Author: Philip Thornborow

Julian Jackson’s 2018 biography of Charles de Gaulle is entitled A Certain Idea of France. I am sure it would horrify many in this country to be compared with the General, but don’t we share a similar national mythology? We are currently in a season of remembrance. On 1 November Christians traditionally remember all the […]

The current government’s response to Covid-19 implies that pandemics are new and unexpected but that we will survive through ‘world beating’ innovation. The government of Elizabeth I prepared for any future outbreaks of Plague in 1578 by issuing ‘Orders thought meet by Her Majesty and Her Privy Council to be executed … in such … places as are … infected with the Plague’.