‘My brother... is at Radley, on account of my parents thinking it a bad idea to have both of us at the same school.’ ‘On account of your being twins?’ said Adrian. ‘Right, on account of my mother OD-ing on fertility drugs.’

Will they find the prospect of greater risk a cause for concern, rather than a gift from the right?

A source close to Mr Cummings said: 'From March through to the autumn, the PM said we should never have locked down. That was why he was so reluctant to do it again in November.' He said, 'the big danger is not Kung-Flu but the harm caused in trying to stop it.'

His fair hair waved long and freely over a white and unwrinkled forehead: the life of a camp and the suns of Italy had but little embrowned his clear and healthful complexion, which retained much of the bloom of youth.