Before you start listening to this podcast, we've got a special subscription offer. You can get 12

issues of The Spectator for £12, which will give you full access to everything on our website,

and we'll also throw in a free £20 £20,000, Amazon voucher. Just go to spectator.com.com

forward slash voucher if you'd like to get this offer.

Hello and welcome to the edition,

the Spectator's weekly podcast discussing some of the most important

and intriguing issues within our pages each week with the writers behind them.

I'm Cindy Yu.

This week, Dr Max Pemberton reports on NHS preparedness from the front line.

We also speak to the former Foreign Secretary William Haig on what Britain will look like after coronavirus.

And last, we celebrate children and their imagination.

First up, the latest estimate for when the peak of the epidemic will hit us is two to three weeks

from Professor Neil Ferguson at Imperial College. So how has the NHS been getting itself ready

for the upcoming battle? Dr Max Pemberton reports from the front lines this week on how the

prepared the NHS is, writing that an NHS infamous for its bureaucracy is now behaving like a Silicon

Valley startup. Max joins me now together with Dr. Kieran Mullen, MP for Crewe and Landwitch,

who is returning to the NHS. So, Max, you write about the NHS as war footing in this week's

cover piece. Can you tell us what you've seen? So really since the kind of

the shifting or the gear change that's happened with Boris Johnson announcing that we know,

really that we've now got to start preparing for widespread infections and we've got to, and the NHS

has got to start preparing for that. He'd almost, almost as he was making that announcement,

all the NHS trusts declared a major

...