Society

Until a couple of weeks ago, the clothing company American Eagle was mainly known as a kind of low-rent Levi’s. Founded in 1977, headquartered in Pennsylvania, the firm – specialising in denim, casualwear and kids’ clothes – has quietly expanded into Europe, and beyond, without ever generating much excitement. Let alone a worldwide culture war. Why has much of the world desired paler, whiter women? All that changed in July, when the company launched a new ad campaign featuring the petite, sassy, curvaceously ubiquitous actress Sydney Sweeney – very much This Year’s Blonde – draping her desirable shape in the company’s clothes. Several ads have been made, they all feature

Even the most seasoned royal watchers may not have expected the revelations that came from the serialisation of Andrew Lownie’s new book, Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York, in the weekend’s newspapers. The biography nominally focuses on the vagaries of Prince Andrew and his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson, but judging from the excerpts released so far, there is embarrassment for much of the rest of the royal family, not least Prince Harry. The Duke of Sussex has now begun legal action against the Mail group for publishing some of the more scabrous stories: in his well-paid, much-used lawyers’ words, the newspaper has published ‘gross inaccuracies, damaging and

Up until yesterday, I was beginning to feel cautiously optimistic about the new James Bond film. After a long hiatus in which the franchise’s new owners Amazon and the previous Bond producers, Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson, seemed unable to compromise, the matter was settled. Broccoli and Wilson were paid a Jeff Bezos-sized ransom, and others took artistic control of the series. The producers – America’s Amy Pascal and Britain’s David Heyman – were good choices, and the decision to hire Dune’s Denis Villeneuve to direct was inspired, to say the least. But the news that Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight will be writing the script has sent my

It’s taken me a while, but I’ve finally realised the purpose of the Charity Commission. I’d always thought its role was to regulate charities – to check that they comply with their charitable aims (and with the law) and then to take action if they don’t. But it’s finally dawned on me that the real purpose of the Charity Commission is satire. Once you realise that the Charity Commission exists in fact to satirise how pathetically weak we are in the face of radical Islam then everything falls into place – especially its otherwise inexplicably pathetic response to the hate preaching that is commonplace in mosques up and down the country.