How to spend 48 hours in New York

Armed with a US passport, I fly to New York for just two days to interview John McWhorter, an African American professor of linguistics at Columbia University. He is America’s fast-rising star of the anti-woke movement and I am there to talk to him about his brave and funny new book, Woke Racism. I zip over to meet him on one of dozens of daily flights between Heathrow and JFK in advance of America’s reopening on 8 November. The good news is that, after 8 November, the rest of Europe’s jet setters can join me.

It is strange flying transatlantic in the final days before the US reopens after nearly two years: there are almost as many planes as passengers. This is particularly true on the route from London to JFK – my destination, thanks to a US passport – where British Airways alone flies six flights a day, two of them leaving just five minutes apart.