Politics

The national Covid-19 inquiry rumbles slowly onwards. Module 8, examining the impact of the pandemic on children and young people, drew to a close last month. Blast-from-the-past appearances from Matt Hancock and Boris Johnson meant the decision to shut schools and stop exams from going ahead for the best part of two years was subjected to scrutiny and buck-passing in equal measure. Since lockdown ended, concern has, rightly, been raised about so-called ‘ghost children’, who continue to be persistently absent from school rolls. Far less attention has been paid to the gaps in the education of those pupils who did turn up when schools reopened. Perhaps understandably, no one wants

My great-grandmother Netty died in June 2005, aged 99. I was four. That evening, my grandmother called us grandchildren into her living room and opened what looked like a small treasure chest. Out spilled her sparkling jewels. ‘Take whatever you want,’ she said. ‘She’d have wanted you to have them.’ I grabbed three things: a pair of glittering earrings, a silver bracelet and a gold Star of David encircled by a delicate band touching each of the star’s points. At four, I only cared for the earrings. The rest I tucked away for ‘less special’ occasions.  At 16, I found the star again, hidden in my jewellery box. Remembering my great-grandmother Netty,

We’re woefully resigned to the strange situation whereby if an alien landed, they’d believe that being famous was hereditary, like being royal. But when I looked at the Wikipedia page of Louis Theroux, I almost fell out of my wheelchair chuckling. Not only is he the son of the ‘noted travel writer and novelist’ Paul Theroux, ‘he is the nephew of novelist Alexander Theroux and writer Peter Theroux. His older brother, Marcel, is a writer and television presenter. His cousin, Justin, is an actor and screenwriter.’ Theroux – educated at Westminster and Magdalen College, Oxford, naturally – is said to be a ‘massive hip hop head’ Kind of like the Beckhams without the beauty;