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December 12th was the birthday of Gustave FLAUBERT (1D) and Frank SINATRA (15). Examples of their work are MADAME BOVARY (13) and SALAMMBÔ (20), and FLY ME TO THE MOON (1A) and STRANGERS IN THE NIGHT (45/37). Flaubert was born in ROUEN (25), and Sinatra in HOBOKEN (in the ninth column) which was to be shaded. First prize James Woodworth, St Albans, HertsRunners-up J.
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A mob descended on Capitol Hill last night acting on lies and disinformation, but there was no foreign actor to blame. This hostility was homegrown and came from the highest echelon of government. The President of the United States has been stoking fear, division and doubt since his defeat in November’s election, and yesterday it bubbled over into an attack on the very heart of American democracy. Trump had been speaking at a 'Save America' rally where he invited crowds to march on the Capitol. 'You’ll never take back our country with weakness,' he told them, 'you have to show strength'.
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Home Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, announced harsher coronavirus restrictions in England, resembling those last March, except that bubbles continued. People must work from home if they could; schools were closed and this year’s exams cancelled. Another £4 billion was directed to businesses in retail, hospitality and leisure. At Westminster, parliament was recalled. In Scotland, golf courses remained open and churches were closed. In England, churches remained open and golf courses closed. The actions came in response to a sharp rise in Covid infections, many from a variant virus. One in 50 were estimated to have the disease. At first, 44 million in England were put under newly-invented Tier 4 restrictions, but hospitalisations increased.
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A ferry tale Gerry Marsden, who died aged 78, was credited with making the ferry across the River Mersey world-famous. But it has another claim to fame: as possibly the oldest continuously operated ferry service in the world. The earliest record of a regular ferry was in 1150, when monks at the then newly built Benedictine Priory in Birkenhead set up a ferry service. It was not, however, reliable; bad weather frequently caused delays, so that in 1317 a licence was granted to build lodging houses for people waiting to cross the river. Those who didn’t want to wait, or wanted to avoid the fare, could try their luck wading across: until the river was made navigable for large boats the Mersey was fordable at low tide.
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Veritas vincit Sir: Professor Dawkins eloquently and engagingly defines true truth for us (‘Matters of fact’, 19 December). It seems to me that ‘true’ is a poor little four-letter word with a heavier workload than is reasonable. Historic truth may include ascertainable facts, which I suppose he would pass, but combined with conclusions based on available evidence or ‘true-to-life’ conjecture. Theological truth combines historic fact with unassailable moral principle and a journey of imagination beyond the reach of experience. It cannot be called untrue — only unproven. Perhaps we need to find a word with more gravitas than ‘truth’ for the scientists. I suggest ‘veritas’ — as found in vino.
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So great have been the government’s failures over Covid that it would be easy to forget to give credit where it is due. The fact that Britain was the first country to begin a public vaccination programme — and this week became the first to have two vaccines in use — did not come about by chance. It happened because the government had the foresight to pre-order large quantities of promising vaccines and because Britain’s medicines regulator, the MHRA, worked fast and effectively to assess the data from the trials of those vaccines. The vaccines from Pfizer and AstraZeneca underline the lifesaving role played by an often-maligned pharmaceutical industry. But Britain’s head start will count for little if the momentum cannot be sustained.
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Unclued lights are nicknames of works by Beethoven, born 250 years ago. The title referred to the Ghost piano trio, Op. 70/1. First prize Carlos de Pommes, Walton on Thames, SurreyRunners-up R.P. Wright, Loughton, Essex; Damian Hassan, Bishop Auckland, Co.
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There have been extraordinary scenes at the United States Capitol this evening, after a pro-Trump mob stormed Capitol Hill and gained access to the Senate Chamber. There have been reports of violent clashes with police and it has been confirmed that one person has been shot. The violence follows a pro-Trump rally which took place in Washington, DC on Wednesday to protest the confirmation of Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election. Members of the US Senate were forced to evacuate the Chamber after the mob managed to break into the building. The National Guard have been called in to restore order.
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Boris Johnson has announced a third national lockdown to last until at least the middle of February. But there are more stated exemptions than in the first lockdown. The new laws are expected to follow shortly, while the formal advice is below: ● You must not leave home without a ‘reasonable excuse’. This will be put in law with fines for non-compliance ranging from £200 (for a first offence) to £6,400. ● Work — You can go to work 'where it is unreasonable for you to do your job from home'. The examples given are 'critical national infrastructure, construction or manufacturing' but the advice says it’s 'not limited to' those jobs. Workers such as cleaners will still be able to go to work.
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Madeleine Kearns To Trump or not to Trump? Whether ’tis nobler on the page to be a morbid cynic or a self-righteous arse? That is the question those of us working in American right-wing media have been staring in the face for four years. Looking back, the Trump years feel like one of those awful ‘would you rather?’ games that teenagers play. ‘Would you rather be half-fish from the waist up or from the waist down?’ ‘Would you rather have pubes for teeth or teeth for pubes?’ You know the sort. Of course, you can make the case for either option if you really want to (and some people do), but the most sensible answer remains, ‘This game is rubbish. I’m not playing.’ Biden is also rubbish, as it happens. And Harris is terrifying.
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When Britain voted on whether to leave the EU or remain within it there were valid arguments on both sides. But on one thing most leavers and remainers could surely have agreed: the Brexit would be a pointless and wasteful exercise unless Britain would retrieve the powers that voters wanted. A deal that left us under EU rules – as outlined by Theresa May’s Chequers proposal – would mean all of the pain but minimal gain. Boris Johnson’s test was whether he could do better. This is what has made the past four and a half years so agonising. For much of that time we seemed destined for a halfway house which nobody really wanted – a state of limbo in which we would be forever bound to follow EU rules and policies yet have no say in the making of those rules.
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Now and then Were households allowed to mix at Christmas during the plague? Samuel Pepys’s diary entry for 25 December 1665: ‘To church in the morning, and there saw a wedding… which I have not seen many a day; and the young people so merry one with another, and strange to see what delight we married people have to see these poor fools decoyed into our condition… thence to my Lord Bruncker’s by invitation and dined there…’ Festive fights Do divorces really increase thanks to Christmas? Divorce lawyers often say they’re especially busy after Christmas, as couples seek to untie the knot after a fractious time.
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Joy Sir: Alexandra Coghlan identifies the coincidence between the rise of recording and broadcast technology and the flourishing of the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge (‘Going for a song’, 5 December). Just as the publication of A Christmas Carol in 1843 coincided with cheaper books and a growing readership to forge the modern Christmas, so recent improvements in musical technology have just as firmly established its soundtrack. If Dickens created our modern Christmas, then its musical accompaniment should be accredited to Sir Stephen Cleobury, who served as Director of Music at King’s for 37 years until his retirement in September 2019.
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January Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, signed the EU withdrawal agreement, sent from Brussels by train. Sajid Javid, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, promised ‘an infrastructure revolution’ in the Budget. An American drone killed Qassem Soleimani, an Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard commander, near Baghdad airport. Iran carelessly shot down a Ukrainian airliner taking off from Tehran, killing 176. Bush fires raged in New South Wales. Cases of acute viral pneumonia were noticed in Wuhan in central China. February Eighty-three British evacuees from Wuhan were quarantined on the Wirral. The Department of Health classified Covid-19 as a ‘serious and imminent threat’. In Hubei 68 million people were made to stay at home.
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Save for those old enough to have lived through the second world war and its immediate austere aftermath, it would be hard to remember a Christmas which felt less festive. Or a new year that brings such foreboding. In spite of the severe restraints on our lives, which have been in place for months now, it seems likely that we will see some sort of third coronavirus wave with a third lockdown also on the cards. And at the same time, Britain will be embarking on a Brexit adventure that many people still see as reckless and unwanted. Yet if we look a little beyond the immediate future, things begin to appear brighter.
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Emily Maitlis Six years ago I took my son, Milo, to Bucharest for his birthday. In the baking July sun, seeking shade, we crouched on the kerb in front of the presidential palace. And I played him the footage of the crowds on that bitter December morning of 1989 as Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena emerged on to the balcony. The speech Ceausescu gave, or tried to give, on 21 December was his last. And it was extraordinary. Ceausescu used his balcony address to reassure, cajole, bribe the crowd. But it turned against him as he stood there. This footage — state TV rolling live at the time — became the physical, televisual embodiment of power seeping away from a president. The leaders and their bodyguards are above them, removed.
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Each of the unclued lights includes the same letter three times in succession.
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Out of the ordinary1. Canada2. Leighton Buzzard3. Death Valley, California4. Krakatoa5. Malta6. Angola 7. Bernie Sanders (with Joe Biden in fifth place)8. Carlos Ghosn9. Fifty pence10. China. The horse’s mouth1. The Queen, in a televised message on 5 April2. Brandon Lewis, the Northern Ireland Secretary3. John Lewis4. A 50p5. Mark Drakeford, the First Minister of Wales6. President Donald Trump of the United States7. Joe Biden, of Donald Trump during the televised debate on 22 October8. Boris Johnson9. Rebecca Long-Bailey10. Sir John Bell, the regius professor of medicine at Oxford. Royal appointments1. The 75th anniversary of VE Day2. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex3. Jerusalem4. The Duchess of Cornwall5. A shark6. The Queen7. Bradford8. The Princess Royal, Princess Anne9.
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At the beginning of the Covid crisis, some expressed the hope that a pandemic might at least bring a divided country back together. Instead, public discourse descended to new levels of bitterness as a fresh schism replaced that caused by Brexit. On one side were those who thought tens of thousands would die because government action was too slow and half-hearted, and on the other, those who thought lockdown to be an over-reaction that inflicted grave damage on our economy and society. Both sides ought now to be able to agree that this week marks a significant turning point in the pandemic. The first shot of an approved Covid vaccine to be administered in a public programme anywhere in the world was given to Margaret Keenan, a 90-year-old woman in a Coventry hospital.
