Hobbes's Leviathan in the time of Coronavirus

 Hobbes’s Leviathan in the Time of Coronavirus

Thomas Hobbes’s famous treatise on political philosophy, Leviathan (published 1651) has been the subject of a couple of recent articles (May 2020). In The Guardian the political philosopher David Runciman writes that the imposition of national lockdown displays the raw power of governments over their subject citizens, in ways that Hobbes would have recognised and indeed advocated.

Spanish Walk Before The Lockdown

Before the Lockdown – a Last Hike in Spain

Long ago – you must forgive my faltering memory; age and distance make things so blurred, and ancient events hold on by their fingertips, and then drop away. It must have been March 2020 (can you remember then?).

Well, in those times, I went walking in the sierra behind Nerja, guided with friendship and expertise by professional guide, John Keo.

Cars in the Lockdown

Cars as Garden Sheds and Other Uses

In these days of sparse traffic, even if volumes are slowly increasing, I’ve come to note certain features of the vehicle use that still persists.

I leave to one side the obvious – the great numbers of delivery vans chasing after their time slots, and the ghostly empty (at most times of the day) buses.

Lockdown and Boarding school

Lockdown and Boarding School

The tiresome cliché is that prison holds no terrors for anyone who has been to a British boarding school, at least of the type prevalent up to the late C20. It would be trite to adapt the cliché for the current lockdown, but I’d like to stand it on its head. Certain aspects of the lockdown, far from being immunised by a boarding school experience, insidiously recall some of the traumas of that experience.

Lockdown - cinematic echoes

Lockdown – Cinematic Echoes

Sean of The Dead is a comedy zombie film set in North London, using locations near to my place of lockdown. One of the conceits it indulges in is the notion that it is not easy to tell a zombie apart from the ordinarily decrepit, or from an exhausted bus passenger gurning in semi-oblivion. 

ignorance about Portugal

Ignorance about Portugal

What do I know about Portugal? Trying to answer that question in advance of a short trip to the Algarve in January, the reply I had to give myself was “very little”. This was to be my first visit to the country, apart from a weekend break in Lisbon some years ago. I chiefly remembered Lisbon as a city where it was possible to walk to most places where a weekend visitor might want to go, so long as one didn’t mind labouring up a lot of very steep hills.

Caminito del Rey (and Cliffs of Moher)

Caminito del Rey (and the Cliffs of Moher)

El Caminito del Rey is a lengthy walkway cantilevered along one side of two sheer gorges near the village of Chorro, northwest of Malaga. It is billed, in some quarters, as the “scariest walk in the world”, but this bit of hyberbole connects to truth only in the way of fairground rides making the same sort of claim. In years past the description had foundation: the original walkway, constructed in the first years of the C20, had, as it approached its centenary, deteriorated so much that it had become lethal. Several walkers fell, and died.