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Diary selections from the pandemic year, March 2020 to March 2021 by Alan Bennett.

First of March. Thanks to arthritis, I'm now much less mobile than I was.

Gone of the days when I could jump on my bike to pop down to the shops. So static semi-isolation is scarcely a hardship, or even a disruption of my routine.

Himself's no slouch when it came to work.

George Steiner once asked a Soviet dissident how he got through so much.

House arrest, Steiner, house arrest.

Alas, so far as work is concerned, I haven't yet noticed much difference.

The only medical scourge I've had any experience of is TB, or consumption, as it was called then.

The Sherwoods, a family that lived next door to us in Armley-Leads in the 1940s, lost their youngest son to TB, which then infected his father, who also died.

Unsurprisingly, this left my mother perpetually anxious, lest we catch it.

Mrs Sherwood was a good cook, and often invited my brother and me to sample her dishes,

which we were strictly forbidden to do.

On one occasion, though, I succumbed, as Yorkshire pudding,

and foolishly saying so at home, it was as if I'd signed my own

death warrant. T.B. was to blame for other more bizarre prohibitions. We were never allowed to

...