Victoria Beckham

Saturday

Zoe Strimpel

Brooklyn Beckham is so typical of his spoiled generation

The misadventures and "mummy issues" of Brooklyn Beckham – articulated in a verbose Instagram post about how much he hates his parents and why – has stirred feelings, even in those least likely to care about anything to do with the Beckhams, senior or junior. The reason why is simple: the 26-year-old man child of Lord and Lady Beckham is the perfect emblem of his spoiled generation. Brooklyn Beckham is a very rich young man, and everything he has and has done has been thanks to the immense privilege he was born into Along with their totalizing hostility towards things deemed racist or imperialist or anti-trans, they are also the first generation to celebrate cutting off your family if they fall short of your expectations.

brooklyn beckham

Thursday

Cosmo Landesman

Is it better to be posh or cool?

What in twenty-first-century Britain is it better to be: posh or cool? Of course the correct answer is: it’s best to be posh and cool. But posh people, on the whole, tend not to be cool and really cool people aren’t usually posh. But the tribes have a lot in common. They share a certain insouciance, which is a posh word for total indifference to the feelings and thoughts of other people. They are both anti-democratic and anti-meritocratic in spirit and practice. No matter how hard you try and how much money you have, you can’t join the posh or be cool. Like sex appeal, you’ve either got or you ain’t. Defining either group is not easy, but you know when you see it — or in the case of the posh, hear it.

posh

Wednesday

Laura Thompson

Will ‘accessibility’ ruin ballet?

When it comes to the arts, I have an allergy to the concept of “relevance.” Yet this tired term continues to exert its power over the creative industries — and one art form, in particular, has scant defense against it. I mean the one whose most familiar symbol is a near-weightless woman with switchblade limbs, poised impossibly on the tiny blocks encasing her toes, wearing a white circle of tulle around her minimal hips and pretending to be a swan. Ballet. Is ballet relevant? Do sylphides and sleeping beauties have anything to say to a twenty-first-century audience? Do princes in tights?

ballet