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The BBC was engulfed in doubts after a report by Lord Dyson blamed Martin Bashir for deceiving the late Diana, Princess of Wales, before interviewing her on television in 1995 — and the BBC for failing to investigate properly. The Duke of Cambridge said: ‘It brings indescribable sadness to know that the BBC’s failures contributed significantly to her fear, paranoia and isolation that I remember from those final years with her.’ He said that had the BBC properly investigated complaints, ‘my mother would have known that she had been deceived’ before her death in 1997. The former chairman of the BBC, Lord Hall of Birkenhead, resigned as chairman of the National Gallery. A gold rosary carried by Mary, Queen of Scots at her execution was stolen by burglars from Arundel Castle.
Public Health England found the Pfizer vaccine is 88 per cent effective against symptomatic illness from the Indian variant of Covid after two doses. But government advice not to travel in or out of Kirklees, Bedford, Burnley, Leicester, Hounslow and North Tyneside was published so quietly that local authorities knew nothing about it for days. After a fuss, updated advice asked people to ‘minimise’, rather than ‘avoid’, travel. By the beginning of the week, 43 per cent of the adult population had received both doses of vaccine; 72 per cent, the first dose. In the seven days to the beginning of the week, 41 people died, bringing the total deaths (within 28 days of testing positive for Covid) to 127,716. No. 10 denied that Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, had missed Cobra meetings at the start of the pandemic because he was writing a book on Shakespeare. Friends were asked to save a day in July next year for his wedding to Carrie Symonds.
Dominic Cummings, the Prime Minister’s former chief adviser, spent the week tweeting about what he might tell a joint session of the health and the science parliamentary select committees about the handling of the pandemic.
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