The Londoner: Mary Beard faces up to post-virus future for universities

Mary Beard and AC Grayling on coronavirus and Universities | Petition to halt Labour leadership contest | Daniel Craig says his kids won't get his cash | Riz Ahmed got arrested in Pakistan | Stars continue to self-isolate
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20 March 2020

Classicist Mary Beard has voiced fears that the pandemic shutdown will change the UK’s universities for good as top academics talked about their experience of coronavirus.

“Higher education will be one of the many long-term losers,” Beard, fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge, predicted to The Londoner.

“When we return, I am sure that we will have to put up a fight to reinstate face-to-face lectures. I am slightly joking,” she added, “but think how much money could be saved by switching to online teaching permanently and selling off the lecture rooms!” Let’s not get any ideas.

Philosopher and academic AC Grayling told The Londoner traditions should be protected for students. “We’re going to learn how to make good use of new ways of delivering content,” said Grayling, who is Master of New College of the Humanities in London. “But we never should backtrack from face-to-face.

“A lot of institutions like my own have shifted things online in the past few days,” he added, joking: “This is useful as a lot of student-age people are alert later in the day than when lectures are usually held. My own view is that as soon as the crisis is over the personal touch will return.”

Universities have not been ordered to shut but Education Secretary Gavin Williamson says he is “confident vice-chancellors are making the right decisions”, which have included suspending face-to-face teaching and cancelling summer exams.

Universities body Universities UK said services for students on campus and essential research were continuing.

Ancient history specialist Beard said not everything was changing for her during quarantine. “I shall be reading everything I can get my hands on about Roman emperors,” she said. That’s reassuring.

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No Thunderball rollover for 007 kids

Daniel Craig (above) made a reported £18 million for his final James Bond film, but he won’t be giving it to his children.

“I don’t want to leave great sums to the next generation,” he says.

“I think inheritance is quite distasteful. My philosophy is to get rid of it or give it away before you go.”

In a Saga magazine interview — he really is looking forward to retirement — the 52-year-old also says he never aspired to play 007 as a younger person.

“I dreamed of being all sorts of other things — Superman, Spider-Man, the Invisible Man, even a good old-fashioned cowboy,” he sighs. There’s still time, Daniel.

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With rumours swirling about corona policy, any No 10 off-the-record briefings probably aren’t a plot, thinks Theresa May’s former press aide Paul Harrison. “I lose count of the number of things that weren’t particularly helpful to say at that particular moment when I was in government,” he tells Matt Forde’s podcast. “It was almost always cock-up rather than conspiracy.” That’s reassuring

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Football’s Peter Crouch has been finding time for “a bit of scampi research” during the shutdown. “It’s been blowing my mind, really, this scampi stuff. What is it? A few people on email and social have told me that scampi is actually langoustine tails... I believe it’s some sort of crappier lobster.” We’re all learning at home now

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Riz takes the rap on Pakistani tour

Star Wars actor Riz Ahmed was recently apprehended in Pakistan for visiting an island military base, he has revealed. Ahmed, who has also released rap albums, accidentally ended up at the base near Karachi on a work trip. When he told prison guards he was a poet, they demanded he prove it. “Only in Pakistan the military police are like, ‘You know what, he’s got a nice flow, let’s let him go man,’” Ahmed tells the Table Manners podcast. “I had to spit some bars to get out of behind bars.” Phew

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SW1A

A petition to suspend the Labour leadership race until after the pandemic has gained more than 3,000 signatures online, with fans of incumbent Jeremy Corbyn very keen for a delay. “We need to keep a leader in situ and we already have a perfectly good one,” writes one.

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Most involved in the election, however, have privately “accepted” it’s over, one former fighter tells The Londoner, focusing instead on Covid-19. Keir Starmer is the frontrunner, and assumed the leader’s role with an op-ed in The Guardian on the “role of the opposition” this week. The party tells us it has no plans to delay, despite the final hustings being cancelled, and is set to announce the result digitally on April 4.

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Contender Lisa Nandy thinks she has at least “got better at talking about herself” during the contest. “There was an interviewer a few years ago who said that interviewing me was literally the worst hour of her life, which was pretty damning,” she tells a New Statesman podcast. Ouch.

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Quote of the day: 'Do not go to The Winchester'

Shaun of the Dead writer Simon Pegg says we shouldn't go to the pub until all this blows over.

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