Peter Rhodes on keeping the Queen healthy, the horror of smog and men who look like thumbs

We cannot see the methane, the carbon dioxide or any of the other substances that cause us so much climate-change angst. Things were so much simpler back in 1921 when dense, choking smogs were all too visible and hung around our towns and cities for days. Exactly 100 years ago the Times reported how the fog was so dense at one cinema that “the powerful lamps in use were unable to penetrate from the operator’s box to the screen.” And that’s inside the cinema.