LONDON LETTER NOVEMBER 2020
BORIS JOHNSON, BONFIRE NIGHT AND THE PERILS OF THE PARDON November is the most heavily pregnant of months, with Christmas and the new year ready to emerge from under multicoloured lights and tinsel. Already the shops are full of Christmas cards, decorations, and multiple varieties of chocolate. This year through Christmas is already overshadowed by the dark clouds of COVID-19 and economic hardship. Portobello has an unfamiliar grey feeling to it. It looks tired. The US elections have of course, overshadowed both Halloween and, that most British of institutions, Bonfire night. Although in recent years the latter has been increasingly overshadowed by a highly Americanised version of Halloween. Fireworks, for understandable reasons, are out of fashion whilst the idea of burning an effigy strikes, again for understandable reasons, a discordant and unappealing note these days. That said this saddens me as Bonfire night was always the big one in my childhood, with ...