The left has become addicted to “worry porn”, says Freddie deBoer in his Substack newsletter. Even with omicron, the pandemic is essentially under control – thanks to “remarkably effective” vaccines and soon-to-be-released antiviral drugs, the “vast, vast majority” of the world will survive it. Yet the left is still freaking out. One widely read recent piece in The Atlantic was headlined “I’m starting to give up on post-pandemic life”; another in Vox was titled “The world as we know it is ending”. And this “catastrophising” – which is also a feature of the left’s coverage of Donald Trump – always carries with it “the quiet, throbbing need for the bad dream to come true”. Covid has already been terrible, but liberals “seem desperately to want it to be worse”.

Prince Albert only lived to 42, says Henry Oliver in UnHerd, but in his short life he transformed the monarchy and Britain itself. When he married his first cousin, Queen Victoria, in 1840, the royal household was “still roasting 12 large joints of meat a day” and the monarchy was “on the brink of republicanism”. Albert quickly tamed and modernised it – in 1843 he drove through the streets of Birmingham, side by side with the radical mayor, being cheered by republicans. As chancellor of Cambridge, he introduced courses in natural sciences alongside the traditional maths and classics. And he helped create a swathe of museums in London, including the V&A and the Natural History Museum.