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Hello, I'm Sam Holmes and welcome to Spectator Out Loud. Every week, a few of our favourite writers read their pieces from the latest issue.

This week, we'll hear Douglas Murray on how the pandemic has made cynics of us all.

Paul Wood on why after 10 years he and his family are finally leaving Lebanon.

And finally, Tanya Gould gives us her review of a Batman-themed restaurant.

First up, Douglas Murray.

The pandemic has made cynics of us all. A report by

MPs into the spread of the coronavirus has concluded that the government's approach constituted

one of this country's worst ever public health failures. The MPs say the early fondness for herd immunity, plus the delay

in locking the country down, ended up costing thousands of lives. What makes this worse is that

everything the government did was done at the suggestion of its leading scientific advisers, witty, valence, and sage.

And so one feels another slippage of faith.

On this occasion relating to the Imperium not of government, but of scientists.

I know some people will be amazed that I should have any remaining trust in government scientific advisers,

but everybody has to trust somebody, and I tend to trust people who know about things I do not.

If I break a bone, I do not do my own research into the best ways to heal it, but rather go to the professionals.

Likewise, if a global pandemic hits, then I trust the people whose job it is to have been

thinking about this before today. Of course, much of what has happened in the past year and

a half has spectacularly eroded that trust.

Watching Neil Ferguson's predictions proving to be off again and again did not help matters,

nor the fact that the faulty predictions just kept coming.

I know people who haven't trusted anything they've been told over the past

...