Six of the Best 919

"Already this week we have seen video of a police officer instructing a man that he and his family are not allowed to play in their own front garden, people doing yoga in local parks being told to go home, socially-isolating families being ordered off beaches even though they are within walking distance of their homes, Cambridgeshire police telling people what they can and cannot buy in supermarkets and Northamptonshire Police saying they might set up roadblocks and could start searching shopping trolleys." Peter Black fears overzealous police forces are undermining lockdown.

"In Raab’s favour, my father would point out that he paid on time and occasionally helped to carry the lawnmower through to the garden." George Steer remembers being the acting prime minister's gardener.

Mary Reid has been writing a daily 'isolation diary' for Liberal Democrat Voice - today's entry is typically thoughtful.

Blanche Wiesen Cook reviews a book about the powerful women who lived in Mecklenburgh Square, including Dorothy L. Sayers and Virginia Woolf.

"His work, then, was a brilliant deception on himself and others that, in the end, failed; when his audience realised they had practised the same deception on themselves, they ceased to believe anything he said. They stopped laughing." Tanya Gold reviews Woody Allen's memoirs.

What links Jack the Ripper and the Beatles' Penny Lane? Christopher T. George explains.