Not only were connotations of loneliness attributed to ready meals, their quality also started to be questioned, with frozen meals increasingly seen as second rate.

BBC: The rise of the ready meal

If Ms Williams does not intend to induce human horror at a pending bestial Armageddon, she at least invokes a future of earthly loneliness, where animals appear only as ceramic-hen butter dishes and endangered-species elastoplasts.

ECONOMIST: American fiction (2)

By insinuating himself under James's skin and writing in the first person, he covers not only the known episodes of James's life, but also the darker corners of the writer's loneliness and uncertainty.

ECONOMIST: New fiction