Lionel Shriver

Lionel Shriver

Lionel Shriver is a columnist at The Spectator and author of We Need to Talk About Kevin, among other books.

Thursday

Lionel Shriver

We need a dose of vaccine realism

One of my geniuses as both a commentator and a character is to confront what for most normal people amounts to unqualified good news and immediately spot the downside. I’m a professional party-pooper. Hence, as promising early results from three major Covid vaccine trials inspire a flurry of jubilant metaphors about tunnels and cavalry, your downer columnist glowers — for the New York Times didn’t tag Shriver ‘the Cassandra of American letters’ for nothing. Beware, warns this killjoy crank, allowing your minders to keep you in confinement ‘just a little bit longer’ and then you’ll be let out to play.

Thursday

Lionel Shriver

What the three types of Trump supporter really want

As Democrats’ colossal collective sigh of relief drives wind turbines even over in Britain, let’s not lose sight of the big story. However welcome, Joe Biden’s win was supposedly a dead cert. Even conservative commentators like Andrew Sullivan were hoping for a landslide. The real big story is that Donald Trump came within about 73,000 votes of winning the Electoral College. Democrats have celebrated the fact that their man got more votes than any other presidential candidate in history. But who got the second largest number of votes in history? Donald Trump. Of all people. And a 75 million vs 71 million popular vote gap is hardly yawning.

Saturday

Lionel Shriver

Why I voted Biden

If the prospect of Joe Biden as fills me with such foreboding, why did I vote for the guy? I’ll spare you the standard foam-at-the-mouth diatribe about Trump being a threat to democracy itself and keep it short. The man’s incompetent. And Biden has upsides. His health care plan beats no health care plan. A president who has occasional verbal lapses beats a president who can’t talk at all. Biden might halt the attrition of qualified civil servants from every branch of government, while improving his country’s international standing — at least from knee-high to mid-thigh. Biden’s very dullness could restore a sense of order; rather than ‘Build back better’, his slogan might more persuasively have run ‘Make America boring again’.

Saturday

Lionel Shriver

Matthew Parris, Lionel Shriver and Douglas Murray

25 min listen

On this episode, Matthew Parris talks about how, on free school meals, he's truly fallen behind the zeitgeist; Lionel Shriver on why she's voting for Biden, warts and all; and Douglas Murray's reflections from America in the days before the election. Tell us your thoughts on our podcasts and be in for a chance to win a bottle of Pol Roger champagne by filling out our podcast survey. Visit spectator.co.uk/podcastsurvey.

Thursday

Lionel Shriver

The long winter – why Covid restrictions could last until April

39 min listen

Why does the government think the second wave will be worse than the first? (00:49) Will a Biden presidency restore America's fortunes? (18:45) And finally, does Covid mark the end for the silver screen? (30:10)Spectator editor Fraser Nelson talks to Carl Heneghan, professor of evidence-based medicine at the University of Oxford; editor of The Spectator's US edition Freddy Gray is joined by columnist Lionel Shriver; and reviewer Tanya Gold is in discussion with The Spectator's arts editor Igor Toronyi-Lalic.Presented by Lara Prendergast.Produced by Gus Carter, Max Jeffery and Sam Russell.

Lionel Shriver

I’m voting to make America boring again

I just spent £2.50 in postage to bring about one of the last things I want. Specifically, the next-to-last thing I want. If the polls are right (and how should I know?), my absentee ballot will help leave Trump behind as a one-term historical aberration and install as US president an elderly Democratic lifer whose cognitive capacities remain uncertain. Many an ambivalent Biden voter will share my concerns about victory: Covid. Who is that masked man? Biden often flaunts his face coverings even when nowhere near another human being, while his party has embraced the mask as a badge of nobility, righteousness and partisan unity. Obliging computer modellers now posit that more than 100,000 Covid deaths ‘could’ be prevented if 95 per cent of Americans always wore masks.

Thursday

Lionel Shriver

Covid has killed off our civil liberties

It started with smoking. The 1960s and 1970s saw little popular objection to legislation restricting advertisements by private companies purveying a legal product. Little objection was raised thereafter when these same companies were banned from promoting their wares at all. Broadly shamed, even smokers have mutely accepted confiscatory taxes on cigarettes. As laws to protect the public from passive smoking have extended parts of the US to beaches, parks and even one’s own apartment balcony — locations where the danger to others is virtually nonexistent — few have cried overreach. It’s a truism: tobacco companies are evil (and so are smokers). The suppression of smoking is widely regarded as a public health triumph.

Thursday

Lionel Shriver

The trouble with a ‘decolonised’ curriculum

I always felt sorry for my father, then president of a chronically strapped educational institution, for having ceaselessly to approach wealthy prospective donors with a begging bowl. How much more delicious, I imagined during his tenure, to instead be the widely welcomed party that doles out the dosh. But as the administrators of Australia’s Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation have discovered since 2017, it isn’t always easy to give money away. Funded by a $3 billion bequest from the late healthcare magnate Paul Ramsay, the centre was established in order to revive the flagging humanities at Australian universities.

Thursday

Lionel Shriver

The Covid hysteria is getting worse

Readers may recall a column last month that laid out powerful evidence for the proposition that the ethnic and racial disparities for dire Covid outcomes are overwhelmingly due to obesity. While I also read the piece aloud for posting online, fewer of you will have listened to the audio rendition. That’s because YouTube took it down. The explanation was pro forma: the column violated the site’s opaque ‘community guidelines’. An appeal produced the further explanation: ‘YouTube does not allow content that spreads medical misinformation that contradicts the World Health Organisation or local health authorities’ medical information about Covid-19, including on methods to prevent, treat, or diagnose Covid-19 and means of transmission of Covid-19.

Saturday

Thursday

Lionel Shriver

The trouble with ‘taking back control’

I sympathised with Leave voters who yearned to ‘take back control’ of British borders. After all, if being a country means anything, it surely entails first and foremost a clear understanding of who comes under that country’s protection — and who doesn’t. Otherwise a country is just a patch on a map. Yet I’ve always found Leavers’ high hopes for reduced immigration heartbreaking.

Saturday

Lionel Shriver

Spectator Out Loud: Lionel Shriver, Simon Cooper and Gerri Peev

22 min listen

On this week's podcast, Lionel Shriver says that the real determinant of coronavirus isn't race - it's obesity (01:00) Simon Cooper asks whether the return of beavers to English rivers is really something to be celebrated (09:35) Gerri Peev asks why the European Union keeps backing Bulgaria's kleptocratic government.

Thursday

Lionel Shriver

University Challenge: the next education mess

31 min listen

While the government’s U-turn on A-level and GCSE results has been widely welcomed, universities are still in a dire state – why? (00:55) Plus, has Boris Johnson got the right approach in his war on fat? (15:00) And finally, are illegal raves during the pandemic socially irresponsible, or just young people sticking it to The Man? (25:45)  With academic and author Matthew Goodwin; chair of the Education Select Committee Robert Halfon; Spectator columnist Lionel Shriver; weight loss doctor Andrew Jenkinson; Spectator contributors Leaf Arbuthnot and James Delingpole. Presented by Cindy Yu. Produced by Cindy Yu, Max Jeffery and Alexa Rendell.

Lionel Shriver

The crucial variable with Covid-19 isn’t ethnicity – it’s fat

In the UK’s capital city, where do the fewest obese people live? North London. The most? East London. The weight disparity between largely white and largely immigrant residents might seem to concern race, but I will argue — against the tide, as right now everything is about race — that, deep down, the fat differential isn’t ethnic. The American and British media have chided for months about higher Covid fatality rates among minorities, and I’ve previously cast medical dubiety on the fashionable claim that these patients are dying of racism. Released last month, a statistically meticulous Columbia University study of some 7,000 cases validates my scepticism.

Saturday

Lionel Shriver

Joanna Lumley, Lionel Shriver, Andrew Doyle and Jeremy Clarke

27 min listen

On this week's edition, Joanna Lumley recalls her meeting with Mongolia’s former champion wrestler – now the country’s president – and reflects on the joys of eating birdseed (01:14). Lionel Shriver argues that the true novelty of coronavirus is just how scared it's made us all (07:14). Andrew Doyle suggests that the SNP's hate crime bill could lead to the criminalisation of the bible (15:34). And Low Life's Jeremy Clarke shares his sadness at seeing an old neighbour and friend moving on (20:14).

Thursday

Lionel Shriver

Never has a virus been so oversold

There’s nothing unprecedented about Covid-19 itself. The equally novel, equally infectious Asian flu of 1957 had commensurate fatalities in Britain: scaled up for today’s population, the equivalent of 42,000, while the UK’s (statistically flawed) Covid death total now stands at 46,000. Globally, the Asian flu was vastly more lethal, causing between two and four million deaths. The Hong Kong flu of 1968-69 also slew up to four million people worldwide, including 80,000 Britons. Yet in both instances, life went on. What is unprecedented: never has a virus been so oversold. Why, I’d like to sign on with Covid’s agent. What a publicity budget.

Saturday

Thursday

Lionel Shriver

Open letters have become ransom notes

In the States, the ‘open letter’ is enjoying quite the formal renaissance. Curiously, recent examples of this newly popular epistolary genre exhibit striking similarities to the ransom note. During June’s riots following George Floyd’s murder, a beloved independent bookstore in Denver called The Tattered Cover posted online that the shop would be politically impartial, the better to remain a neutral space for customers. Cue local outrage. Cue the store’s immediate volte-face: fulsome support for Black Lives Matter. The reversal proved unsatisfactory. Signed by miffed patrons and authors, an open letter to the owners listed ten demands.

Thursday

Lionel Shriver

The Edition: are white working class boys being left behind?

38 min listen

White working class boys consistently perform worse than other demographics in the UK's education system - why? (00:45) What is it like to be 'cancelled'? (14:20) And is it time to return to the office? (24:50)With the IEA's Christopher Snowdon; former Ucas head Mary Curnock Cook; journalist Kevin Myers; the Spectator's columnist Lionel Shriver; editor of the Oldie, Harry Mount; and Director of UK in a Changing Europe Anand Menon.Presented by Cindy Yu.Produced by Cindy Yu and Max Jeffery.

Saturday