Welcome to the Colette Podcast. My name is Claire Lehman and I am editor and chief of Colette.

Colette is where Free Thought lives. We are an independent grassroots platform for heterodox ideas and fearless commentary.

Our podcast is a team effort and is jointly hosted by myself, Associate Editor Toby Young,

and Canadian editor Jonathan Kay.

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Hi I'm Toby Young, one of Quillet's London-based editors.

And today I'm talking to the novelist Lionel Shriver in the offices of The Spectator where she's been a columnist for three

and a half years. Shriver's novel we need to talk about Kevin won the Orange Prize

in 2005 has sold over two million copies and was made into a film in 2011 starring Tilda Swinton

and she is no stranger to controversy and has been a lockdown sceptic since the beginning of the pandemic.

I think the main thing I want to talk to you about is lockdown skepticism that we might venture a little further afield.

Have you been surprised by how few lockdown

skeptics that have been amongst the literary class

intellectuals? I think you know the answer. literary class, intellectuals.

I think you know the answer.

I've been astonished.

I guess I shouldn't be because this same conformism seems to apply to everything else,

so why should lockdowns be any different. The entire intellectual so-called community seems to speak with one voice

on race, on Brexit, and this is just one more source of perfect conformity.

Why do you think that it went in that direction rather than the other. You would have thought that given the progressive

...