Western observers — including many in London, where Gergiev is the principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra — condemned Russia’s invasion of Georgia as a return to the hegemonistic ambitions of the Soviet Union.

And when I raised my eyes for the first time I really did see a throng of people, a massive churchload of them, and I faltered again, but only for a moment.

In a letter from Pepys to his nephew Jackson, April 8th, 1700, there is a reference to the breaking out three years before his death of the wound caused by the cutting for the stone: It has been my calamity for much the greatest part of this time to have been kept bedrid, under an evil so rarely known as to have had it matter of universal surprise and with little less general opinion of its dangerousness; namely, that the cicatrice of a wound occasioned upon my cutting for the stone, without hearing anything of it in all this time, should after more than 40 years' perfect cure, break out again.

They were also impressed with the speed of the rollout, considering that the idea was only realised once the pandemic took hold.