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Just after Andy Murray made the winning pass that won him Wimbledon for the first time in 2013, he looked up to the sky in pain. Not laughing with joy as Djokovic does when he wins a slam or weeping graciously as Federer did before he quietly put on his Rolex, but a sheer plea of existential pain. And wasn’t pain what Andy Murray was really all about? The emotional pain of the press conferences where he could barely conceal his dislike for the journalists, the pain of a nation’s expectation on his shoulders, and, latterly, the endless physical pain that he spoke of so often. His audience knew his

Labour appears to be planning to make housing a big priority for its first weeks in power, which is perhaps unsurprisingly, given that it will have gained power thanks in part to the growing number of frustrated young would-be homeowners. We are being led to expect a housebuilding bill within three weeks of Keir Starmer taking power, to effect the party’s promise to build 1.5 million new homes over the course of a five-year parliament. There is a very large Nimby tendency in the environmental movement Labour’s manifesto suggests what will be in it: local authorities will once again be set housebuilding targets, abolished under Rishi Sunak. There will be

Naples is dirty, noisy, haphazard, and full of kamikaze scooter drivers. It is also sensual, liberating, and jolly. But that doesn’t seem to appeal to many people today, who prefer everything to be ordered, measured; all uncertainty removed. In city form, it’s known as Singapore: unlike Naples, everything there is clean, tidy, and works. It’s also a sterile, soulless, mini dictatorship. Everyone looks a little sticky, ruffled; no one cares about a sweat patch breaking out – shock horror J.G. Farrell’s wonderful book The Singapore Grip describes the fall of Singapore during the second world war. There are many parallels between the city back then and Naples now: the elegant

Europe is revolting against the tourist invasion. This summer, Venice has started charging a tourist tax to keep visitors at bay. Mallorca, Menorca, Ibiza and Formentera have just set up inter-island protests under the slogan, ‘Let’s change course – let’s set limits to tourism’. Barcelona is planning to ban Airbnb. In the Cinque Terre, on the Italian Riviera, some of the coastline is now one-way, to restrict tourist traffic. On another bit of the Ligurian coast, plans are afoot to charge walkers. You can see why – the famous cities and resorts of Europe have become one vast Queueworld, where tourists gather in great numbers, intense heat – and, increasingly,

Sabrina Carpenter first emerged in 2014 as a child actress on the Disney Channel. From there, she signed with a record label, becoming yet another entertainer to take advantage of the tween-TV-to-music-charts pipeline (see Miley Cyrus, Ariana Grande, Selena Gomez et al). Ten years and five average albums later, she was known only to a few teenage girls, but over the last few months this has changed. The 25-year-old is now everywhere: music videos, magazine covers, billboards, chat show sofas and, of course, Instagram and TikTok. If you’re under the age of 30, you can’t escape Carpenter.  Hers is music that adopts the principles of the advertising ditty Her newfound

Anyone visiting the small Westphalian city of Münster in north-west Germany may notice three man-sized cages hanging from the handsome St Lambert’s Roman Catholic Church in the city’s main square, the Prinzipalmarkt, and wonder about their provenance. The cages are one of the last visible relics of an episode in which society took leave of its collective senses and went quite mad. It is my impression that the western world is currently undergoing just such a convulsion. Where the 16th century had their crazed prophets crying down destruction on a doomed civilisation, we have our furious activists vying for their 15 minutes of fame In Münster’s case, what the Germans

I live north of the river in London and my parents live south of it, in the Tunbridge Wells. I have long been a registered user of the Dartford Crossing for fear of forgetting to pay to cross – and thus incurring an automatic fine. This means that the cameras at the bridge and tunnel recognise my car number plate and immediately deduct £2.50 from my bank account when they see it going over or under the Thames. I found myself in an automated telephone queuing system. I was caller number 73 Or it did mean this until something went wrong. After my usual crossing in April, I started to

I belong to a generation of foreign correspondents whose first move, on entering a hotel room, was not to turn down the bed or to check (hopefully) for hot water, but to examine the phone, screwdriver in hand. Could you detach it from its socket? Could you open it up to get at the wiring? Did you have a compatible adaptor, and even if you did, could the line transmit data back to your editor in London? The rooms had recently been redone, according to the owner’s redesign, and this entailed removing the tables There were more than a few times when I whisked my long-suffering husband out of an

Older Japanese women are boozing more than ever, according to a new survey conducted by Tokyo Metropolitan Government. The study found that while binge drinking by men decreased over the last ten years in all age groups, the percentage of women in their 40s, and especially those in their 50s, drinking dangerous amounts of alcohol, has shot up. For the latter cohort the figures were particularly alarming: 9 per cent a decade ago and 17 per cent now. Public displays of drunkenness are not especially frowned upon Why would this be? The most popular theory is that life for many middle-aged women has simply become much more stressful in recent