Karl Sabbagh

One of the cadavers from which samples of Spanish flu virus have been taken was that of Sir Mark Sykes, who along with Georges-Picot reorganised the Middle East after the First World War. Sykes was exhumed in 2008, and his lungs and brain supplied 17 samples of the virus for research.

Emma Barnes writes that Keynes would have found unrealistic ‘the idea that governments might impose hairshirt policies on citizens (especially when there was no guarantee that other governments would do the same) or that individuals themselves would choose to reduce their consumption dramatically (again, with no guarantee that others would do the same)’ (Letters, 22 November). It’s worth noting...