The busy streets of central London are normally no place for the faint-hearted in the run-up to Christmas. Shoppers jostle with increasing urgency to secure last-minute gifts while revellers spill out from bars and restaurants to celebrate their final days in the office.
But this is far from a normal Christmas. Shoppers and tourists have stayed away from the capital in large numbers, data – and haunting pictures – reveal.
Images of near-empty streets in citiessuch as Manchester and Edinburgh tell a tale of shoppers and tourists alike staying away from city centres over fears about the spread of the Omicron coronavirus variant and a mass return to working from home. Andrew Lloyd Webber has closed Cinderella until next year, and productions of
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