Society

Be honest, how excited are you about the women’s European football championship? The BBC – which will broadcast every game of the tournament that starts on Wednesday – clearly expects you to be very excited indeed. But is the BBC in danger of overhyping women’s football, and doing it and the players a disservice in the process? Our national broadcaster has form here. The coverage of the women’s World Cup of 2019 was similarly comprehensive and exhaustingly upbeat. Decent games were ‘wonderful’, mediocre games ‘good’; and ways were found to describe stinkers in some way or other positively. There were few poor players, just disappointing performances by hugely talented individuals.

‘Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could,’ says Jeff Goldblum’s character in Jurassic Park, ‘they didn’t stop to think if they should’. These, among the wisest of that fictional oracle’s many wise words, are what came to mind as I read of a whizzy new pan-European science project called Odeuropa. Historians and chemists in Holland, Germany, Italy, France and Slovenia along with colleagues at UCL and in Cambridge, have spent two years, apparently, working to synthesize the smells of the past. In Germany, they’re even training machines to recognise images relating to smell in libraries of historical images – a notable f’rinstance being pictures of people holding their

When Boris Johnson flew to Rwanda with Prince Charles for a key Commonwealth summit last weekend, the trip ended up being overshadowed by a bubbling feud between the two men over Britain’s Rwanda asylum scheme, which Charles has privately opposed. For the Commonwealth the focus on the spat was a shame, as it had some welcome news to announce that was arguably far more significant for Britain than the two men’s personal beef. On 25 June it was officially declared that two new countries, Gabon and Togo, were joining the Commonwealth. For those who have been prophesising the death of an antiquated and creaking Commonwealth for years, it was a

The 109th edition of the Tour de France is underway although Friday’s first stage, held for the first time in Denmark, was spoiled by heavy rain and numerous crashes. Not that the adverse conditions dampened the spirits of the estimated half a million spectators who gathered in Copenhagen to witness a spot of sporting history. Similar crowds will line the route of cycling’s most famous race when it arrives in France on Tuesday, all hoping to cheer on the first homegrown winner of the Tour since Bernard Hinault was crowned champion in 1985. In an interview in the Guardian in 2009 Hinault was blunt when asked why France was no

The English language has a curious feature, called the phrasal verb. It consists of a plain verb plus a preposition; to go up, to get over, to find out. They are quite often more vivid than their simple synonyms – to ascend, to recover, to discover. New ones are constantly being thought up; they are also totally irrational – get on with or get off with? Most serious writers spend a lot of time thinking about them. One day, the story goes, the poet Philip Larkin was challenged by his secretary at work. She had discovered a cache of pornography in his office cupboard. ‘But what’s it for?’ she asked.

It’s been an eventful week for celebrity justice, especially of the entirely predictable kind. First, Ghislaine Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years for recruiting and trafficking young girls. Now, the musician and paedophile R. Kelly has received a 30-year prison sentence for sexually abusing girls, boys and women. He was convicted of the offence last September so a lengthy prison sentence has been inevitable ever since. Still, 30 years is a long, long time. Should Robert Sylvester Kelly make it to the end of his incarceration — and the odds against a high-profile convicted sex offender surviving unmolested are not high — then he will be 85 upon his release.

There is a cartoon doing the rounds this week that shows two women having a drink. One says to the other ‘My dream is to travel back in time’. Her friend replies ‘Just book a ticket to the USA’. No doubt the cartoonist had in mind the topical issues of the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe vs Wade and its striking down New York’s law requiring ‘proper cause’ to carry guns in public. But it could equally apply to a federal court’s decision this week to impose a 20-year sentence of imprisonment on a 60-year-old woman, my sister Ghislaine. This cruel sentence arises from her conviction at trial six months ago and

Royal Ascot has come and gone: 300,000 racegoers, men in top hats and tails, women in chic outfits and beautiful, or bizarre, millinery, gathered for the highlight of the racing calendar. But beneath the pageantry, all is not well in the world of horse racing. The sport’s leadership is in disarray. Day-to-day racecourse attendance is plummeting; gambling restrictions are looming; animal rights activists are piling on pressure; funding and prize-money are woeful; some of the best horses are being sold overseas; and the sport is at an increasing competitive disadvantage compared to Australia, the Gulf, Hong Kong and Japan. For one man in particular, Joe Saumarez Smith, three weeks into