Month: May 2021

Thym Tryeth Troth

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In the depths of the Northumbrian countryside is Wallington, a substantial house and estate managed by the National Trust. The walled garden is idyllic, with a wealth of colour and a sense of tranquility, accompanied by the soft trickle of flowing water. A place of calm, colour, order and reflection.

The house at Wallington bears the motto of the Trevelyan family: ‘thym tryeth troth’. Otherwise rendered as time tries faith, it is a reminder that loyalties can be made in a moment but are proven over time. If we ever think about the word ‘troth’ it is probably in the words of marriage service according to the Book of Common Prayer. It is here that people plight their troth, giving both a pledge and their ‘truth’ to one another.

Time tends to reveal many things – not least that apparent truths in one age can become questionable and dangerous opinions when viewed from a distance. Often, even at the time when purported truths hold sway, there are lone voices which query the assumptions underpinning these claims to truth. As the UK woke up to the reality of pandemic there were already those who had seen and set out in detail the implications of the impending crisis. On 12 March 2020 Rory Stewart was willing to voice what was happening and the actions that were needed.

There are also times when the truth about the past continues to have serious political weight. At a Downing Street briefing on 5 May 2020 Matt Hancock characterised the Government’s response to the COVID risk in care homes as an attempt to provide a protective shield. I don’t think I’ve ever watched a political statement being made and been so certain of its mendacity. Being fully aware of what was happening in care homes the idea that any serious Government effort had gone into protecting people was absurd. Even the data in the public domain made it clear that deaths in care homes were running at twice their rate compared with recent years.

“Right from the start it’s been clear that this horrible virus affects older people most. Right from the start, we’ve tried to throw a protective ring around our care homes”

Secretary of State for Health Matt Hancock speaking at a Downing Street briefing on 5 May 2020

All the evidence suggests that care homes were off the Government’s radar. Early models for the pandemic failed to take account of the way care homes are embedded in communities and what that might mean for transmission. Despite early evidence that once established in a care home COVID could be lethal, rapid and unstoppable, the political determination to halt the spread to homes was weak at best. In fact, as the evidence from Dominic Cummings suggests, not only were care homes unprotected but decisions to discharge untested NHS patients to homes caused illness and death. This is the detail which undermines the claim that any serious attempt was made to throw a protective ring round our most vulnerable citizens.

In the walled garden of Wallington all this seems far away. Places of tranquility invite us to take the long view and consider how humanity has lived through many different moments of crisis. Time continues to flow and every age can learn from critical experiences, drawing on painful episodes in order to become more just and merciful – or choose instead to entrench social inequalities with a spirit of fear and suspicion.

The walled garden, Wallington

If building back better means anything it must be about more than an exaggerated version of the past. From the degree of social inequality, to the environment, political apathy and consumerism, we owe the people who have died more than a warmed up version of previous policies. The pain of loss during the last 15 months is continuing to emerge. During Radio 4’s weekly phone in show, ‘Any Answers?’ a grieving widow noted not only the death she had experienced but its circumstances. Loss of contact in the months before death was a devastating cost in a marriage that spanned many decades.

In the months ahead – and through the promised inquiry – the detail of individual truths will be tested. However, these details of response (and lack of response) must come to inform the greater truth of how we live as a society and global community. Failing to do this will be a betrayal of the multiple losses experience during COVID-19, and the lessons that have come at such great cost. We need a better vision coming out of this crisis. A vision with a much stronger commitment to ‘love one another’. William Temple once said that it is impossible for governments to love individuals. However, there is an alternative way for this to be expressed. He commented: ‘love in social organisation is justice’. Let’s not deny future generations the justice they seek and deserve.

A Narrowing Path

Chris Swift1 Comment

In April I achieved a level of optimism about the pandemic which was entirely new. The success of the vaccine programme in the UK, combined with the lockdown, was delivering results that exceeded expectations. Numbers of cases and deaths weren’t just declining, they were tumbling. The BBC’s map of COVID infections was changing from the deep colours of danger to the lighter greens of relative safety. Everything looked set for joyful reunions on May 17, as indoor visits and restaurant dinning become possible. This optimism began to level off as reports of a new and more transmissible strain of the virus began to circulate.

The primrose path that seemed tantalisingly close has been replaced by the prospect of a more fraught road ahead. This is a narrow path with steep falls in either side. There is the real risk that tomorrow’s easing of restrictions will accelerate the transmission of the new strain. Given the huge response to vaccination in the UK this may appear to be excessively pessimistic. However, we are now experienced in COVID-19 and know that wherever there is an opportunity this virus thrives. Even with the shield of immunity for many, the pandemic will find the cracks in our defences. The people who haven’t been vaccinated; the people for whom the vaccine will not work as it should; the people whose health means that even mild symptoms push them into crisis. A much more transmissible version of the virus will find these people and fill the beds of the NHS.

Photo by George Morina on Pexels.com

What’s even more remarkable about the 1918 flu, say infectious disease experts, is that it never really went away. After infecting an estimated 500 million people worldwide in 1918 and 1919 (a third of the global population), the H1N1 strain that caused the Spanish flu receded into the background and stuck around as the regular seasonal flu.


The History Channel

This is quite depressing. As millions of people across the world continue to be infected, the changes that take place in the virus through transmission will intensify. When it came to the flu pandemic following the First World War the reduction of infection took place in a world where travel was enjoyed by the few, and a lot of journeys happened very slowly. Will COVID-19 recede so quickly in a world where normality in the West means an immense amount of rapid international travel? In the first lockdown in the UK it is calculated that there was a ‘74% reduction in the average daily number of contacts’. Normalised Western interactions in the 21st century are the perfect conduit for a disease that can be asymptomatic and spreads with remarkable ease among human beings. The role of ski resorts in gathering, infecting and dispersing people around the world is a microcosm of the global village.

Eleven months into the pandemic, we know that ski resorts played a significant role in seeding the pandemic across Europe 


World Health Organisation, Regional Office for Europe 16 December 2020

Both with the UK Government’s initiative to incentivise visits to restaurants, and the prospect of eased restrictions for Christmas, well-intended stimulus to human interaction fuelled transmission. The disheartening experience is that, as easing of measures approaches, time and again we have found the way ahead vanish in mists of uncertainty. The key difference this time is the high rate of vaccination – a factor which may turn the tide of any new surge. The simple fact is that we don’t know. However, we do know enough about the consequences of making a mistake in the freedoms we allow to incline us towards caution. It’s not what anyone wants to hear, but the reality of risk for the NHS, for care home residents, and for vulnerable individuals and communities cannot be discounted.

The government initiative (‘Eat Out to Help Out”), which cost around £500 million, caused a significant rise in new infections in August and early September accelerating the pandemic into its current second wave.


The University of Warwick
Photo by Helena Lopes on Pexels.com

While it is unclear what will unfold this week (and it may take two weeks to emerge) there is every sense that the path ahead is narrowing. Too many times we have failed to give the risks associated with the virus the respect they deserve. Of course we need to resume near-normal living as soon as possible. We know that there are many twists and turns in the pandemic, and harmful consequences can arise where least expected. Nevertheless, some risks are clear and should be avoided as far as possible, especially when so much is unknown.

As we chart the way ahead there must be a balance between the devil-may-care attitude of abandoned caution, and the doom-mongers who can only see risk on the horizon. A hundred years after the last pandemic, when that virus is still with us, we need to learn to live with the reality of COVID-19. As the first pandemic to occur in an age of rapid and plentiful transportation, the solutions we find to live with the virus will need to be new and innovative. Otherwise this won’t be a blip at the start of the 2020s – but the beginning of a decade of damaging restrictions.

Ashes Under Eboracum

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Around the age of seven I went on a trip to Hadrian’s Wall. My parents took us to Housesteads, then on a walk along the wall from Steel Rigg. It is a dramatic and evocative setting, with the wall climbing the contours high up onto the Whin Sill. For whatever reason, it started an interest in Roman Britain that lasted well into my teens. The Lancashire town where I lived had Roman heritage, and a military shield boss found locally is in the British Museum. Encouraging my developing interest, my parents then arranged a tour in York – Roman Eboracum – with a local archeologist.

Living in that same city more than forty years later I’m mindful of the history lying just below the pavement. At least one of the sewers built by the Romans survives in excellent condition under Church Street in York. From Romans, to Saxons and Vikings, this patch of earth has been the centre of influence in the north for thousands of years. The Minster’s foundations stand in the remains of the heart of the Roman fortress – an empire of spiritual life supplanting the temporal forces that once ruled the city.

History has been in the news in the UK following the announcement that two modern universities plan to cut courses. There is concern that only elite centres of study will continue to offer history degrees. In a world where science is offering so much in responding to COVID-19, it isn’t difficult to see why some universities may be reviewing what they offer. Yet how short-sighted. Without doubt both humanities and the arts offer a vital dimension to our understanding and outlook. As I commented many blogs ago, when it came to COVID-19, our best academic modellers lacked the insight or imagination to appreciate how care homes interacted with their local communities. Without the disciplines that explore lived human experiences key dimensions of our understanding are absent. That absence can result in a failure to register vital elements of the reality we are addressing.

A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.


Marcus Garvey

History offers us perspective. As we study the past we encounter people very confident about how much they knew and how human life should be governed. These understandings have changed over time, and an important lesson for today should be the provisional nature of our knowledge. Science operates on the basis that there is more to know and, consequently, that what we take today to be certain may be questionable tomorrow. Many years ago, when running an elective course for medical students, I asked what proportion of all that could be known about medicine they thought was known today. With commendable candour one student pronounced it was ‘diddly-squat’. Our learning increases all the time and, when we look back at the past, we can experience horror at the medical procedures people once endured. Our great-great grandchildren may feel much the same when they look back at our response to the pandemic.

History has the power to teach us humility. It tells us that people made choices which seemed rational and wise at the time, only to realise that seeds of disaster were being sown. Understanding the past is vital if human beings are going to learn, change and live well in the future. Simply doing what we want in one generation fails to recognise that we are part of the future, and our choices have consequences that endure. This is perhaps one of the most important lessons in the response to climate change.

To-day the Roman and his trouble
Are ashes under Uricon.


From A Shropshire Lad 31: On Wenlock Edge the Wood’s in Trouble, by A. E. Housman

Housman’s poem reminds us that for all the power and reach of the Roman Empire, today it is a layer of ash under Wroxeter. The Roman remains of York are impressive and have endured a long time, but the people who built them and ruled here are gone. Much of the understanding about how the world works has changed over those centuries and, while some things may remain, human self-perception moves on. It will continue to evolve and change, hopefully with the aid of the arts and humanities bringing their own unique learning to our understanding. To lose that knowledge is too great a risk when we know how quickly human life can change. Living humbly with the limitations of our knowledge might be the most significant contribution history conveys to help us make wise choices today.