Beaches were packed last year but the weather has stopped similar scenes this May
It s just typical, isn t it? This time last year glorious weather welcomed in the bank holiday, with the Met Office declaring it the sunniest May on record – and yet we were stuck in lockdown, our freedom limited by early efforts to keep Covid at bay.
Back then, we had to keep two metres away from anyone not in our own household; and we weren t supposed to meet more than one person from another household. But that didn t stop people rushing to the beaches, of course. Beachgoers cited Dominic Cummings’ lockdown breaches as justification for a trip to a crowded seaside, after the Prime Minister s adviser had been perceived to break the rules with a trip to Durham.
Operation Unthinkable: Churchill’s top secret plan to invade Russia
Britain s current relationship with Russia is said to be icy – but that s nothing compared to the blueprint for war drawn up 76 years ago
23 May 2021 • 6:00am
Just days after the Red Army captured Berlin, Churchill ordered his joint planning staff at the war office to draw up plans for a massive offensive against the Soviet Union
Credit: AP
“Close to frozen” is how Andrey Kelin, Russia’s ambassador to the UK, recently described relations between London and Moscow. His frankness raised a few diplomatic eyebrows, but the comment should come as no surprise. Ever since the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, hostility between the two nations has been the norm – not the exception.
‘Zen’, a word the French overuse to describe harmonious, peaceful situations isn’t one you’d ordinarily use of the hyperactive, sometimes brutal Sarkozy. A successful Minister of the Interior (Home Secretary), a position he held twice, he ran his party, and then Cabinet, like a military operation, brooking no interference and firing underperforming ministers without qualms. His hair-trigger temper often plunged his communications team into despair. Visiting the annual Paris Agricultural Fair in 2008 (an essential walkabout in a country where the farming lobby is strong) he shot back to a visitor who’d thrown a casual insult at him, ‘Get lost, you moron!’ in full view of a brace of TV cameras.