1967, Carey served plain constructions: “Hughes’s aim is to questioned the “easy moralism” underpin- him as a book reviewer, radio critic, and reinvigorate language”; “One quality Craig ning the idea that, say, Virginia Woolf was TV columnist – he was forced to rent Raine lacks is dignity” (a compliment); simply “a pretentious snob”. t GRANGER HISTORICAL PICTURE ARCHIVE / ALAMY a television set for the purpose – while “The clear message of the 1986 Guinness Mark Lawson, who regularly worked

1-7 MAY 2020 | NEW STATESMAN | 37

2020+18 034 Leo Robson meets John Carey.indd 37 28/04/2020 19:37:24 t with Carey on radio and television, in print, though Clive James said he slept – “sometimes to my annoyance” – becom- told me, “All critics have weaknesses – few badly for months after Carey’s review of his ing “strangely enthused about some idea or have as few as John – and he does have a first book, The Metropolitan Critic. (James’s author or film or an entire art form to which tendency to see things through an English widow recently claimed that he could have I’d never previously given much thought”. class perspective, siding with the non-es- quoted the article by heart.) The Australian writer Peter Carey (no re- tablishment figures.” Lawson told me that During our conversation, Carey said lation) has said that the spur for his novel during a judges’ meeting for the WH Smith that he found Sally Rooney’s novels “sort Oscar and Lucinda, which won the Booker Literary Award, Carey said it was remark- of desultory”, though he conceded he was Prize in 1988, came from Carey’s article able that someone with a background like not the target audience. In A Little History of about the English writer Edmund Gosse. Nick Hornby’s could have written a novel Poetry, he quotes Yeats on the irrelevance of (Carey, who wasn’t aware of the connec- as accomplished as High Fidelity. It soon war poetry, then says: “It is hard to imagine tion, chose Oscar and Lucinda as one of emerged that Carey believed that Fever a more foolish comment.” his books of the year.) Pitch – the book that made football middle The question is what form enthusiasm class – was a memoir of hooliganism. “That might most profitably take. In Carey’s view, was so John,” Lawson said. “It would have Clive James slept badly critics often get in the way. His inaugu- been a very appealing narrative – much for months after Carey’s ral Merton lecture, published in the New more so than the other one, that Hornby Statesman under the headline “The Critic was the son of a Thatcherite knight who’d review of his first book as Vandal”, issued a warning about the dan- been involved in the Channel Tunnel.” gers of paraphrase. Towards the end, he But Carey’s egalitarian streak is coupled Carey admits that he is “pretty ashamed” posited the figure of “the anti-critic”, some- with a refusal to give anyone – humble, of some things he has written – he calls his one attuned to “the fact that literature is well-born, world-renowned – a free pass. review of Clive James “smart-arse”, and irreplaceable, irreducible, and irrefutable”. Craig Raine – in one of his rare dignified recalled a “very mischievous – I’m afraid – His books are notable for the wealth of quo- moments – wrote that you had to look to review” he wrote about Germaine Greer. tation and for trying, insofar as possible, to the early TS Eliot to find a critic with Car- But he believes his enthusiasm is often inhabit the author’s “mind”, “personality” ey’s “eye for what is bad in an author”. My overlooked. He regrets that his book on or “imaginative world”. undergraduate head of department, Thom- Donne is viewed as an attack. Of his 1977 as Docherty, told me he had been flattered book on Thackeray, Carey says that he was t this stage of his evolution, John to receive one of Carey’s dressing-downs “trying to say what’s good about him actu- Carey welcomes any opportu- ally,” though he couldn’t help adding: “It’s nity to give readers unimpeded just that I happen not to think that a lot of it access to works of literature. is worth reading.” When I rang him at home on 22 AApril, during the coronavirus lockdown, n recent decades, Carey has devoted he did not seem worried, despite being in most of his time to acts of advocacy the high-risk group: “Thank heavens Gill and appreciation. He produced a series and I feel fine.” He told me that when he of anthologies, one of which, The Faber wasn’t jogging around his garden (“we are Book of Reportage, was a best-seller. lucky in having one”) or riding his bicycle I(“That was when we bought a second car,” (“it’s perfectly legal”) or reading the new Leo Carey said.) In Pure Pleasure, he wrote Hilary Mantel (the jury’s out), he was at about his favourite books of the 20th centu- work on a pair of particularly Careyish pro- ry. His biography of William Golding was a jects – a weekly series for the Sunday Times labour of love. (Hilary Mantel wrote to tell website in which he reprints a poem and him it was the best literary biography she provides a short, mostly factual introduc- had ever read.) What Good are the Arts? and tion, and an anthology of works that he The Unexpected Professor both end with particularly treasures but couldn’t quote in a celebration of reading. Carey’s last book full in the Little History. was an abridged version of Paradise Lost, Ishiguro seemed to hit upon the source designed to encourage a new audience. And of Carey’s enduring appeal when he said in A Little History of Poetry, he writes with that he doesn’t “come over as an academic” passionate concision about dozens of po- and that “everything he says seems to come ets, including Milton, Donne, Rilke, Stevie inflected by personal, lived experience”. Smith, Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop, Yet Carey is often dealing with subjects on Seamus Heaney, Philip Larkin, Mary Oliver. which, in Ishiguro’s phrase, “his scholarly Carey’s cruelty may inspire amusement expertise is immense”. Unlike the major- or Schadenfreude, but his presence is ab- ity of his colleagues and descendants, Carey sorbing and his curiosity is germinal. Kazuo never switches code or shifts guises, speak- Ishiguro – whom Carey called a “wonder- ing now as a populist, now as a specialist. ful, wonderful, wonderful writer” – told He has no need to – for more than 50 years, me that during on-stage events with Carey, his taut, spry, flexible, idiomatic style has he often becomes “properly lost in conver- enabled him to engage a large non-specialist sation”: “I suspect him of employing some audience without, for the most part, stint- kind of hypnotist’s trick.” And whenever ing his deep infectious belief that literature they meet, Ishiguro invariably finds himself is serious, and matters. l

38 | NEW STATESMAN | 1-7 MAY 2020

2020+18 034 Leo Robson meets John Carey.indd 38 28/04/2020 19:37:31 Megan Nolan Out of the Ordinary This is the longest I have gone without being touched. My body is starting to feel like a stranger

t the beginning of isolation, I so- The way that it can be made to feel, the and beauty. And yet he writes: “But even licited company urgently. When I feelings it provokes in others. The way it with the nice long walks and good com- Aspoke to my friends on video calls, aligns with somebody else’s, sexually or pany, it’s finally just weird to not be able to my body reacted with the same surge of ex- otherwise: these are the ergonomics of in- touch anyone.” cited pleasure it would feel when I walked timacy. A leg that, venturing tentatively Until I read that, I had been thinking about into one of our pubs and saw them there. from its bar stool, turns out to fit perfectly what I miss in more general terms: I miss When I spoke to somebody I found at- between those of your date, or the conviv- dinner with X, I miss bumping into Y, I miss tractive it grew warm and restless as it ial arm of your best friend thrown around flirting with Z. I hadn’t comprehended how would on a date. Now it is learning not to a shoulder in jubilance: these are the things strange it is that I have not been touched bother. The hangover from normal life has that make you more than you are, more at all, by anyone, for so many weeks. It is, I worn off, my reflexes dulled. My body has than a thing. realise, the longest I have gone without caught up with my brain and knows that Now that my body is alone, it is dissected. some kind of touch in my entire life. it is still, stagnating; that there is nothing It lives only in images, in pieces. Eroticism In the days after I understand this, I grow possible in any direction. is reduced to body parts. The only manner resentful and jealous of my friends who What does my body usually do? It of seduction we have is to parcel them out are experiencing this time with their part- moves. It doesn’t move with any par- to each other and hope for the best. Pho- ners, thinking that even if they are as bored ticular grace or athleticism or elegance, tographic representations of the body may and anxious as I am, at least they have the but it moves, is moving always. It moves feel like the closest we can come to physi- anchor of touch. At least they can be made through cities and from person to person. cal intimacy, but being really experienced is to feel real in that way. In The Divided Self Its normal state is one of propulsion, of use. so different to being seen that I may as well RD Laing writes of a young woman patient Even when I dislike it aesthetically, I can ap- be taking photos of shrubbery, of cutlery, of his: “If she is not in the actual presence preciate this use, and without it my body of a kitchen sink. of another person who knows her, or if she grows ever more foreign to me. cannot succeed in evoking this person’s I read back over the Oliver Sacks book A presence in his absence, her sense of her Leg to Stand On, in which he describes a I feel myself incline own identity drains away from her. Her catastrophic injury that led to him losing towards hibernation panic is at the fading away of her being. She not only the physical sensation in his leg, is like Tinker Bell. In order to exist she needs but also any feeling of ownership over it. and disengagement someone else to believe in her existence.” What he experienced was the inversion of And I think then of how trauma can split phantom limb syndrome, where an ampu- On video calls, in the corner of my screen, the mind from the body, how that process tee feels the presence of a limb which is no I see myself as the other person does (or at is happening on an unthinkable scale across longer physically present. Sacks’s leg was, least I think I do – of course, I never truly the world. indeed, still attached to his body, but he can) and am appalled, angling this way and At first, this time had something to it that could no longer feel it: “The leg suddenly that, trying to escape myself. “Tell me this reminded me of buying nice underwear and assumed an eerie character… and became a is not what I am like in real life,” I want to posing for pictures to send to a lover you foreign, inconceivable thing, which I looked say. So far, I have accepted these imperfect won’t see for a while, the conversations and at, and touched, without any sense what- interactions as “better than nothing”, but I connections extended hopefully, in recog- ever of recognition or relation.” am beginning to seriously doubt that. What nition of a shared future. The longer it goes Devoid of use, interacting with nothing I meant by better than nothing was that to on, the less we have any sense of an ending, outside of itself, my body feels and appears talk to somebody, in any way, was better the more ridiculous that held pose comes meaningless to me. It isn’t that I dislike it than not to talk to them at all. Now I suspect to feel. It is impossible to maintain. I feel especially, or want it to be different. What that the inadequate approximation of some- myself retreat and incline towards hiberna- I feel is worse than the passing, passionate thing as profound and fundamentally nec- tion and disengagement. My body is learn- revolt I feel towards it intermittently in nor- essary as human connection may ultimately ing that it is not in use, and that it shouldn’t mal life, which is to say that I now feel noth- be more depressing than its absence. hold its breath waiting for the time when ing at all. In daily life, even when I find my I email back and forth a little with an it will be. Learning that there is no point in body ugly as a collection of parts, it collides acquaintance who is isolated with close tensing for eventual release, my body exists with other people in a way which coheres it, friends in upstate New York, aware that slackly now, sapped of purpose, becoming

IAN McGOWAN and elevates it beyond what it is. he’s lucky to have them and access to nature colder and stranger to itself. l

1-7 MAY 2020 | NEW STATESMAN | 39

2020+18 039 Megan Nolan.indd 39 28/04/2020 16:58:53 LETTER FROM PARIS The smoke clears over the city An uneasy calm has returned after riots in the northern suburbs By Andrew Hussey

ne of the few consolations left to Paris. For now, many of them seem to have Heart”, a charity that feeds the homeless Parisians since the lockdown (“le disappeared from the streets and are being and those on low incomes, is reporting confinement”), which began on housed in empty hotels, temporary shelters queues of a hundred people or more in some 17 March, is that for most of April and hostels. Meanwhile, life in poorer parts areas. A public appeal has been launched by the days have been sunny and of the city is further strained by the policy the charity, which says that soon it will not Obright. In the southern part of Paris where of staying at home, especially if you live, have the resources to feed these people. I live, the streets are empty, practically as many Parisians do, in a tiny space with a without traffic, and it’s rare to see a plane family and no access to a wider world. hat President Emmanuel in the clear, blue skies. In the nearby park – On every street in my quartier, there Macron fears most is civil one of the few to remain open – kids mess are posters offering help for women living disorder, but this has already about, parents sunbathe, young women with violent and abusive men. According started and once again the practise yoga and small bands of lads from to Marlène Schiappa, the secretary of state suburbs of northern Paris the neighbouring council estate smoke for gender equality, in the first few weeks Whave been the flashpoint. The trouble began weed and listen to music. Early each on Saturday 18 April in the council estate evening, in the nearby Place de la Garenne, of Villeneuve-la-Garenne, when a 30-year- there is an impromptu (and illegal) game of The youths of old motorcyclist (who does not want to be five-a-side football. Seine-Saint-Denis feel named) was driving at speed and without If you’re in the right frame of mind, you a helmet and collided with a police vehicle. could easily mistake these scenes as a typi- angry and abandoned News quickly spread around the quartier cal lazy afternoon in August, the time of that this was a bavure (a deliberate and ma- the year when most Parisians go on holiday of the lockdown acts of “conjugal violence” licious police cock-up), and by midnight and the city is left to tourists. When the sun reported to the police increased by 32 per the police were under attack from youths shines, the dark days of early March, when cent. There is every reason to believe that throwing fireworks and setting fire to rub- the threat of Covid-19 dominated our lives, this figure will rise as the lockdown – and bish bins and cars. Over the next five nights, now seem to belong to another, quite differ- with it the claustrophobia and sense of im- there were battles and stand-offs across the ent era. This is all deeply deceptive. prisonment – continues. northern suburbs. The most violent clashes The most visible indicators of the effects There are other tensions, too. In the were on the Rue Danielle-Casanova, near of the virus are that so many people are Département de Seine-Saint-Denis to the the rundown estate of Les Francs Moisins. now wearing masks (often homemade), north of Paris – and one of the poorest places The police, wearing riot gear, hit back hard, bars and restaurants remain closed, and the in France – there have been reports of food shooting off LBDs, or lanceurs de balles de police are ever-vigilant on those who try to riots, most notably from the local préfet (in défense. These are commonly used in France get around the lockdown. In the city you effect the chief of police), Georges-François in riot situations and can fire off a range of still have to carry signed papers that docu- Leclerc. He has warned in a leaked email ammunition that is supposed to be non- ment and justify your movements. The that there is a floating population of be- lethal but has caused serious injury. They police have been especially tough on the tween 15,000 and 20,000 people who are were widely used during the gilets jaunes more affluent Parisians who have tried to either living in “shanty towns, emergency demonstrations of 2019, and the Council of get away to their second homes, imposing shelters or hostels for migrants”, and who Europe called on the French to suspend their direct fines and often escorting motorists will find it hard to feed themselves in the use. This stricture was ignored. back to within the city limits. next few weeks as food supplies diminish. On the night of 21 April, a primary One potential catastrophe concerns the Already there are angry crowds queuing school in the district of Gennevilliers was plight of the homeless. There are reckoned up in front of shops with empty shelves. half burned to the ground. There were to be as many as 3,500 homeless people in The Restos du Cœur (“Restaurants of the demands for the army to be called in but

40 | NEW STATESMAN | 1-7 MAY 2020

2020+18 040 Andrew Hussey.indd 40 28/04/2020 16:55:28 Le confinement: the closed Palais Royal garden a construction site, a hospital or a super- déconfinement adapté, a planned and grad- in Paris on the 42nd day of lockdown in France market – you risk catching Covid-19. Mean- ual easing of the lockdown. while, TF1, the main television channel, has Édouard Philippe, the prime minister, Christophe Castaner, the minister of the in- played down the riots and reported instead has announced a six-point plan for re- terior, claimed that this would only escalate on those who could afford to get out of the construction. The focus will be on public the confrontations with the police. Street city by 17 March – this is more than a quarter health, including the distribution of masks, violence was also reported in the northern of the population of Paris – and who seem to the reopening of schools (which will be in towns of Lille, Roubaix and Tourcoing, and be treating the lockdown almost as an early stages), starting up businesses again (work- further south in Lyon and Toulouse. holiday. By contrast, the youths of Seine- ing from home will be encouraged), open- For the time being, a fraught but fragile Saint-Denis do not just feel angry, Belaid ing shops, relaunching the public transport calm has returned to these trouble spots, said, but abandoned and betrayed. systems and giving permission for public partly helped by a video from the injured meetings. But the logistical details of the motorcyclist, released by his lawyer, in sually translated as “relaxa- plan have not been worked out. For this which he appealed for the rioters to “return tion”, relâchement has become reason, confidence in Macron’s govern- home” and look after their families. But the a popular word to describe the ment has fallen to 38 per cent from 47 per boredom, frustration and aggression that minor flouting of the rules of cent in recent weeks. The hard left and the provoked the riots have not gone away. An lockdown. There is now more far right have accused the president of lies Algerian neighbour of mine, Belaid Mechi- Ulong-distance jogging, cycling and some and incompetence. Compared to what the ba, who knows the troubled suburbs of Par- bakeries are even selling flowers and plants French have seen of the shambolic strategy is well, recently visited Gennevilliers and – non-essential items that can cheer up even of the UK government, however, Macron’s discovered that the youths who lived there the dreariest balcony in the warm spring response has seemed impressive and deci- were as angry as he had ever seen them. sunshine. The government is, however, sive, if somewhat sluggish at the beginning One of the reasons for this anger, Belaid cautious that relâchement can too quickly of the crisis. said, made perfect sense: in a time of lock- become a dangerous, even deadly, form of The public wants to believe that change down these youths feel even more cut off complacency. There are daily updates from is on the way. But I don’t know anybody from central Paris. Transport in the north- the government on the number of Cov- in Paris who has travel plans much beyond ern suburbs is erratic and wildly over- id-19 deaths in France – more than 23,000 their own quartier, let alone planning a l STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES crowded, and if you have to get to work – to at the time of writing. The talk now is of summer holiday.

1-7 MAY 2020 | NEW STATESMAN | 41

2020+18 040 Andrew Hussey.indd 41 28/04/2020 16:55:51 Ian Leslie Left Field Politicians must do more than simply listen to expert advice – they need to challenge it

ould you rather our response to gatherings was largely pointless. Two days which “everyone nodded, nobody agreed”. this pandemic was led by politi- later Downing Street banned them – not Arguments flush out the opinions that peo- Wcians or experts? I suspect most of because new evidence had emerged but be- ple are too polite to express at first. you would plump for the latter. The terms cause that’s what other governments were Third, experts should be encouraged have contrasting connotations. Politicians doing. If anything, you might argue that to sound the alarm when they feel it is are self-seeking, deceitful and full of bluster. Downing Street followed the advice of its warranted. At least some of the govern- Experts are disinterested, honest and au- experts too closely for too long. ment’s scientists believed early on that an thoritative. It’s tempting to punt the big de- Experts have a crucial part to play in epidemic was imminent. In a meeting of cisions to them. But experts cannot decide policymaking, but for their value to be the government’s expert panel on 21 Febru- what to do in this crisis any more than poli- realised politicians must know how to get ary, John Edmunds of the London School of ticians can author scientific studies on it. the most out of them. That means, first, Hygiene and Tropical Medicine had a prob- One definition of an expert is someone ensuring that their experts are cognitively lem with his broadband and could not who understands better than most how lit- diverse. Mark Woolhouse, professor of in- be heard. He later emailed to say that he tle he or she knows. The governor of New fectious disease epidemiology at Edinburgh thought the threat should be “high” instead York, Andrew Cuomo, has remarked that University, has remarked, “I am an epide- of “moderate”. His email was noted but it his scientific advisers preface every answer miologist and I worry that the response is did not shift the group’s decision. What if with “I don’t know”. The scientists know based too much on epidemiology alone.” somebody had stood up at that meeting and little about how infectious Covid-19 is, why This was a wonderfully self-aware thing to shouted? What if Professor Edmunds had it kills some people and barely bothers oth- say. Every academic field has its blind spots sent his email in all caps? “I do think there’s ers, whether it returns to those whom it has – the mathematical models used by epide- a bit of a worry in terms of you don’t want already visited, whether and how it will mu- to unnecessarily panic people,” he said later. tate, or the best way to treat it. They are des- We put a great premium, in this country, perately trying to work out the best way to Medical advisers on calmness. But somebody needs to risk handle it, but it is like navigating in a snow- decided to set the UK’s sounding like Chicken Little. Sometimes storm when every instrument is faulty. the sky really is falling in. That’s why the soothing phrase “guided risk level at “moderate” None of this is to blame the scientists. by the science” means very little. When The point is that politicians should not ac- the problem is as new as this one, there miologists are not very good at accounting cept their advice at face value. Matthew is no such thing as “the science”, just a for the empirical realities of human behav- Cavanagh, a political adviser to Tony Blair’s spread of informed opinions which often iour. The government also needs to listen to government, has observed similarities be- contradict each other. On 16 January, Devi public health officials and frontline physi- tween the slow response to Covid-19 and the Sridhar, professor of global public health at cians, who can highlight dangers that aren’t planning of the 2006 British-led campaign Edinburgh University, publicly urged gov- showing up in the data. in Helmand, Afghanistan, in which hun- ernments to take Covid-19 more seriously. Second, it means getting the experts to dreds of soldiers lost their lives. “Our fail- But on 27 January, Wang Linfa, a professor argue with one another, and with the politi- ure,” he said, “was not (as the media always of infectious diseases in Singapore, said his cians (or their advisers). Psychologists who assumed) that we were ignoring or overrul- “gut feeling” was that the Covid-19 out- study group decision-making talk about ing military advice. It was that we failed to break would prove less dangerous to the the problem of “shared information bias”: challenge it, to interrogate it enough, to ex- world than Sars. You might have thought he groups tend to spend more time discussing pose the differences within the expert com- would know, since he co-discovered Sars. what everyone already knows than they do munity and have a proper debate.” Critics of the government accuse it of exploring each individual’s knowledge and Cavanagh notes that one of the conse- taking radical action too late because it ig- perspective. The main reason for this is po- quences of a culture in which politicians are nored the scientists. But up until 12 March, liteness; people like to get along and have held in low esteem is that they are nervous the UK’s risk level, which is set by medi- a low tolerance for conflicting views. In a of being seen to question experts. It’s crucial cal advisers based on scientific advice, re- crisis, experts may be particularly keen to that they do so, not least because they will mained at “moderate”, even as the virus be helpful by reaching consensus quickly, carry the can either way. Both politicians devastated northern Italy. On 11 March, the which increases the pressure to swallow and voters should recognise and respect that government’s deputy chief medical officer doubts and questions. In his novel Amster- profound responsibility. We are all flying

Jenny Harries suggested that banning mass dam, Ian McEwan describes a meeting in blind, but somebody has to land the plane. l IAN McGOWAN

42 | NEW STATESMAN | 1-7 MAY 2020

2020+18 042 Ian Leslie.indd 42 28/04/2020 16:53:03 ART | BOOKS | MUSIC | FILM | TELEVISION | RADIO The Critics MARTIN O’NEIL Nature cure: Sophie McBain on why we need the wild. 44

BOOKS ART BACK PAGES Simon Michael Felicity Cloake on armchair travel Kuper Prodger The NS Q&A: How we should plan Christen Købke Diana Evans for an unknowable and the art of Sarah Manavis on future. 50 contentment. 52 lockdown with in-laws 1-7 MAY 2020 | NEW STATESMAN | 43

2020+18 043 Critics Opener.indd 43 28/04/2020 16:49:35 THE CRITICS | BOOKS

THE CRITICS | CRITIC AT LARGE Nature’s lessons in how to live Stuck indoors, many of us yearn for green spaces. But scientists are only beginning to realise how much our mental health depends on the natural world By Sophie McBain

ew York’s lockdown coincided al- in Midtown Manhattan, a hard-edged land- anxiety, obsessively checking death tolls most perfectly with the arrival of scape of concrete, tarmac, glass and chrome; and refreshing news feeds, either impa- Nspring. On the last day before my the trees are dwarfed by skyscrapers, the tient and distracted with my daughters or daughter’s nursery closed we stopped on plants confined to small flowerbeds outside too affectionate, smothering them with the our walk home to admire the blossom that luxury apartment complexes and pulled fierce, greedy love that is inseparable from had appeared, seemingly overnight, on a out and replaced every season. None of this fear. Then I’d reach the park, heart pound- spindly tree planted on the pavement just bothered me until my world shrank. ing, where the blossom petals gathered like off Second Avenue. A week later on Nowruz I took up running again, leaving our snow drifts on empty footpaths, and the – the Iranian New Year, which falls on the apartment just after sunset to jog through breeze carried the smell of petrichor and spring equinox – New York’s governor an- eerily quiet streets, down Fifth Avenue, grass, magnolia, something funky from nounced the lockdown and we celebrated past parked ambulances and shuttered de- inside the zoo, and I’d feel a surge of joy, an my daughter’s third birthday alone at home. partment stores and the armed police out- unthinking, animal happiness. I would feel By then all the trees along our street were side Trump Tower, and into Central Park. guilty, too, that I could still find such pleas-

wearing pink and white petticoats. We live I spent all day cooped up inside with my ure while surrounded by death. GABRIC/MILLENNIUMSLAVEN IMAGES, UK

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I wasn’t alone in seeking solace in nature, The Natural Health Service: What the marooned in a big city under lockdown – or at least in the small pockets of green space Great Outdoors Can Do for Your Mind one can feel transported and restored. “Re- one finds in the city. Online, people posted Isabel Hardman ally, awe is Earth’s signature,” Jones writes. photos of back gardens, woodland, fields, “We may have forgotten but how could it spring flowers, feeling reassured – or was Atlantic, 336pp, £16.99 not be? The adorable, terrible, leaky, stinky, it some naive sense of disbelief? – that all Losing Eden: Why Our Minds Need the Wild gooey, glimmery, furry, bloody, swoony, around us the natural world could exist un- Lucy Jones shimmery, thumping majesty of the Earth.” moved by the unfolding horror. Now that Allen Lane, 272pp, £20 Modern indoor lifestyles are believed to time outdoors is limited, we hunger for it, be linked to a global rise in myopia among Rootbound: Rewilding a Life surprised at our appetite. We know, instinc- children, and, in a sense, we are all becom- Alice Vincent tively, that it makes us feel better, but we ing short-sighted; our horizons are shrink- don’t fully understand why. The benefits Canongate, 368pp, £14.99 ing unnoticed. Jones writes of the problem of experiencing nature may be far greater of an “extinction of experience”: as every than is commonly appreciated; scientists if we could spend more time outdoors. passing generation becomes a little more are only now starting to understand the “Nature can make a life made grey by detached from nature, they feel less person- hidden mechanisms that could explain why mental illness seem rich again,” she writes. ally invested in preserving plants and ani- a woodland walk or a wild swim can boost The sense of wonder she feels for the natu- mals they have never seen and cannot name. mental and physical well-being, why a leafy ral world is contagious. “Approaching an We do not fully understand the psychologi- view from your hospital bed may aid recov- old tree is like walking up to a dinosaur or a cal cost of mass extinctions and a warming ery, why even showing inmates nature vid- great blue whale to say hello,” she observes, planet, or the psychic suffering inflicted in a eos seems to reduce violence in prisons. a sentiment I had not felt until she described world where access to green spaces is often Britain’s oldest tree, Fortingall Yew in a luxury. Soon it may be too late. n 2016 the political journalist Isabel Perthshire, which is believed to be between Hardman, assistant editor at the Spec- 2,000 and 3,000 years old. When it comes he emerging science on the benefits of Itator, suffered a mental breakdown, an to the science, Hardman is cautious and connecting to nature challenges the acute attack of post-traumatic stress disor- hyper-alert to “quackery”. The scientific ev- TCartesian distinction between mind der that felt, to her, like her mind had just idence to support nature prescriptions is still and body, or the idea that humans exist in stopped working. In the difficult years that scant, but then again, the effects of main- some realm distinct from nature. We are followed, conventional medicine – medica- stream mental health interventions, from creatures, and we mingle with the Earth and tion, therapy, GP and A&E visits – helped psycho-pharmaceuticals to talking cures, its ecosystems in ways we cannot yet grasp. her overcome her deepest crises. But she are hard to measure and under-researched. Some studies suggest, for example, that reg- also credits her rekindled love for spending One difficult lesson Hardman learned ular exposure to M vaccae, a type of bacteria time outdoors – on daily walks, wild swim- is that nature is a balm, but not a cure for found in the soil, can protect people against ming, hiking, bird-watching, orchid-hunt- mental malaise. “I have now realised I may forms of inflammation that are linked to ing and gardening – with making her want never close up the black hole inside me,” she depression, anxiety and schizophrenia. to keep living. Her most recent book, The writes, with powerful simplicity. Political Phytoncides, the chemicals released by Natural Health Service, makes an impas- journalism is fast-paced and competitive, trees and plants in the forest, are believed by sioned case for integrating nature and out- and Hardman has found it hard to be forced some scientists to increase a person’s natu- door exercise into mental health treatment. to take many months of sick leave. Hers is ral killer cells, lowering their risk of cancer As Hardman notes, there are signs that not always the life she would have chosen, and other diseases – a finding that has led to this may be happening: in 2018 NHS doc- but she writes that the plant and animal life the rising popularity for “forest bathing” in tors in Shetland began offering “nature pre- she encounters on her daily rambles are “so parts of Asia. scriptions”. Alongside the usual medicinal memorable as to make me feel that, at the The Attention Restoration Theory sug- offers, the doctors gave patients with debili- very least, I am not wasting the life I have gests that the gentle stimulation created tating physical and mental health problems ended up with”. by viewing natural landscapes can help us instructions such as “really look at lichen” The writer Lucy Jones also believes that overcome the mental fatigue generated by or “step outside – be still for three minutes”. the natural world played a role in helping our unending digital distractions and make In recent years, the NHS has encouraged so- her – in her case, to overcome an alcohol us more resilient to stress. Another theory cial prescribing, which is when doctors help and drug addiction that overshadowed her gaining support is biophilia, the idea that patients connect to community groups, art late teens and twenties. During her recov- humans are evolutionarily hard-wired to and fitness classes or social services. ery, she took daily walks in Walthamstow prefer certain natural landscapes. Maybe Hardman documents a plethora of chari- Marshes. “I started to feel that I belonged to modern urbanites are like tigers raised in ties, voluntary groups and NHS-funded a wider family of species, a communion of reptile terrariums: our habitat is all wrong programmes that are encouraging those beings, the matrix of life, from the spiders and it is hurting us in ways we aren’t even with mental illnesses to reconnect with na- to the lichen and the cormorants and coots. able to articulate. ture, through activities such as gardening or I felt born again. Nature picked me up by Hardman and Jones cover many of the forest walking or park runs. These projects the scruff of my neck, and I rested in her same studies and both argue forcefully that are helping people to rebuild their lives, still teeth for a while,” she writes in Losing Eden. access to outdoor space is a pressing social their darkest thoughts or find a new way of Her fascinating exploration of the new sci- justice issue. But Jones calls for a more fun- engaging with the world. Mental healthcare ence of our connection to the natural world damental overhaul of how humans relate in the UK is chronically under-resourced, emphasises the untold psychological cost to the world around us. She argues that we and Hardman underlines that the Natural of environmental degradation and climate need a new language: too often the words Health Service is no substitute for NHS care. catastrophe. It is written in such lush, viv- we use encode a false dichotomy between

But we might all be happier and healthier id prose that reading it – especially while humanity and our surroundings (nature, t

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t the environment) or define nature only in terms of its value to mankind (natural capital, or even terms such as ecotherapy). “It’s time for a new cosmology, a new love story,” Jones writes. The natural history writers Jones grew up reading were all straight, white, educated men; she says she is hungry for different stories, ones that do not view nature as something “out there”, waiting to be tamed. Like Hardman and Jones, the journal- ist and gardening expert Alice Vincent is a millennial woman (as am I). We are the first digital natives, our early adulthood was shaped by the 2008 financial crash, ours is the first generation in modern history to earn less than our parents. When Vincent took up gardening in her mid-twenties, it was considered an unusual pursuit, but mil- lennials are now driving a surge in demand for houseplants, and particularly for Insta- gram-friendly succulents and photogenic varieties such as fiddle-leaf figs. Vincent sees the gardening revival as a second-wave Arts and Crafts movement, one “driven by a similar desire to slow down and turn our backs on the technology that has left us as one of the most overworked and vocally anxious generations yet”. In Rootbound, Vincent is less interested in untouched landscapes than in the green oases one can find, or create, in the city: parks, community gardens, greenhouses, balconies, houseplants. This is a book about the life-affirming joy of tending to nature: planting, pruning, digging and weeding. Part botany, part memoir, Rootbound is an exploration of how gardening helped Vin- cent in the aftermath of a painful break- up, as she learned to let go of the future she imagined for herself and navigate the uncertainty and instability of millennial adulthood. Through gardening she learns to accept impermanence and to relinquish control. She becomes aware that nothing good (or bad) can last for ever. All three writers are attuned to how ob- serving nature helps us make sense of our own lives, and offers a way of understand- ing the tenacity of life and the inevitability of death. We cannot stop ourselves from Inside the searching nature for meaning, or seeing it as a metaphor. And perhaps that’s why as I ran through Central Park recently, with these books on my mind, I thought about how the Trump nursery pandemic was serving as a reminder that mankind cannot exist apart from nature. Why the 45th president is terrified of boredom Whether we work the land or live mostly indoors, behind LCD screens, in hermeti- By David Reynolds cally sealed, air-conditioned offices, we can- not escape our biology. We will all return to The Toddler-in-Chief: What Donald Trump Teaches Us About the Modern Presidency the earth one day. But until then we cannot Daniel W Drezner help but put down roots and grow; we can University of Chicago Press, 282pp, £12 only strain towards the light. l EDEL RODRIGUEZ

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any authors of books on politics and doesn’t read even short memos. Unlike all presidency to driving a fast car on a twisty history, present company included, his predecessors since the 1960s, he rarely mountain road, and warns that the “guard- Menjoy using epigraphs to help sign- if ever looks at the collation of intelligence rails” preventing a bad driver from going post the argument and add erudition, or now known as the President’s Daily Brief, over the edge have been badly damaged in at least the appearance of it. But this is the preferring short verbal presentations spiced recent years. first work of political science I can recall that with images and graphics. Invoking Arthur Schlesinger’s indict- heads every chapter not with some profun- These failings are exacerbated by his ment of the Imperial Presidency in the era dity from Marx, Gramsci, Foucault et al but “knowledge deficit”. As the first incumbent of Vietnam and Watergate – an interpreta- with a quotation from Caring for Your Baby of the Oval Office without either previ- tion revived in this century by scholars such and Young Child by the American Academy ous public service or military experience, as Andrew Rudalevige – Drezner notes how of Pediatrics. Trump has little awareness of how govern- recent presidents have “seized more power Daniel Drezner, a political science profes- ment works and apparently scant interest in response to a dysfunctional legislative sor and regular contributor to the Washing- – stating in 2016 that he had never read the branch” and how the judiciary – especially ton Post, develops two propositions in this biography of a single president and had no the Supreme Court – has failed to question crisp, witty and highly readable philippic. intention of doing so. He gets much of his presidential “power grabs”. In 2015, two The first is that “Donald Trump behaves information about events from watching major achievements of Barack Obama’s for- more like the Toddler-in-Chief than the cable TV, especially the ultra-conservative eign policy depended on executive action to Commander-in-Chief”. Drezner does not secure US adherence – the deal to contain dispute the physiological evidence that the Iran’s nuclear programme and the Paris ac- 45th US president “is a borderline-obese Europeans should not cord on climate change – because he had white male over the age of 70” but argues assume evicting Trump no hope of getting a formal treaty through that “Trump’s psychological make-up the Senate. In 2017-18 Trump used the same approximates to that of a toddler. He is would be any panacea powers to pull out of both agreements, with not a small child, but he sure as heck destabilising international consequences. acts like one.” Fox News and Fox Business channels, dur- In the end, Drezner argues, “the most im- This, of course, has been a frequent com- ing what is euphemistically known as “ex- portant check on the Toddler-in-Chief will plaint of Trump’s critics. “I’m the mother ecutive time” in the residence. Some close have to come from the American people” of five, grandmother of nine. I know a tem- advisers say he spends between four to eight when they vote in November 2020. His per tantrum when I see one,” exclaimed hours a day in front of a television. This is book was completed last Christmas, when the Democrat Speaker of the House Nancy when he generates most of his notorious the economy was booming and before Pelosi after Trump shut down the federal tweets, usually in response to something he coronavirus, though he did include a presci- government at Christmas 2018 because he has just heard (and often misunderstood), ent sentence about how it is “truly frighten- couldn’t get money for his wall along the which is why aides often try – like responsi- ing” to imagine Trump coping with “a true Mexican border. But the nub of Drezner’s ble parents – to limit his screen time. crisis” such as a terrorist attack, a clash with argument is that Trump’s allies and aides This depiction of the president, de- China or “a global pandemic”. have also repeatedly likened him to an im- spite its lively prose and neat packaging, Today, the president’s critics hope mature child who they are trying to “man- does not really surprise. And it’s arguable that his slow and fumbling response to age” like “babysitters”. Between April 2017 whether “toddler” is the right word for a Covid-19 will finally prove his undoing. and December 2019 Drezner recorded over leader who ponders in public whether his But the immediate effect was to boost his one thousand such public utterances that people should ingest disinfectant to com- opinion poll ratings amid the familiar rally- emanated from inside the Trump nursery. bat Covid-19. But Drezner connects his around-the-flag response to national jeop- Of course, all presidents lose their rag amusing/scary stories with a second and ardy. And remember that his antics since from time to time. But Trump is in a league larger argument, that “having a president inauguration have hardly dented the loyalty of his own. His volcanic eruptions humili- who behaves like a toddler is a more se- of his core base. ate staff and deter them from supplying any rious problem today than it would have This contrasts with the way the approval information that runs against his prejudic- been, say, 50 years ago”. He likens the ratings of most presidents gradually slide es; worse, such chronic petulance has often over time, while spiking in response to spe- “sabotaged his administration.” A classic cific events. For instance, George HW Bush example is his peremptory dismissal of FBI registered a high of around 90 per cent at boss James Comey in May 2017, which pre- the end of the Gulf War in 1991, as his son cipitated the Justice Department’s appoint- George W Bush did after the 9/11 attacks. ment of Robert Mueller as special counsel. Yet Trump’s approval ratings stayed Even though Mueller’s report pulled its steadily around 40 per cent throughout punches, the dirt it dug up contributed 2017, 2018 and 2019. In other words, the sort to the House of Representatives’ case for of evidence Drezner sets out in his book impeachment. seems irrelevant to committed Trumpers. Another toddler trait examined in the They simply say their man is “unorthodox”. book is Trump’s notoriously short attention Which reminds us that studies of lead- span, likened by one frustrated Republican ers must also consider their followers. Why strategist to that of “a gnat on meth”. The do millions of Americans ardently sup- president flits from one idea to another, per- port a man whom millions more are sure is haps because – as a friend confessed – he’s “a transparently unfit for office? A vote for guy whose most fundamental, minute-by- Trump in 2016 was arguably less an en- GRIZELDA.NET minute fear in life is of boredom”. Trump “To be fair, he struggles to work from work” dorsement of him as a vote against t

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2020+18 044 Sophie McBain and David Reynolds.indd 47 28/04/2020 16:44:02 DO YOU WANT TO IMPROVE YOUR MENTAL HEALTH? TAKE IT OUTSIDE.

Bestselling author and award-winning journalist Isabel Hardmen investigates how nature and exercise can boost mental wellbeing.

‘BRILLIANT’ ‘UPLIFTING’ MATT HAIG ALISTAIR CAMPBELL ‘WISE, COMPASSIONATE,TIMELY’ ANDREW MARR

OUT NOW

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t Hillary Clinton – and against what and THE NS POEM whom she was seen to represent. Whoever wins this November, that cleavage in US society is not going away. My Grandfather’s Measure The polarisation between Republicans and In memory of Albert Peters, 1900-52 Democrats is at root a battle over national identity, with Barack Obama being literally by Kieron Winn the face of the US’s future and Trump that of its past. That continuing struggle will im- pede efficient and consensual government His spool tape measure is imperial only, regardless of whether Donald Trump or Joe Biden occupies the Oval Office in 2021. Palm-sized, nut-brown. He died at fifty-two The wider world also has a huge stake in But is unfolded from a box of letters that election, because of Trump’s “US First” isolationist tendencies and his distaste for Sent to his daughter Joyce, my mother, who international institutions such as Nato, the UN and the EU. Covid-19 has highlighted the need for concerted multilateral coop- Was safe in Scotland, far from bombed West Wickham. eration under US leadership, yet it would be This one, in bashed-out type, gives at the top shortsighted to assume a Biden presidency will herald a return to Atlanticism as usual. Of bright blue paper, crisply edged as ever, The likely trend of American foreign The home address as: “Daddy, the wood shop.” policy in the 2020s was signalled in the first years of Obama’s presidency, before he was diverted by the resurrection of Vladimir Pu- Ironic notes my mother trained me in tin as Russia’s president in 2012 and the Syr- ian Civil War. In 2011, Obama declared that Reveal their sources; her sardonic wit the US was “turning our attention to the Had roots in days when Beckenham resembled vast potential of the Asia-Pacific”; Clinton, then his secretary of state, predicted that “The ruins Cromwell knocked about a bit.” “the 21st century will be America’s Pacific Century”. Recently, the assertiveness of Xi Jinping, particularly his “Belt and Road” My grandfather worked in rescue parties: here global development project, has intensified They’ve tunnelled in, “but we need not have hurried, the pressure for the US to “pivot” towards the challenges from the Asia-Pacific. The man and woman were both finished.” Calm, That’s why Europeans should not assume that evicting the Toddler-in-Chief from the He says he’s used to it, not to be worried, Oval Office would be any panacea. The calls for western Europe to do more for its own defence and security will increase who- And turns to news of Spot, her dog, and cricket. ever is president – Americans are no longer Next month, her mother’s urging him to buy ready to “pay any price” and “bear any bur- den”, in Kennedyesque vein – while the EU A luxury shirt. “I said it was too dear.” must gear up as a serious decision-making To spur him on, she’s bought a matching tie. body and transcend its recent sauve qui peut reaction to coronavirus. Both Nato and the EU matter more than ever as instruments “I told her that I’d have to leave the house of internationalism, but each is a mid-20th century institution that desperately needs Without my trousers on, so I could show reform and revitalisation. All of the shirt and get good value from it.” It also remains to be seen whether, in a pandemic world, Brexit Britain has the same Their registers of love and humour glow appetite to go it alone. Will it still yearn to chase the global dragons of “mercantil- ism” across the high seas, as Boris Johnson And live: the grandfather I never met exuberantly imagined in the fantasy-filled Fills me with laughter. Seventy-five years’ span Painted Hall at Greenwich’s Royal Naval College only three (long) months ago? l Now disappears like rapidly spooling ribbon. David Reynolds is emeritus professor of I feel I have the measure of the man. international history at Cambridge and an NS contributing writer. His most recent book is “Island Stories: Britain and its History in This poem is published to mark the 75th anniversary of VE Day on 8 May. the Age of Brexit” (William Collins) Kieron Winn is the author of the collection The Mortal Man (Howtown Press).

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human calculator making rational, self- interested plans. This cocky view of humanity reached its apex between 1990 and 2007. Commu- nism had failed, the market worked, and we had learned to manage the economic future. Gordon Brown proclaimed “an end to boom and bust”. The Nobel laureate Rob- ert Lucas told the American Economic As- sociation in his 2003 presidential address: “Macroeconomics… has succeeded: its cen- tral problem of depression prevention has been solved, for all practical purposes, and in fact has been solved for many decades.” In this period Kay and King rose to profes- sional esteem and some power: King became governor of the Bank of England in 2003. Then the financial crisis of 2008 happened on his watch. The predictive models used by investment banks – which valued sub- prime American mortgages as safe assets – crumbled overnight. Central banks realised that their forecasting models left out the financial system. “An economic crisis origi- nating in the financial system was therefore impossible,” the authors note wryly. In late middle age, at the pinnacle of their careers, these men had to discard any re- maining fidelity to the world-view they had Knowing too much been taught. As they touchingly concede: “Over 40 years, the authors have watched but not enough the bright optimism of a new, rigorous ap- proach to economics – an optimism which they shared – dissolve into the failures of How a cocky view of humanity was upended prediction and analysis which were seen in By Simon Kuper the global financial crisis of 2007-08. And it is the pervasive nature of radical insecurity Radical Uncertainty which is the source of the problem.” John Kay and Mervyn King What went wrong, they explain, is that The Bridge Street Press, 544pp, £25 the Friedman-esque prescription of plan- ning for the future by drawing up models, filling them with numbers, inputting prob- “ e must expect to be hit by an Control and Prevention. However, other abilities, and making a self-interested deci- epidemic of an infectious disease countries did prepare. Angela Merkel raised sion only works in a few, limited circum- Wresulting from a virus which does the possibility of a pandemic in one of her stances. It’s useful if you’re playing poker: not yet exist,” write John Kay and Mervyn first private talks with Donald Trump. you know which cards are in the deck, and King in their book about how to handle an Coronavirus provides a case study of the probability of each coming up. It’s useful unknowable future, which was published how to prepare for the future when mod- if you are an insurer using big data to assign in March. Radical Uncertainty helps us els and data aren’t much help. Kay and King probabilities as to whether a particular per- think about our current predicament. It’s come from a world of models and data. son will have a heart attack, or a car accident. also a poignantly Oedipal attack on the Professional economists for 50 years, they Data-filled models are also good for predict- terribly flawed economics profession that first wrote a book together (The British Tax ing tomorrow’s weather, or even sending a spawned these two authors. System) in 1978. They were raised largely rocket to Mercury. That’s because modelling Six months ago, if you were studying the on the economic orthodoxy of that era: the works when a system is well-understood (a possibility of a global pandemic, you would notion that people, businesses and govern- pack of cards, risk factors for heart attacks) have noted that there hadn’t been one of ments are cold, rational decision-makers and when it doesn’t change much over time. the scale of the Spanish flu in the West in a who plan for the future by weighing all But models aren’t good at predicting century. You might have calculated that the probabilities and aiming for optimal out- any system that changes – such as almost probability of one was so negligible it wasn’t comes. The economist Milton Friedman, anything involving humans. You cannot worth preparing for. Indeed, the Trump ad- high priest of this orthodoxy, said: “We plausibly model your pension because you ministration closed down the pandemic may treat people as if they assigned nu- don’t know how many years you will work, response team in the White House in 2018, merical probabilities to every conceivable how much you will earn, how the economy and eliminated the post of a US epidemiolo- event.” For Friedman’s Chicago School, and stock market will change during your

gist embedded in China’s Center for Disease everybody was “homo economicus”, a career, or when you will retire and die. ELLIE FOREMAN-PECK

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Models are also little use in statecraft. A to understand events not by using data and Instead of reaching at once for data sets, ask, model couldn’t tell the US how to deal with models, like computers do, but through sto- “What’s going on here?” Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, because he ran a ries. Even Jeff Bezos, chief executive of data- More recommendations: in human af- unique regime in a unique global context. mining Amazon, starts meetings by making fairs, don’t attach any meaning to precise In fact, every situation in human affairs is senior executives spend half an hour si- probabilities. But do use numbers, stories unique. Loose analogies with past situations lently reading a narrative memo about some and simple models and rival theories – any might tell you something, but they can also aspect of the company. Bezos says: “The crutch for thinking can be helpful. Solicit mislead you: George W Bush went wrong thing I have noticed is that when the anec- criticism. Be quick to say, “I don’t know.” partly by interpreting Saddam’s Iraq as dotes and the data disagree, the anecdotes If you’re a leader, be Obama rather than Hitler’s Germany and applying Churchill’s are usually right. There’s something wrong Trump: consult specialists, encourage them playbook. There are no fixed laws of society. with the way you are measuring it.” to speak freely, but don’t ask for certainty. We have also discovered that models The Ks conclude from all this: “Humans Effective leaders understand that they have are terrible at producing economic fore- excel at finding ways to cope with open- “superior responsibility” rather than “su- casts. That’s mostly because unprecedented ended mysteries… We are not defective perior wisdom”, write the Ks. Imagine how things that don’t appear in any model – nov- versions of computers… but human beings things might go horribly wrong – an unin- el ways of packaging mortgages, an animal with individual and collective intelligence tentional nuclear war, say, or a pandemic. transmitting a virus in a Wuhan wet market evolved over millennia.” But that seems too Choose strategies that are robust even when – keep happening. The International Mon- kind. Often, humans are rubbish at coping the future turns out unexpectedly: part of etary Fund’s Spring World Economic Out- with open-ended mysteries, and deal with the beauty of George Kennan’s “contain- look predicted zero of the 207 recessions them by concocting conspiracy theories or ment” strategy in the Cold War was that it that occurred through 2016. The present picking scapegoats or voting for Trump. could be ratcheted up when necessary, but recession has hit us as unexpectedly as the The Ks do have some useful advice on de- would work if the Soviets didn’t seek war. one in 2008. Given our inability to forecast, cision-making under uncertainty, much of All these are sound recommendations. the Remain campaign in 2016 should have it gleaned from history. One president who However, they aren’t very surprising. Most known better than to lead with an economic improved his decision-making the hard people know even without reading Radical forecast: that Brexit would produce a “do-it- way was John F Kennedy. In 1961 he author- Uncertainty that the future is unknowable, yourself recession” and cost each household ised the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of consultation is good, groupthink bad, and an implausibly precise £4,300 a year. that models aren’t the real world. The most potent critique of homo eco- The authors admit in their preface that nomicus has come from behavioural econ- We try to understand discussing their ideas with friends and col- omists, led by Amos Tversky and Daniel events not through data leagues, they got very different reactions Kahneman. They argue that people aren’t from “general readers” and “specialists”. rational decision-makers at all. In their view, and models but stories The former tended to “find the concept of we cannot successfully pursue our own radical uncertainty natural and indeed obvi- self-interest, because human thinking is dis- Cuba by anti-Castro exiles. With hindsight, ous… Many people who have been trained torted by all sorts of biases. For instance, we Kennedy realised that he’d presided over in economics, statistics, or decision theory, are loss-averse: we attach more importance meetings in which officials were afraid to however, find it difficult to accept the cen- to a potential loss than to a potential equiva- voice doubts about the mission. Invasion trality of radical uncertainty.” lent gain. We are overconfident, we become was obviously his favoured option, so eve- On this issue, ordinary people are prob- fixated on the first number mentioned in a rybody clustered around it. This was what ably cleverer than economists. negotiation (a phenomenon called “anchor- came to be labelled “groupthink”. Radical Uncertainty is jam-packed with ing”), and so on. Behavioural economics had When the Cuban missile crisis erupted a erudition, sometimes too much so. The arguably killed homo economicus before year later, Kennedy handled it differently. stories about everyone from Max Planck to Kay and King (the Ks) entered this debate. He solicited criticism of proposed policy. He David Beckham are well-told, but they risk But the Ks have no time for the behav- also kept in mind a worst-case scenario, “the turning the book into a grab-bag of every- iourists either. Radical Uncertainty argues awful unpredictability of escalation”, which thing the Ks have picked up in their com- that it’s wrong to think of humans as indi- the military seemed to underestimate. He bined century of professional endeavour, vidual agents trying and failing to maximise avoided backing the Soviet leader Nikita right down to a potted history of dentistry. their future self-interest. Rather, we have Khrushchev into a corner. Instead of trying There is a lot of value here. But perhaps the a uniquely human set of tools for thinking to optimise, he steered towards a compro- book works best as a modern version of about the future. For a start, we are social mise: the Soviets pulled their missiles out those takedowns of communism that re- animals. We think not as individuals but of Cuba in exchange for a secret American covering ex-Marxists wrote in the 1930s and in groups, whether that’s inside a com- promise to take theirs out of Turkey. 1940s: intelligent people trying to come to pany or a tribe or a government. We come The Ks advise against aiming for the opti- terms with the fact that the dogmas they to decisions by debating and sharing infor- mal outcome, partly because it’s impossible had swallowed weren’t actually true. mation with others. To quote the German to identify and partly because the smarter With hindsight, the Ks were unlucky to playwright Bertolt Brecht: the smallest hu- path is to pursue a good-enough outcome come of age in an era of intellectual over- man unit is two people. It follows that we while trying to minimise the risk of catas- confidence, when the future seemed know- are altruists rather than Friedman-esque trophe. They have other tips for decision- able. The generation whose formative eco- self-seekers. In the words of Nobel laureate making: treat every human situation as a nomic experiences have been the crises of Richard Thaler, “humans” are not “econs”. one-off. Don’t enter it with strong prior 2008 and 2020 may never be confident of The phrase “storytelling is universal” beliefs, like a Marx or a Friedman or a Jacob anything again. l seems to feature in most recent books, and Rees-Mogg, because a fixed theory can lead Simon Kuper is an author and Financial the Ks use it too. Their point is that we try you to overlook the particulars of the case. Times columnist

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2020+18 050 Simon Kuper.indd 51 28/04/2020 16:40:22 THE CRITICS | ART

enmark’s Golden Age was all the more gilded for the disasters from which it Nothing rotten Dwas born and the brutality with which it ended. The period covers roughly the years 1815-1850 – that is, from the end of the Napoleonic Wars to the middle of the First in Denmark Schleswig War. The first upheavals saw Co- penhagen devastated by bombardment from Our series on landscapes continues with 126 British warships in 1807; state bankrupt- cy declared in 1813; and the fiefdom of Nor- Christen Købke who, in art and life, ignored way ceded to Sweden in 1814. Bookending events saw the dissolution of the absolute turbulent emotions and sought contentment monarchy and the nation at war again. By Michael Prodger In the years between, however, there was an extraordinary efflorescence of cultural talent. These were the decades of the fabu- list Hans Christian Andersen, the philoso- pher Søren Kierkegaard, and the pioneer of electromagnetism Hans Christian Ørsted.

52 | NEW STATESMAN | 1-7 MAY 2020

2020+18 052 Michael's landscape.indd 52 28/04/2020 16:14:53 THE CRITICS

Close to home: Købke’s work consists almost entirely of paintings of Copenhagen

of art was given over to explorations of the subconscious, renderings of emotionally fraught literature, sturm und drang, wild nature and death. Perhaps this was because, as his first biographer claimed, Købke “was born without any creative imagination” and that “he was empty and barren as soon as he closed his eyes”. So he painted only – and exactly – what he could see. A quiet spirit, Købke wrote that “The Lord is strong in the weak” – and he felt himself to be weak. So unquesting was he that he never painted anywhere that was too far for him to return home in time for dinner. This should make him a dull painter, but in fact his pictures are poignant and poetic – renditions of scenes that breathe calm but also show a height- ened realism and intense and precise obser- vation. And in two paintings at least he was as radical as any painter anywhere in Europe. In 1834-35 he painted a pair of monu- mental canvases for his parents. They carry the most prosaic of titles, One of the Small Towers on Frederiksborg Castle (Designmu- seum, Copenhagen) and Roof Ridge of Fred- eriksborg Castle with View of Lake, Town and Forest (SMK, Copenhagen), and show the view, or rather carefully selected sections of it, from the roof of a royal palace some 35 kilometres north of Copenhagen. The scale – each is more than a metre and a half square – was usually reserved for history or biblical paintings but Købke gave it instead to scenes that barely have a subject or a focal point. We have become accustomed through photography to the sort of cropping prac- tised by Købke, which rather obscures just how avant-garde his views are. They are based on strong geometrical horizontals and verticals, but while almost miniaturist in their detail – the light catching the ridges where the roof leads meet, the individual- There was an outbreak of art, too, notably painter with perfect pitch. ity of chimney bricks – they also approach with the sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen and Købke, one of 11 children, lived for 18 the abstract. Fully two-thirds of one shows the painter Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg, years in the Citadel, a fortified military en- nothing more than empty sky, though that, who, as a teacher, made Copenhagen a cen- campment on the edge of Copenhagen. His too, as is every inch of the paintings, is ren- tre of northern European art. father was a baker for the military there, and dered with the same degree of attention. One of the most distinctive talents of the its towers, gateways and bridges were to It is tempting to look for symbolism in the age, though, remains little known outside become one of the staples of his art. At the paintings: what do the pair of storks signify? Denmark. Christen Købke was an artist who age of 11 he was struck down by a bout of Do the ogee domes and spires represent exemplified the undemonstrative, intimate rheumatic fever, and, bedbound, started to pride in Denmark’s past and its resurgence? prosperity of the Danish Golden Age; in- draw. On his recovery he was admitted to But Købke was not given to flights of fancy deed, his own life – 1810-1848 (he died at 37 the Royal Danish Academy, where he was or metaphors. These scenes, bathed in crys- of pneumonia) – fits its span with seemingly later taught by Eckersberg and absorbed his talline sunlight, show a real, attractive but predestined neatness. And the world of his mantras: “Paint whatever you wish” and unspectacular landscape and a well-ordered pictures is a tidy one too: Købke’s work con- approach the ideal through the real. world of stillness. This careful pleasantness sists almost entirely of paintings of Copen- Købke’s early years coincided with the is, however, transfigured: the pictures make hagen and its environs, small portraits of high point of European Romanticism and for the gentlest of idylls and yet are wholly friends and family, and Italian scenes made there is something quietly determined about satisfying – they are a sigh of contentment. In when he left Denmark in 1838 for the first the way he ignored it. Look at his paintings this bourgeois Eden all was well, for Købke and only time in his life. He was, though, a and it is hard to believe that a great tranche and for Denmark, and that was enough. l

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2020+18 052 Michael's landscape.indd 53 28/04/2020 16:14:54 THE CRITICS

FILM Keeping schtum Ryan Gilbey

The Assistant (15) dir: Kitty Green

More insidious than any of the violence in Mary Harron’s adaptation of American Psy- cho was the sight of the investment banker Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) casually removing from his jacket a single blonde hair. The whereabouts of the head to which that hair had been attached was unknown, but the moment eclipsed any of the film’s instances of outright horror. Now it’s the turn of another director to use absences and ellipses to evoke the carnage of a monstrous Manhattanite. The Assistant, the fiction debut from the “Is it fun?”: Jane’s day is divided into units of menial activity choreographed like abstract dance innovative Australian documentary maker Kitty Green, catalogues a day in the life seems to make anyone aware of her pres- you been to France?” we hear the boss ask of Jane (Julia Garner), who has recently ence. The film generates meaning from her off-screen, and an awestruck female voice started work at a film production company. repetitive routine, along with an acrid hor- admits she hasn’t. “Is it fun?” asks her father, excitedly. As a ror from incidents that are hinted at but Green’s documentary Casting JonBenét description for 16-hour days spent cater- not shown. Non-disclosure agreements are also had an intentional vacuum at its centre: ing to the whims of a predatory bullying signed; meetings with young women are the film was constructed from interviews sociopath within a system designed at every moved from afternoon to evening, board- with people auditioning to appear in a mov- point to remind women of their worthless- room to hotel suite, with sinister efficiency. ie about a murdered child beauty pageant ness, “fun” doesn’t quite cover it. queen, though in fact there was no movie Her day, which begins at dawn when an other than the documentary Green was unseen driver ferries her to the office from The physical absence making. From this emerged a portrait in her home in Queens, is divided into units of a bogeyman allows relief of the victim, and of America’s ghoul- of menial activity choreographed like ab- ish fascination with her. In the case of The stract dance. She switches on the lights, culpability to be shared Assistant, it’s not hard to guess the identity makes coffee, unpacks the bottled water, of the elephant in the room. (A clue: James all while the camera drifts robotically side- What plot there is emerges from the Stewart’s imaginary rabbit had the same ways around the neat compartmentalised dawning of Jane’s conscience after she first name.) But Green, who thanks in the set: a clean visual look for a dirty business. shepherds a young waitress to the swanky end credits “all those who shared their ex- The subservience demanded of her is sig- hotel where the boss is installing her on periences”, is more interested in analysing nalled by the film’s title appearing in tiny the promise of an industry job. Jane takes the social structures rigged to permit, con- lettering in the bottom corner of the screen her suspicions about this transaction to the ceal and reward abuse than in portraying over an image of a New York street, con- jolly-faced HR manager (Matthew Mac- any single wrongdoer. signing her job description literally to the fadyen), though as soon as we see the set The physical absence of a bogeyman gutter. One of her tasks is to scrub the pre- of clubs in his office it’s clear he won’t risk allows culpability to be shared in the movie vious night’s stains out of her boss’s couch a nice game of golf, let alone his position, by among those who choose to keep mum, (the word “casting” is implied) and it is here pursuing her complaints. such as the seen-it-all older associate who that she finds the film’s equivalent for that Beastly-boss movies such as The Devil notices Jane fretting over the latest young blonde hair from American Psycho: a single, Wears Prada and Swimming with Sharks lamb offered up to be slaughtered and says: delicate earring on the floor. The abuses and draw much of their energy from showing “Don’t worry, she’ll get more out of it than debasements it represents are implied, and behaviour they affect to deplore but The As- he will.” It takes a lot of people looking the possibly infinite. sistant, operating in a more serious register other way for that level of harm to be ren- With the entrance of a male colleague, and with a minimalist aesthetic, works by dered unremarkable. The question, still un- the visual grammar shifts slightly, and a suggestion alone. Green’s masterstroke is to answered at the end of the movie, is wheth- new camera position is introduced: a tight, keep Jane’s boss hidden from view, showing er Jane can carry on obediently printing out high-angled shot looking down on Jane only the damage he causes and the detritus female head-shots by the dozen ready for like a scornful invisible judge. Her job of- he leaves behind. Male production execu- men to rank them, rate them and worse. l fers a peculiar mix of being scrutinised and tives file out of his office, their pallor grey “The Assistant” is streaming on Amazon, ignored. Colleagues fail to notice her in the and their bones rattling, while young wom- BFI Player, iTunes and other platforms lift and only the occasional footling error en enter and are never seen again. “Have from 1 May

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2020+18 054 Film, TV, Radio.indd 54 28/04/2020 15:18:50 THE CRITICS

TELEVISION RADIO Colour Everyone’s a us happy comedian Rachel Cooke Antonia Quirke

Becoming Matisse Homeschool History/You’re Dead To Me BBC Two BBC Radio 4

The life of Henri Matisse is replete with piv- A new teaching-aid podcast for children otal moments: turning points so extraordi- is presented by “public historian” Greg nary, you scarcely believe they’re true. The Jenner of Horrible Histories (“I’ve spent artist didn’t even so much as pick up a brush my career making history fun”). Each epi- until he was 21, when his mother gave him sode is a chipper, quarter-hour monologue a paintbox as a distraction while he lay in Henri Matisse: a balm, an unexpected blessing containing such thigh-slapping lines as bed with appendicitis and what was prob- “to understand the Space Race we have to ably depression. Years later, in Collioure in famous portrait of Amélie in a hat, a paint- understand the Cold War. There was no ice- south-west France, where he spent the sum- ing that brought on a fresh bout of jeering cream involved.” Ha ha. mer of 1905, he and his young friend André from both the art world and the public (a Jenner’s other podcast, You’re Dead to Derain together turned art upside down. turquoise nose? an orange neck?). We never Me, is notably successful – a kind of In Our Boom! It was there that Matisse learned that got to find out how Amélie felt, ultimately, Time, minus Melvyn Bragg descending into colour was like dynamite: light its fuse, and about the sustenance she provided for so irascibility. Instead, Jenner invites a histo- 500 years of tradition could go up in smoke. long, whether it caused her to lose some- rian and a comedian to discuss the history But one of these climacterics – the one thing of herself. of chocolate or Joan of Arc, using a format that most appeals to me – was quieter, Nevertheless, Becoming Matisse (25 Radio 4 is now completely obsessed with: more domestic in nature. In 1898, Matisse April, 9.15pm) was a tonic. Our galleries are pairing comedians with scientists, natural- met Amélie Parayre, a free-thinking young closed; there is little possibility that we will ists or linguists. woman whom he loved intensely, and who be able to travel anywhere at all in the near “Comedian” is the great modern multi- would support him through the leanest future, let alone to the warm places on Ma- tasking career choice. Only “comedian” years of his career (and God knows, there tisse’s map (Corsica, St Tropez). Watching isn’t really the word. They appear in these were plenty of those). Their marriage would it, my nostrils seemed to fill with the scent shows more as an explainer. A cheerleader. not last – she ended it after 41 years, in 1939, of Ambre Solaire; at points, I closed my eyes Someone to make things digestible. A food when he became involved with his Russian as if against the sun. There are a thousand chewer, basically. A blender to mulch any assistant and model, Lydia Delectorskaya things you can say about Matisse: here, his information contained. This wildly prolif- – but while it did, it was from her side pas- biographer, Hilary Spurling, described him erating broadcasting trope demonstrates a sionately sympathetic. Others could laugh as “a man of ruthless purpose”; his first lack of confidence that’s utterly systemic. at her “childish smearer”, but she never tutor at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris And it’s impossible not to see it all, some- would. Their wedding, then, was another had him down as “sournois” (sly, sneaky). how, in the context of there being several crossroad for Matisse, and he seems to have He was certainly a revolutionary; he was countries in Europe with a premier who known it. Soon afterwards, he wrote in his always reinventing himself; he had great is an ex-comedian. Pre-pre-Covid, Boris diary: “Vive la Liberté!” This is love, I think: pluck. But in the end, as his great-grand- Johnson’s political USP was “able to write freedom, not confinement. daughter showed by means of a series of jokey columns”. And Donald Trump essen- Sophie Matisse is the artist’s great-grand- animations – the best of these brought to tially goes on stand-up tours. daughter, and in her dextrous film about his life the birds his grain store-owning parents Sometimes I wonder if BBC commission- early life, she put his family centre stage: kept at their home in Bohain, in flat, grey ers have officially concluded that people Amélie and their three children, Marguerite northern France – and some well-chosen simply will not listen to amazing stories of (Matisse’s from an earlier relationship), Jean readings from his diaries and letters, Mat- planet Earth unless they involve the guy in and Pierre. In 1903, when life was more than isse’s work has mostly to do with joy, with the pub who keeps interrupting people. The usually difficult for the Matisses (Amélie’s ecstasy, with release. Here is art that tran- individual who irritates the shit out of eve- father had recently been imprisoned fol- scends the darkness. Here, always, is colour. rybody has been elevated to a whole new lowing the disappearance of his fraudster These are difficult days. We’re anxious level of insincerity. This truly is the zom- employers), it was Marguerite, as well as and full of longing; it’s as if we are absent bie society. Having said that, You’re Dead her mother, who scrubbed clean several of from our own lives. When Sophie Mat- to Me can now and again be great – specifi- her father’s canvasses, erasing forever the isse, an artist herself, began work on this cally when the comedian involved simply conventional still-lifes he’d hoped to sell, project, she could never have known what forgets to interject and just listens to, say, the family being desperately in need of cash. lay ahead; in what kind of world it would Dr Mehreen Chida-Razvi talk intriguingly Matisse later dated his “emancipation” as an eventually be seen. But still, what timing. about the Mughals. In these moments, the artist from that day. “Let the stories of the I experienced Becoming Matisse as a balm, history is so interesting, you literally hear wives be told!” said Sophie, at one point – an unexpected blessing. The blue sea. The them forgetting to make jokes. This is when or words to that effect. Unfortunately, her green trees. The yellow sun. A window was Jenner is at his best too: making history documentary concluded only in 1905, soon briefly flung open, and I was so happy to “fun” by affably, tactfully, instinctively al- l l THE ROYAL PHOTOGRAPHICTHE ROYAL SOCIETY COLLECTION/VICTORIA MUSEUM, AND ALBERT LONDON/GETTY IMAGES after Matisse exhibited at a Paris salon his lean out of it and take in the air. lowing others to take the floor.

1-7 MAY 2020 | NEW STATESMAN | 55

2020+18 054 Film, TV, Radio.indd 55 28/04/2020 15:18:58 Enlightened thinking in dark times

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20-18_ads.indd 5 28/04/2020 17:43:16 FOOD | DRINK | NATURE | CROSSWORD | COLUMNS Back Pages

description of a Sri Lankan feast, many of the dishes so unfamiliar he struggles to name them in English, is the perfect example of food’s power to conjure an entire culture: “There were huge architectural crisps, rich beetroot broths, columns of rice… pancakes baked as thin and fine as millinery… it was the chemistry of all this that was so beguiling, and the sensation of colour and landscape and the perfect kiss.” Breaking bread unites us like nothing else – especially when booze is involved. Dervla Murphy, cycling from Dunkirk to Delhi, records going to bed “dead drunk” after dining with the chief of an Afghan village. Tucking into her mutton and potato stew, one of her host’s sons arrived with a bottle Felicity Cloake “and said he’d heard Christian women liked alcohol and Food would I have some wine. It is hardly necessary to record my reply.” Trapped at home with no hope of dining out, Another cyclist, Tim Moore, meets a less welcoming I’ve rediscovered the vicarious pleasures local after making a poor pizza choice in France. “The of armchair travel smell, an apocalyptic marine rancidity, ensured I would not be summoning any of “ was thinking we should my cramped London flat. With Morris once described my other senses in dealing get going, but my husband my world shrunk to the limits Sybille Bedford as “a little too with the chef’s creation.” The I was drinking wine from of an all-too familiar horizon, irrepressible” on the subject episode ends with an exchange unmarked bottles that had I’ve rediscovered the vicarious of food – but Bedford knew of furious Franglais before our been brought out of the pleasures of armchair travel. these details bring a journey noble hero flees the scene in cellar… The table was spread My favourite trips are those to life. Her train picnic from flapping espadrilles – proof with cheese and tomatoes that give the reader a glimpse New York to Mexico convinces that the worst of meals can and Tuscan bread and salami. of the food that fuels them: me of her merits as a travelling make for a good story. Though we had reservations the bread and cheese that companion: “A chicken, Even hopping on a train to elsewhere and other places to propel Patrick Leigh Fermor roasted that afternoon at a Dover to the “lively, steamy be, we all sat and drank wine from the Hook of Holland to friend’s house, still gently and deliciously warm” caff under the stars until it was the Golden Horn, or the spicy warm; a few slices of that where Bill Bryson enjoys his time for bed.” yak-meat noodles Vikram American wonder, Virginia first British fry-up “with a side In the spring of 2020, these Seth devours on his way home ham; marble-sized, dark red plate of bread and marge, and lines, from American writer across the Himalayas. Yet not tomatoes from the market on two cups of tea” sounds good and self-professed “wanderer every writer seems to eat. The Second Avenue; watercress, a right now, when the greasy of the planet” Mary Morris, formidable Jan Morris, so great flute of bread, a square of cream spoon round the corner feels read like a fantasy of the on history, politics and culture, cheese, a bag of cherries and a hopelessly exotic. That said, wildest sort. I can almost manages to write a whole bottle of pink wine.” the tea is a lot better at home. l feel the weight of the warm book on Venice with barely a Food can signify more than Next week: John Burnside

STEVE MCCURRY/MAGNUM PHOTOS summer evening settle over mention of spaghetti. just dinner. John Gimlette’s on nature

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2020+18 057 Felicity Cloake Food.indd 57 28/04/2020 15:16:25 BACK PAGES

been a factor. Was it also a out into the road, or crossing consequence of having, at that it. Then I thought: “Why stage of the evening, drunk should I do that? This person a bottle and a half of wine on can swerve, into the traffic-free an empty stomach? Almost road and on to the unpeopled undoubtedly. And did the pavement opposite. He oppressiveness of current should be grateful for the extra circumstances encourage distance.” But he thundered me to an unfortunate and past me, closer than anyone has insulting outburst of hysterical been for a month, panting and flippancy? It’s a thought. spraying God knows what in And might it also, perhaps, his wake. partly be due to a new-found It was only later that outrage at joggers, who before I learned about research Nicholas Lezard coronavirus had aroused in suggesting that coronavirus me an indifferent bafflement particles from runners – and Down and Out and pity? They are as driven cyclists – could leave a wake to their passion as helplessly of ten metres, rather than two as the junkie is to his next fix, metres for normal walking or While panting joggers endanger with the difference that at standing still. I should have everyone’s health, at least I least the junkie knows to bury crossed the road the moment his habit beneath a blanket of I saw him, or – how about only endanger my own shame, secrecy and evasion. this? – he shouldn’t have Boasting about how much one been running in the first has run during the day, these fucking place. people should know, seems I suppose at least there are s it getting to you? Of course The other day this woman, a to me of interest only to other people out there trying to it is. It’s getting to me, couple of days after a delightful runners (they get annoyed if stay healthy. I just wish they Ialthough it shouldn’t, or not phone conversation that you call them joggers), and at wouldn’t compromise other as much. As I have said before, lasted over an hour, chaste the best of times I never gave a people’s health while doing or you might have intuited, but affectionate, pinged me an monkey’s toss about even my it. I only compromise my sitting around picking my nose image mapping an 8.8km run closest friends’ running times. own. The other day my old all day is more or less my métier; that she had performed that (One thing: the ex I mentioned comrade Razors, now in LA, in a small way, I like to think day. I have known this woman should have worked out by sent me, via Majestic, a case of of this column as a counselling for three and a bit decades, and now that I have never been, Not Cheap mixed reds, and I service. But sometimes even had never known that she ran. and almost certainly never will calculated that at my current the most serene guru snaps. “As you know,” I replied, “I be, the kind of person who is rate of consumption this Let me explain. will always love you and revel interested in anyone’s running would last me 4.8 days. So I am One of the more pleasant in our friendship” – something times and distances.) feeling virtuous today, as I see side-effects of the lockdown like that – “but I don’t give But last week I was walking from the level of the bottle in is that people have been a monkey’s toss about your back with my shopping and I front of me that a case will now getting in touch with each running.” (Exactly that.) saw a jogger coming down the last me 7.2 days, and reduce the other again. There is an almost Now, that’s not very nice, is hill towards me, on a collision chances of my wounding a dear flirtatious quality to these it? And indeed, immediately course. I considered stepping friend by almost 50 per cent. l reunions, especially gratifying afterwards I received a message (for me, that is) if the person of hugely disappointed rebuke, making contact is either an which in turn provoked from This Grace and arborum ex-girlfriend, or someone me an instant apology, and a A fake tree installed in front whom I would have liked, at hopeless plea for forgiveness, England of a house in Hampstead some point, to have been my grovelling and sincere. And has been dismantled. girlfriend. (I should point out then I stayed off social media Each printed entry Neighbours had complained that such flirtation, when it for two days, while I hid receives a £5 book to Camden Council, claiming occurs, is almost Victorian – underneath duvets both actual token. Entries to it “lowered the tone” of the if not Austen-esque – in its and spiritual, and examined comp@newstatesman. area and made Well Road look subtlety and discretion.) One my soul. co.uk or on a postcard like Disneyland. such, who used, long ago, to Honest self-examination is, to This England. Camden New Journal feature heavily in this column, and should be, never pleasant. This column – which, (Amanda Welles) has been either sending me It should leave one scoured, though named after a messages or ringing me up. or mortified, or almost so, and line in Shakespeare’s Nanny state As I am one of those men who this time was no exception. “Richard II”, refers to A gang of goats has been keeps a chamber in his heart Was this my revenge for the whole of Britain – spotted strolling around the for almost any woman he has her having broken my heart has run in the NS streets of Llandudno during loved, I find this very pleasing more than a decade ago? I since 1934. the nationwide lockdown. and touching. think that might have well

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2020+18 058 Lezard & Sarah.indd 58 28/04/2020 15:12:29 BACK PAGES

as their grandmother, meant Apso is a ticking timebomb, that living with your mother- ready to blow at any moment. in-law in particular was a The cat, my nemesis, knows cautionary tale. how to open doors on her Like everyone else, my own and hates all the dogs, life has drastically changed – plus most of the humans. My but instead of spending my sweet dog, Martha, submits time making sourdough and to all these pets and is often having drinks over Zoom, I’m found crying in the corner over discussing pension plans and a stolen toy. It is rare for us to the logistics around sourcing have a moment where at least seeds for my in-laws’ new one animal isn’t being tethered allotment. I am now someone indoors on their lead. who watches Britain’s Got Despite the pets, I have Sarah Manavis Talent, near-daily episodes of found living with my in-laws The Chase and, for the first time to be mostly painless. One Under the Influence in ten years, a Julian Fellowes unexpected side-effect is how period drama (which, I must much it’s made me miss my I’m in lockdown in rural add, everyone in this house own family. Being around a set hated). Rather than bingeing on of loving parents is reassuring Scotland with my in-laws, three Netflix reality shows, I binge- during a time as unsettling as watch my father-in-law’s this, but it makes you acutely dogs and a cat who is my nemesis slideshows of family holidays. aware that your own mother is We are all up and moving across an ocean, and you have by 8am and only spend our no idea when you’ll see her. working days apart, otherwise Suddenly, my common have always wondered if a months ago that this would be sharing meals, the television refrain of “they’re only a flight sweary, loud American is my reality, I would have asked and every free moment in each away” has shown itself to be a Iwhat my in-laws envisioned why my friends and family had other’s company. flimsy idea. I’m now ingrained for their youngest son. Over disowned me and how both While this may seem a in a constant battle of trying not the three years I’ve known my partner and I had lost our slightly monotonous schedule, to think about how this may them, we’ve always got on jobs. But for six weeks I have the insane circus of animals last another year, how my Mum well, and even after spending been in rural Scotland with my makes all of our lives – not to has a compromised immune whole weeks in their company, partner’s parents, three dogs exaggerate – a living nightmare. system, and that she lives in the we’ve made it through without and a cat who is my nemesis. The youngest dog is an US, a country whose president any major hitches. Now, This is six times longer than energetic one-year-old who, is treating this pandemic as if it though, in the midst of this any amount of time I’ve spent despite his size, is often found is a joke. pandemic, we are stress testing here previously. jumping on the kitchen table While I’ve had moments of whether or not we truly like Living with my in-laws and is known for tearing the feeling out of my mind, I’ve each other in perhaps the most at 25 is a fate I have hoped entire front off my brother-in- gained a solid understanding intense way possible: living to avoid my entire life. My law’s sweater (who is 6ft 3in that I like my in-laws (I’m not together in isolation for the Greek childhood, where I saw and, crucially, was standing saying this because I know I’ll foreseeable future. nearly every Greek kid my age at the time). The seemingly still be living with them after If you had told me six growing up in the same house sweet, gentle 15-year-old Lhasa they read this column). “You know, it’s actually fine,” is the response I’ve given to all of my Resident Andrew Stuart said Past-ernity leave to eat the 2.8kg (6.4lb) beef friends who have whispered he called the police after he A dad has made a pasty the pasty in honour of Jowan’s the inevitable question over noticed the animals breaking same size and weight as his birth during lockdown. video chats and phone calls. isolation rules on Friday night newborn son. The 33-year-old said the They’re considerate, they by gathering in a large group It took Tim Fuge 19 hours trickiest part was not making respect boundaries, and are and not keeping the required it but finding a baking tray quite fun. two metres apart. big enough to cook it on. Being in lockdown with North Wales Pioneer The pasty is estimated your in-laws is not something (Daragh Brady) to have had up to 4,000 I would encourage everyone calories and is half a metre to trial, however. Had the When Jeeves leaves (50cm) in diameter – the pandemic not happened, I Wealthy households are taking same length as Jowan, who is would have said it’s insane. online housekeeping classes as two weeks old. But I know that for the rest of their butlers and nannies are in “I am absolutely stuffed,” my life, I’ll never get such a self-isolation, a domestic staff Mr Fuge said. strange, unexpected chance to company has said. BBC Cornwall get to know two people who Daily Telegraph (Vin Arthey) (Janet Mansfield) are such an integral part of it. l ALEX BRENCHLEY Next week: Tracey Thorn

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the wheels on the cart. A swirling vortex of negative energy fills me up to the brim and then overflows, leaking out of my mouth. 12 “Why don’t you have any interests?” I snap. “It’s weeks so boring. You never have anything to talk about.” for just “That’s a pretty nasty thing to say,” he points out. But this only goads me on. “I mean, I really have no idea £12! why we are still together. Apart Alice O’Keeffe from the children, we’ve got nothing in common at all.” School’s Out Husband nods, slowly. He finishes his beer, gets up and puts the empty can by the Husband and I have put the kids sink. He doesn’t put it in the to bed early. We are having a “date recycling. He never puts his beer cans in the recycling, night” in our dining room presumably because he thinks that as his wife I should do that kind of thing for him. With the addition of this tiny grain usband and I are having a He thinks about this for a of injustice the grim swirl of “date night”. Obviously moment. “No,” he replies. resentment crystallises into H we can’t leave the house, Husband is not, to put it pure, clear rage. and even if we could, there mildly, a conversationalist. “I’m not your skivvy, you Exclusive online articles and columns by would be no restaurants or He is a man of few words, the know!” I shout, as he trudges all our columnists... cinemas open in which a kind of guy who can happily up the stairs to bed. date could take place. So “date sit and stare at a wall for a Later, I lie awake in the dark. night” involves sitting in our good part of the afternoon. Husband is breathing quietly Stephen

Bush Helen dining room, at the same table This is one of the many ways beside me. I think about the Thompson where we have eaten every in which our personalities are virus; men are more likely meal for the past four weeks, diametrically opposed, words to die than women, they say. Jeremy Cliffe Tracey with a beer (him) and a lemon being very much my thing, and Husband hasn’t got the greatest Thorn and ginger tea (me). We’ve slightly manic activity being my lungs; he used to smoke – put the kids to bed early so vibe. In its stronger moments, still does sometimes – and we can spend some quality our relationship works because he often gets bronchitis in time together. we bring complementary the winter. + The most insightful Our date has kicked off qualities to it; he is the ying, I don’t want him to get political writing with a long and shell-shocked I’m the yang. corona, I don’t want him to die. silence. Neither of us can think In its less strong moments – And if he is going to die, I don’t + Exclusive newsletters of anything to say. What, after of which date night, so far, is want it to happen after I’ve said and podcasts all, do you say to a person you one – I feel like I am living with horrible things to him, made + Access to the NS have spent every single minute an alien. him feel unloved. I would App via smartphone of every day and night with for I fiddle with the string on my never forgive myself. the past month? What do you tea bag; he takes another sip My dad died when I was not or tablet talk about, when for as long as of beer. We haven’t even got much older than our oldest son you can remember you have any nibbles, as my last trip to is now, so I know all too well done nothing other than look Sainsbury’s filled me with such that it can happen. I think some Order at www. after children, cook, clean, apocalyptic horror that I’ve part of me is actually preparing newstatesman.com/ exercise and sleep? been putting off going again. for it; deep down I expect the subscribe12 I briefly consider bringing In the yawning silence, pattern of early bereavement to or call 0808 284 9422 up current affairs – nothing my mind fills up with the repeat itself. Perhaps I just can’t (+44 20 7030 4927 says romance like a discussion accumulated panic and imagine a childhood unscarred from outside the UK) about PPE and testing – but frustration I have been by loss. then realise I’d rather eat my suppressing for weeks, in an I turn over, put my arms *12 weeks for just £12. Offer valid for UK subscriptions only. own arm. attempt to be a good mother, around Husband, and squeeze Conditions apply. See online for “So,” I venture, “have you a good daughter, a good friend; him tightly. I don’t say I’m other options. got any projects you’d like to do to keep work ticking along, sorry, and he doesn’t ask me to. during lockdown?” to keep the bills paid, to keep He just hugs me back. l

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THE NS CROSSWORD 492 BY ANORAK

Across Down  1 Council employee, like my old 1 Stops believers accepting initial man (7) sacrament (7)  5 Heavyweight in charge of 2 Agriculturist is no great cup drink (5) winner (11)   9 Mark follows sailor not to 3 Skirts lake with son making a vote (7) few TV programmes (10) 10 Aimin’ at higher things on 4 Spruce in Cologne – a tablet (7) Tannenbaum (4)    11 Reveal record go slow (8) 5 Spinner at his peak! (3)  12 Some toe-rag has transgressed, 6 Ran up at speed to tell a tale (7) 7 horrified (6) Limits prisoners on coach (9)   15 Long speech and study session 8 See 14 Down following the infernal world (9) 13 Novelist Prince T. S. (6,5) 16 About time, doctor gets letter 14/8 What perpetual fliers do in (5) Peter Pan’s abode (5-5,4)     17 Slice of bread on every side of 15 The German campanologist’s patrol (5) short pistol (9) 19 Leaves Never Drop – that 18 Said a word or two – popular old song (9) indistinctly, but not for starters    21 Hold prisoner and bury at (7) noon (6) 20 Is superior to former favourites,  22 Means of keeping in touch we hear (7) during period without company 23 Traditional story of lisping girl    (8) (4) 25 Refuse accepting how old the 24 Bound and awfully pale (4) outfit is? (7) 26 England cricketer Moeen in 27 Most haughty leading volunteer California (3)   by top-class home (7) 28 More than one spoke (5) 29 Yellow mineral – it is found in Answers to crossword 491 of 24 April 2020 heaps of combustible material Across 7) Herewith 9) Drains 10) Took 11) Siamese cat 12) Nipped 14) Skittish 15) Sinewy (7) 17) Reverb 20) Optional 22) Entrée 23) Matchmaker 24) Disc 25) Tonsil 26) Sculptor Down 1) Aerobics 2) Peak 3) Rinsed 4) Idée fixe 5) Latent heat 6) In-laws 8) Hearse 13) Pencil l This week’s solutions will be published case 16) Windmill 18) Bless you 19) Flukes 21) Pharos 22) Earful 24) Dupe in the next issue of the NS Clockwise from top left, the perimeter reads “April is the cruellest month”.

SUBSCRIBER OF THE WEEK THE NS WORD GAMES 182: MEN OF NOTE

Michael Loughridge Each clue is an anagram of the name of a composer. What do How do you read yours? you do? Alongside breakfast, over Bengal bar (5,4) Parents ail (10) Retired several days. Cracker fans (5,6) A nastiness (5-5) lecturer in What would you like to Elvish races (7,4) Lab embrasure (6,6) German, now see more of in the NS? Near pitcher (11) Butchers (8) a translator. Nature and science. Whingers (8) Eastman (7) Where do you live? Who are your favourite Ghosts’ vault (6,5) The oarsman (6,4) Cupar, Fife. NS writers? Tameness (8) Do you vote? Many – that’s its strength. Sea-mines (8) Yes. Who would you put on Removed tin (10) Anorak How long have you the cover of the NS? been a subscriber? A masked healthcare worker Four years. or team. What made you start? With which political figure I gave up dailies in 2016. The would you least like to be weekly I looked for was not stuck in a lift? on the news-stand. NS was. Any of the vocal Brexiteers. Is the NS bug in the family? All-time favourite NS article? No, regrettably. Tends to be replaced every What pages do you second or third week. flick to first? The New Statesman is… I start at the front and Stimulating, incisive, work through. wide-ranging. l

NS Word Games answers Monteverdi, Palestrina, Saint-Saëns, Samuel Barber, Schubert, Smetana, Thomas Arne Thomas Smetana, Schubert, Barber, Samuel Saint-Saëns, Palestrina, Monteverdi,

Alban Berg, César Franck, Charles Ives, Charpentier, Gershwin, Gustav Holst, Massenet, Messiaen, Messiaen, Massenet, Holst, Gustav Gershwin, Charpentier, Ives, Charles Franck, César Berg, Alban “How long are we supposed to keep this up?”

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a lot of admiration for Jacinda Ardern because she is one of the few politicians leading with common-sense intelligence, genuine compassion and humility.

In which time and place, other than your own, would you like to live? I would love to have seen Otis Redding and Sam Cooke – not together, but separately – singing “A Change is Gonna Come” live. I would weep all the way through. So around 1964, if only for the music.

What TV show could you not live without? I could very easily live without TV but I do love Fleabag, Girls, Insecure and Big Little Lies on Friday nights when I want to zone into truthful reflections of women’s lives. I’d like to see more of this in the context of black British lives that don’t revolve around crime and the usual stereotypes.

Who would paint your portrait? Dorothea Tanning. I like how she used her subjective imagination to convey precise experience and interpretation. I’d have an afro with flames coming out of it.

What’s your theme tune? I don’t have one. There are so many tunes and so many themes in a single day.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received? THE NS Q&A Don’t always be in a rush, because it makes you ill and you miss your life. I’m not good with stress-management and when I “The worthiest heroism is remember this it calms me down. grossly undervalued” What’s currently bugging you? Covid-19; not being able to hug my mum.

Diana Evans, novelist What single thing would make your life better? Right now, a swim.

Diana Evans was born in London in 1972 care home, on transport or elsewhere on When were you happiest? and spent part of her childhood in Lagos, the frontline. The worthiest heroism is I am happiest when immersed in a writing Nigeria. Her third novel, “Ordinary ordinary and grossly undervalued. project, and almost every evening when People”, was shortlisted for the 2019 witnessing my children healthy and asleep. Women’s Prize. What book last changed your thinking? Raymond Antrobus’s poetry collection In another life, what job might you What’s your earliest memory? The Perseverance made me aware of the have chosen? I have an impressionistic memory from subconscious pomposity of hearing, and I have been told that I would make a very age ten: my father wearing a beige jacket in reminded me of the importance of voice good PA. I am highly organised and scarily a holiday cottage in Brittany, sun filtering and visibility for the marginalised. efficient. I think I’d probably enjoy it. into the hallway, feeling a little uneasy. What would be your Mastermind Are we all doomed? Who are your heroes? specialist subject? It seems that way. But there is hope and My sisters and closest friends, who give me If I play Trivial Pursuit I’m passable on the activism, and the intrinsic, soul-restoring guidance and comfort. Alice Walker, who arts, but Mastermind is another story. activism of the arts. l was my late-teen literary darling, and more recently, James Baldwin. Currently, anyone Which political figure do you look up to? Diana Evans is a judge for the Sunday Times

who works in a supermarket, a hospital, a Angela Davis and Arundhati Roy. I have Audible Short Story Award 2020 KRISTIAN HAMMERSTAD FOR NEW STATESMAN

62 | NEW STATESMAN | 1-7 MAY 2020

2020+18 062 Q+A.indd 62 28/04/2020 14:59:45 Enlightened thinking in dark times Subscribe from just £1 a week*

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