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Women don’t want to dress like Kate Middleton any more

Look, if you will, at Kate Middleton on the Isle of Mull for her wedding anniversary. There she was in skinny jeans, tucked-in blue shirt and tweed blazer, shod in what looked like sensible walking boots. It’s a look I like to call Royal Prep School Mummy, and she’s been at it for years: on school runs, at charity netball matches, and Anmer Hall photoshoots. It works, as it always has done, by combining registers. The tweed blazer nods to all sorts of Balmoral-ish, elitist accents – but we forget all about that because of the blue shirt and skinny jeans, items we might well own ourselves. Hilary Mantel may

Why is the BBC obsessed with rap?

Two of the top ten stories on the BBC news feed yesterday concerned the travails of leading rap and hip hop stars in different kinds of trouble in the United States. In one case, the 55-year-old rap singer Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs – one of the biggest names in the business – is on trial in New York facing charges of assault and sex trafficking, which he denies. The trial is only the latest in a long line of legal actions Combs has faced over the years, in which he’s been accused of offences of sexual violence. In the second case, a 32-year-old hip hop star called Tory Lanez was rushed

Trent Alexander-Arnold and the wrath of Anfield

Trent Alexander-Arnold is a gifted footballer. Twice he has helped Liverpool become champions of England. He was also an important member of the team that became champions of Europe, and he has played 33 times at right back for England. Alexander-Arnold is still only 26. His race is nowhere near run. He has, one may safely say, power to add. And how did Liverpool supporters receive him when he came on as a second-half substitute against Arsenal over the weekend? Touched by the sun, thousands hooted their disapproval. The ‘Anfield faithful’, to borrow one of those sentimental phrases that come so easily to lazy scribes, let the player know that

Why are women expected to love chocolate?

‘What? You don’t like chocolate?’ The British Airways attendant almost shouted at me in incomprehension as she was passing out little packets of chocolate digestives. I had had the temerity to ask (in economy, of course) whether there might be any other biscuits on offer. To which she had responded with a concerned enquiry about allergies. No, I said, I am not allergic. I just don’t like chocolate. I can’t say I was surprised by the attendant’s reaction. Any suggestion that you might not share the current appetite – nay, fetish – for chocolate and you are treated as though you’re inexplicably withdrawing yourself from the cultural mainstream. This applies

What my walking boots taught me about death

It’s unlikely you’ll find a sorrier-looking pair of hiking boots than mine. As a result of my Camino addiction, the backs of my boots are literally crumbling, while the fronts have split open like a French baguette. They look like prime candidates for the hiking boot version of assisted dying – to put them out of their misery. But on my last pilgrimage, and in recognition of my complacency, I began treating my boots like royalty. I applied leather grease at the end of each day, packing them with newspaper to draw out the moisture. In short, I put those boots before all else. They are lasting far longer than

How the internet turned ugly

Consulting a website on my phone recently, I was struck by how painful it has become to use the internet. All I wanted was to read some local news and check the spread of a power cut in my area. Instead, as I scrolled, I was assailed by interruptions from integrated adverts which – in the best case – wanted eagerly to tell me about the charm and usefulness of a new BMW. In the worst case, I was urged to consult some lawyers immediately because I had been mis-sold an insurance or financial product in the past and was due an enormous payout, if only I would contact the

The sorry state of our public conveniences

Britain’s public loos are a national embarrassment. If you are in any doubt, head to Liverpool Street Station and spend a penny. It’s unquestionably the most odious and unpleasant public lavatory anywhere in the supposedly civilised world. It has to be experienced to be believed, but suffice it to say that the level of cleanliness on display would make a Medicine Sans Frontier doctor fresh from West Africa recoil in fear and reach for their PPE. The floor is usually awash in various places with unknown fluids. The long shared trough installed for handwashing is so disgusting that you wouldn’t clean your dog in it. The supposedly automatic taps barely dispense

Is AI evil?

Is Claude your confidant? Is ChatGPT your yes-man? Your wingman? Artificial intelligence seems more like a friend than the apex predator we feared. Maybe it’s not gearing up to enslave us or turn us into paperclips after all. But I find there is something just as malign about AI posing as our friend. Slowly, subtly, politely, it is changing how we think of ourselves, other people and our relationships. The friendliness of AI is a user-retention tactic. OpenAI, for example, relies on its models to be informative, yes, but also on them being more agreeable than humans. Sam Altman recently announced that OpenAI was rolling back its latest model of ChatGPT

Lara Prendergast

The quiet frustrations of Puerto Rico

If you like piña coladas – and I do – Puerto Rico will suit you just fine. The cocktail was born on the island in 1954, though debate lingers over exactly where it was first dreamt up. A bartender at the Caribe Hilton is credited with blending coconut cream, pineapple and rum into its original form, but some claim it was at Barrachina that the drink evolved into the slushier, icier version we know today. But does it really matter? What’s important is that in Puerto Rico, you’re never far from a piña colada. Spring break was in full flow when I arrived on this tropical US territory. The college

The perennial appeal of Made in Chelsea

The modern world of dating is ripe for disappointment, and recent dating app convert Sophie is certainly not immune. ‘I went on a date with an actor – not doing too bad – we go to Zuma. I ordered everything; Henry VIII in there, got it all. Then the bill came and he says, how should we do this? Ugh! Ejector seat. Meep! Bye bye. No, I couldn’t. I paid the whole bill and left. Auf wiedersehen.’ Luckily, pal Olivia has a solution, and advises her to ditch the apps and instead sign up to a millionaires’ dating agency run by her friend. Good advice for all of us, perhaps,

Bets for Chester and Ascot

Today’s Ladbrokes Chester Cup (3.05 p.m.), run over a distance of more than two miles and two furlongs, is an intriguing affair with 15 runners competing for a first prize of more than £86,000. The best handicapped horse on the basis of his hurdles form is the likely favourite East India Dock, who was third in the Grade 1 JCB Triumph Hurdle at the Cheltenham Festival in March and can run off a lenient official flat mark of 89 today. The slight downsides to his chances are that he is untried at such a marathon trip as this on the flat and he has no experience of the unique twists and turns of Chester. East

The Lord of the Rings gave me my moral compass

In a recent diary for The Spectator, the editor noted that many of the world’s leading tech companies have names inspired by The Lord of the Rings: Peter Thiel’s Palantir and Mithril; Palmer Luckey’s Anduril. ‘J.R.R. Tolkien has a curious hold on the minds of Silicon Valley’s Trump supporters,’ he wrote. Well, they’re not the only ones. If I had founded a company I probably would have called it Anduril too. While less odd teenagers spent their money on CDs or football boots, I used to have a life-sized replica of the Elvish sword hanging above my bed. I, like the tech bros, was a LOTR obsessive. A super fan.

Magic and the art of lying

Talking to a former politician about lying felt very appropriate. It was during one of my ‘Magical Thinking’ sessions, a corporate team-building event I run in which I perform close-up magic tricks and the participants try to work out how they’re being done. Among those at this session was Anne-Marie Trevelyan, who had initially been baffled by a particular mentalism effect. She thought of a day of the week, then a month of the year and finally a playing card, and my guesses on all three proved correct. Every possible route by which I could have cheated seemed blocked off – but Anne-Marie was brilliant at responding to my hints