Why on earth would the NHS want to know your baby’s ‘sexuality’?

According to reports, midwives in Devon are being asked to fill in an utterly mind-boggling new form. What fresh madness is this?   

If Shakespeare was a black woman, I’m in trouble

When I read that a feminist historian is to publish a book claiming that William Shakespeare was actually a black woman, I’m afraid I was very angry. Obviously I recognise that the book is an exciting and profoundly important work of scholarship. I’m just worried that it will deter publishers from accepting my own groundbreaking treatise, which argues that Shakespeare was actually a Palestinian climate activist and ADHD sickfluencer. Perhaps I’ll just have to tell publishers that he was a black woman as well. Admittedly I don’t have a single shred of evidence to support my theory, but I don’t see why they should hold that against me.

At any rate, the news that a white man from 16th-century Warwickshire was in fact a Woman of Colour does help clear up one mystery. Last week, film critics were surprised to see that Oscars judges had snubbed Paul Mescal, who plays the Bard in Hamnet. But now it all makes sense. Mr Mescal was completely wrong for the role. They should have cast Whoopi Goldberg.

Of course, this is far from the first time that the authorship of Shakespeare’s works has been disputed. For donkey’s years there have been people claiming that his plays were really written by Francis Bacon, or Christopher Marlowe, or the 17th Earl of Oxford – or even, incredibly, Queen Elizabeth I. What I find curious, however, is that no other great writer gets this sort of treatment. You never hear anyone claim that, say, Jane Austen was actually a welder from Wigan, or that Philip Larkin arrived on the Windrush. So come on, academics. Be more adventurous. Tell me that Chinua Achebe was actually a ginger Dundonian, or that Emily Bronte was actually a man named Ellis Bell who pretended to be a woman named Emily Bronte pretending to be a man named Ellis Bell in order to give feminist historians something to write about.

In the meantime, I would advise against mocking this latest theory about Shakespeare’s true identity – because anyone who does so may live to regret it. In the words of an anonymous Twitter account, at the height of Black Lives Matter mania: “A black woman invented the telescope. You might disagree. You might even have some evidence to the contrary. But you have to ask yourself: is this really worth losing my job over? A black woman invented the telescope.”

Time, I feel, for those words of wisdom to be updated. “A black woman wrote the complete works of Shakespeare. You might disagree. You might even have some evidence to the contrary. But you have to ask yourself: is this really worth losing my job over? A black woman wrote the complete works of Shakespeare.”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/01/27/why-on-earth-would-nhs-want-know-newborn-baby-sexuality/