STUCK in lockdown and slowly going mad? Can I recommend you read Dan Rhodes’ When the Professor Got Stuck in the Snow, which is the story of Professor Richard Dawkins also stuck in a lockdown, due to a snowstorm, and also apparently going bonkers.

I first came across Dan Rhodes through his short stories. 

When I say short, they were really short. His earlier book, Anthropology, is of 101 stories, each 101 words long, so he knows all about economy and brevity. He can be funny and sharp and can get emotional depth out of fewer words.  

His most recent book, 2014’s When the Professor Got Stuck in the Snow involves Richard Dawkins — with his Dawkins dial turned up to 11 — and his assistant, stuck in the snowbound village of Upper Bottom, trying to convince the Women’s Institute to abandon God. 

It has walk-on parts for Martin Amis, Johann Hari and others and a satisfying number of stupid “Bottom” jokes. 

It’s also got a point, as a satire of the arch pomposity of the “new atheism,” with snobby leaders and angry “divorced dad” followers — an inhumane know-it-all model reflected in other “movements” like the “FBPE,” “centrist dad” and contrarian clever-clogs gangs. 

But there is also a warning here that the same stupid approach can also swallow up movements to which we are sympathetic, as well as unsympathetic. 

We on the left can be the same kind of daft arses as the snowbound professor, and have to try hard not to be.