proportion of the vote out of any party at every election during those years. However, it failed to form the government in six of those elections. Hannan's statement led to online mockery in March 2019; on Twitter, some of those making fun of Hannan's statement used the hashtag "#HannanIrishHistory" to post incorrect facts about Irish history. Hannan, who is himself part Ulster Catholic responded to the mockery by writing on Twitter, "I managed a Double First in Modern History from Oxford. One of the things I was taught is that historians necessarily have different takes on the same events. Please try to accept that yours is not the only interpretation." COVID-19 pandemic Hannan argued throughout the COVID-19 pandemic that the COVID-19 virus was not as serious to the general population as was widely believed. He was very critical of the UK government's response to the pandemic, arguing against restrictions on public mobility. Hannan joined other high-profile critics, known as 'lockdown sceptics', such as Lord Sumption and Toby Young, in arguing that the full restrictive lockdown would have serious negative consequences, as a result of restrictions on civil liberties, locking down the population, and stalling the economy. He first expressed this view in February 2020 in an article he wrote in the website Conservative Home, and stuck to it consistently through the lockdown. Personal life Hannan speaks English, French and Spanish. Awards and distinctions In 2009, Hannan was awarded the Bastiat Prize for Online Journalism for his Telegraph blog. He won the award for Speech of the Year at the 2009 Spectator Awards, for his Gordon Brown speech in the European Parliament. He won the 2012 Columbia Award (Washington Policy Centre) and the 2014 Paolucci Book Award (Intercollegiate Studies Institute). Hannan was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize in blogging in 2011. In 2014, Hannan won the Political Books Awards polemic of the year award, for his book How We Invented Freedom and Why It Matters. In 2017, Hannan received the Whittaker Chambers Award from the National Review Institute in person from John O'Sullivan. The award was opposed by the family of Whittaker Chambers; David Chambers, Whittaker's grandson, wrote that Whittaker would have supported a strong European Union as a counterweight to "Russia's new Stalin, Vladimir Putin." Bibliography Books (published in the United States as ) References External links Conservative Party website Articles at The Telegraph Profile at European Parliament website 1971