Lionel Shriver talks to Allison Pearson: 'The British people have never more profoundly disappointed me'

Lionel Shriver has said she is "profoundly disappointed" in the British people for their tolerance to the UK's strict lockdown during the global pandemic.

Speaking to The Telegraph's Planet Normal podcast – which you can listen to on the audio player above – Shriver told podcast host and Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson she was "dismayed" with the way Britons have stayed at home without questioning government strategy.

"The British people have never more profoundly disappointed me. It seems so un-British to say, alright then I’ll just roll over and I’ll stay home. I think part of it was being able to feed into the Blitz narrative," she said. "The bizarre attachment to being confined to your homes and not making a living and relying on the government...I’m just dismayed."

The award-winning American author of We Need to Talk about Kevin, who has lived in the UK since 1987 and voted to leave the European Union, also criticised the approach of Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who was hospitalised for coronavirus last month. "I was very worried when he became ill that it was going to change his judgment and his relationship to the virus and I’m afraid so far I’ve been proved right."

The 63-year-old writer, who has often found herself in hot water over her strong views on herd mentality and identity politics, also went on to question the efficacy of Black Lives Matter protests across the world.

"I don’t think it’s helpful to push the minority population to exaggerate their suffering. I think it’s important to know where the problems are but this hyperbolic approach of decrying systemic racism in every institution, in the entire country, and everyone in it as corrupt and racist...well first off I don’t believe that to be true and second of all that does not admit for any solutions on a practical level."

The interview comes after the publication of Shriver's most recent novel, The Motion of the Body, which satirises the world's growing fanaticism with fitness through the lens of a deranged 60-year-old couple, and from which she read an excerpt on the podcast.

The controversial writer, who in 2018 was dropped from the judging panel for Mslexia magazine's writing competition after she slammed publisher Penguin Random House for its diversity and inclusion policies, told Pearson she doubted she'll ever win another literary prize again, and had even been dropped by her Swedish publisher on account of her politics.

"Fiction writers these days are all from a very narrow political persuasion, their books neatly line up and there’s no edge. If nothing else, it’s boring," she said. "I have lost friendships because of my political positions. But someone a little right of centre never renounces the left wing friend. It’s always the other way around. That means something. It means where the intolerance is. I can make do with having Remainer friends, I forgive them too."