Mrs Hitchens remembers - as I had forgotten - that I was in almost complete despair over the Covid panic after about two weeks of national hysteria.
As far as I could make out, I was the only national newspaper commentator in the country who had any doubts about the wisdom of closing Britain down and deliberately going bankrupt to pay for it.
The scale and fury of the abuse was unlike anything else I had experienced. Anti-social media erupted in derision and spite. During that period, I was frequently accused of deliberately seeking to kill people, once of helping to bring about the death of a specific person. The doors of the BBC, once ajar, became almost completely closed to me.
Then, thank heaven, I discovered, buried deep on page 64 of The Times newspaper, an article by former Supreme Court judge Lord Sumption, attacking the legal basis of Alexander 'Boris' Johnson's mass house arrest.
He concluded: 'There is a difference between law and official instructions. It is the difference between a democracy and a police state. Liberty and the rule of law are surely worth something even in the face of a pandemic.'
As far as I could make out, I was the only national newspaper commentator in the country who had any doubts about the wisdom of closing Britain down and deliberately going bankrupt to pay for it, writes Peter Hitchens
I knew that Lady Hallett's (pictured) ridiculous inquiry would report as it did, and I have many times predicted its weary conclusion... and so it will happen again soon in some form or other
And, as I knew that Sumption was (and is) a considerable mind and a first-class lawyer, I concluded that I was not in fact crazy, and the struggle against the Great Panic was not pointless. People who might readily dismiss me could not do the same to him. So I took various steps to rescue the article from the tomb in which The Times had hidden it, and suddenly I was not alone after all. And I kept it up afterwards for many months.
I won't try to fight this battle again. What I said is all on the record. What I learned during those stupid days was that huge numbers of people, a large majority, actually do not want to be free. They welcome being ordered about. And that if you seek power, the best way to get it is to spread fear, and then claim to be the people's protector.
I knew that Lady Hallett's ridiculous inquiry would report as it did, and I have many times predicted its weary conclusion. And so it will happen again soon in some form or other.
Except that the next time we will already be bankrupt, while countless numbers of people have already abandoned full-time education, or lost the work discipline that a major country needs to survive. So it will be worse, and we will end up even poorer than before.
The repulsive liar and drug abuser Hermann Goering is the star of a questionable new film about the Nuremberg war crimes trials.
This seems to me to be a pity. Goering is shown as cunning, even charming. At one point he boasts that he has never been beaten.
Actually, he was humiliated in Nazi Germany's Supreme Court in 1933 by a very brave Communist, Georgi Dimitrov.
Dimitrov was falsely accused of burning down the German Parliament building, the Reichstag. The Nazis, who had almost certainly burned down the building themselves, made this the excuse to abolish what was left of German freedom.
Dimitrov made mincemeat of a jackbooted, menacing Goering, in one of the great real-life courtroom dramas of the time, which has now sadly been forgotten. It would make a better film than this one. Russell Crowe is a fine actor, but should his talents be used to humanise this pagan bully?
The film also misrepresents a meeting between the American chief prosecutor, Robert Jackson, and Pope Pius XII. It uses it to slander the Pope as soft on the Nazis, now a fashionable view among atheists and leftists.
The Vatican may not have done all it could, but the Nazi response to Church protests was to commit even more murders.
In July 1942, when Dutch Catholic bishops cried out against persecution of Dutch Jews, the Nazis retaliated by murdering more than 200 Jewish converts to Christianity, who had until then been spared. So you can see why church leaders hesitated to raise their voices.
But as is the way with films, many will see this stuff and think it true.
Last Tuesday I found what had until recently been a fine old-fashioned Royal Mail pillar box, turned into a filthy litter bin by passers-by.
This was on a busy street in Oxford, full of small shops, restaurants, cafes and pubs. I was, for a second, taken back to a visit I made in 1992 to the devastated Somali capital of Mogadishu, once an elegant Italian-style metropolis, but at that time reduced to a terrifying squalid slum by human conflict and moral decay.
I learned from that journey how quickly apparent civilisation can slump into barbarism.
Royal Mail has explained to me how it came about. The box was being prepared for conversion into a more modern interactive device, and so its front door was taken off and the gap protected by a sheet of plastic.
But my point is this. Why was the trash dumped there of all places? These stately red cylinders, with their crowns and monograms, are symbols of trust, tradition, authority and order.
Left defenceless, you might hope they would be left unharmed. But something in the modern British mind hates authority and tradition and enjoys undermining them.
The police have already gone. How long before the remaining restraints disappear too? Then what will be safe from the slobs who did this?
The road to Mogadishu may be rather shorter than we thought it was. I never want to go there again, and I very much don't want it to come and visit me either.