Happy Friday!

I was supposed to take this afternoon off, but something came up! It’s been that kind of a week. Here are this week’s links

My father was famous as John le Carré. My mother was his crucial, covert collaborator. I just love this, a son making sure that his mother isn’t overlooked as just ‘the wife’.

Johnson wants to move on from Covid – 125,000 deaths shows why we need an inquiry

Why can’t Britain handle the truth about Winston Churchill?. Because overall, it can’t really stand the truth about itself. It’s hard to think of yourself as an oppressor, I don’t feel that any of my ancestors particularly benefitted from Empire, but rising tides do raise all boats. Did my working class family struggle, yes, did we starve, not in the last couple of generations. But it’s hard to look at your efforts and struggle, and see privilege. It’s much easy to be a victim, if people would understand how hard you’ve worked. That also means that everything you have, you worked for, it’s not as a result of your privilege. So you cling unreasonably to the ideas that are about your greatness, about what makes you right and hard done by. If Churchill was racist, what else about what you think of yourself is wrong? It’s not right and I’m not sure that I have an answer for it but it’s pretty easy to understand.

Women killed: 118. Statues ‘killed’: 1. So guess which is the national priority?

There Is No Vaccine for Grief. Like the buffalo, I like to minimise the time I’m in discomfort!

What Happened to Christian Pulisic? The last couple of weeks, the reaction in the US to the Sussex drama and this article have really highlighted how culturally different the US and the UK are…

What Sarah Everard’s Murder Illuminates—And Might Obscure

Women Aren’t Nags—We’re Just Fed Up. This is one of the many reasons I’m single. I carry that kind of labour as part of my job. Living alone means that if my house is a mess, it’s down to me and I’m the only one that can fix it. Having to do that work at home for other people would drive me demented.