TALK OF THE TOWN: 'All roads lead to Eton' as Royals agree on new school for Prince George
Rumours have been swirling for months about which senior school the Prince and Princess of Wales will choose for young Prince George.
Now I hear the Royal couple have at long last agreed on their choice, with a well-placed source telling me 'all roads lead to Eton'.
Although William and Kate were spotted looking around a number of top schools, Eton and rival Marlborough College were clear front-runners. Eton – the alma mater of Prince William, where fees are more than £63,000 a year – is conveniently near the family home in Windsor.
Meanwhile, Kate is known to have flourished at Marlborough, and the co-ed school would allow Princess Charlotte to join her elder brother, right at Trooping the Colour last week.
But now insiders tell me there is a 'smugness' emanating from Eton about a forthcoming announcement. 'It was like, 'I know something and the people at Eton know something, but I'm not going to tell you'. That was after William and Kate visited Eton,' says my source.
George, 11, is currently at Lambrook School in Berkshire, as are both his siblings, and is not due to start anywhere new until September 2026.
Last week, this newspaper revealed two pupils there allegedly sexually assaulted another on a school trip. The Royal children were not involved, and their parents were not thought to be aware of it.
Beauty secrets of Diana's nieces
Princess Diana's glamorous nieces Lady Eliza and Lady Amelia Spencer never appear at any occasion looking less than flawless – and it was no different at Royal Ascot last week.
What's their beauty secret? The 32-year-old twins have revealed they visit top Harley Street cosmetic specialist Alice Henshaw to get Botox and trendy salmon sperm DNA injections under their eyes, at £1,000 a pop.
'They had a combination of anti-wrinkle injections and polynucleotides,' Alice says. The treatment, as championed by Kim Kardashian, is said to help keep the skin elastic. Beauty is pain!
Toff's brimming with good ideas
Newly married Georgia Toffolo got fed up debunking racegoers' speculation she might be pregnant.
'If one more person asks me why I'm not drinking then looks at my stomach, I'm going to kick off,' the ex-Made in Chelsea star said.
She was at Ascot every day in a variety of hats, from this red fascinator, right, to a practical wide-brimmed number.
'The good thing about that is if I see any of my ex-boyfriends, I can tilt it down!' she joked.
I spied Piers Morgan waving and yelling 'Your Majesty! Your Majesty!' in a desperate attempt to get a response from the King as he rode past in his carriage on Friday. Sadly, to no avail.
Designer Jasper Conran was being a cautious gambler, only betting £20 a race, despite just inheriting half of his mother Shirley's fortune…
Is Kate no longer a Foot Fighter fighter?
Actress Kate Hudson was said to be furious with Foo Fighters rocker Dave Grohl after he betrayed his wife – and her best friend – Jordyn Blum by fathering a child outside their marriage.
So it could have been very awkward when Hudson, left, crossed paths with the musician and his wife at London's River Cafe.
But a fellow diner tells me it was all hugs and kisses. Blum is said to have now forgiven Grohl. Has Hudson buried the hatchet too?
Everyone likes to make a fashion statement at Ascot – even the King.
On Thursday, he wore a new signet ring for the first time in more than 50 years.
He was rarely seen without his old one, given to him by his mother in 1969 and bearing the Prince of Wales's feathers.
His new ring features a coat of arms similar to that of the Greek royal family – a nod to Prince Philip's heritage.
Former tennis pro Annabel Croft is more used to SW19 than Ascot, but on Friday she had the job of picking the best turned-out horse – a mission she relished.
'I'm all about standards, and standards are dropping everywhere. So it's nice we still have standards here at Ascot and at Wimbledon,' she told me.
The winner was Mount Atlas, trained by Andrew Balding, brother of Annabel's BBC sports colleague Clare. Hope there was no favouritism!
It seems Harry and Meghan are sluggish with their admin. The couple are late filing tax forms for their non-profit body Archewell for the fourth time, missing the May 15 deadline.
Not even a 'delinquency notice' from California's attorney-general made them change their ways.
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Eight days apart, at the British Summer Time stage in Hyde Park, in front of a crowd of 65,000, two glittering, platinum pop titans will perform. First up, next Friday, is Olivia Rodrigo: 22 years old, 46 million monthly listeners on Spotify; 14 Grammy nominations; three wins; and about to headline Glastonbury. Then, on July 5 and 6, Sabrina Carpenter: 26 years old, 70 million monthly listeners on Spotify; six Grammy nominations; two wins; her song Espresso the biggest single of 2024 by a female artist. The pair have often been depicted as bitter rivals: two Disney Channel alumni whose overlapping journeys to superstardom were powered partly by lyrics that may, or may not, have been written about the same ex-boyfriend. But really, they are both lessons in how to pull off the Disney breakaway — what happens when young women wriggle out of their contracts and embrace their new freedom by singing about the brutality and reality of modern girlhood, its shattering heartbreaks and the fun of the rebound. One of the things that marks both of them out is the obsessiveness with which their fans pore over their songs and image-making, whether it's Rodrigo last week being accused on social media of ordering a Nashville music venue to take down Taylor Swift imagery before she filmed there — it was actually removed by the venue for legal reasons — or Carpenter sending the internet into meltdown with the suggestive cover art for her new album, Man's Best Friend. Rodrigo grew up in Temacula, California, a theatre kid in a family who did other things — her mother a teacher, her father a therapist. After various singing competitions and school productions, she was made the lead in the American Girl doll franchise movie at 12 years old and, the following year, cast in Disney's Bizaardvark and then High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, a mockumentary. Rodrigo was homeschooled, studying for her exams on set. 'Like, 'Oh shit, I worked my whole childhood and I'm never going to get it back,'' she told The Guardian in 2023. 'I didn't go to football games, I didn't have this group of girlfriends that I hung out with after school. That's kind of sad.' After a song she wrote for the High School Musical show went viral, Rodrigo sought a record deal, choosing not to make music for Disney's in-house label. She went with Interscope/Geffen. Disney allowed her to break her contract before the show's fourth series and, during the pandemic, Rodrigo sat down to write. In 2021 her song Drivers License went stratospheric, breaking a Spotify record as the first song to hit 80 million streams in seven days. The track reached No 1 in 48 countries on Apple Music, 31 countries on Spotify and 14 countries on YouTube. 'It's been the absolute craziest week of my life,' she said in an interview. 'My entire life just, like, shifted in an instant.' Four months later she released her debut album, Sour, a pop-punk triumph about her teenage heartbreak, the songs searing and seething with anger, underwritten by longing and ache — all written by a 17-year-old, with her producer, Dan Nigro. Though she stretched her legs in the ballads, it was her stroppy, plucky rock which was particularly satisfying. Critics, with some arch surprise that it had come from a squeaky-clean Disney-kid, gave the album rave reviews. At Glastonbury 2022 she brought on Lily Allen to sing Allen's 2009 banger F*** You, dedicating it to the Supreme Court justices who had just overturned the Roe v Wade abortion ruling in the United States. 'I'm devastated and terrified, and so many women and so many girls are going to die because of this,' Rodrigo said on stage, having spent hours memorising her speech. As well as being a great song with crushing lyrics, it created a perfect storm of gossip and intrigue. 'And you're probably with that blonde girl,' she sang, 'who always made me doubt — she's so much older than me.' Fans were convinced she was singing about her former Disney co-star Joshua Bassett, with whom they thought she had a romantic relationship. The 'blonde girl', they suspected, was Sabrina Carpenter, who was rumoured to have dated Bassett the next summer. 'I put it out not knowing that it would get that reaction, so it was really strange [when] it did,' Rodrigo told Variety. 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Overwork is making us sick — here's how to rest your brain
As I was reading The Brain at Rest, about the cognitive benefits of doing nothing, I was reminded of a comedy sketch that was doing the rounds on social media last year. In it, the American-Irish stand-up Des Bishop fondly recalls how 'mindful' life was before smartphones. Remember, he says, how much of our lives was spent just waiting — for people to show up, for a video to rewind, for a bus to arrive. 'We were mindful half of every f***ing day because we didn't have a choice!' he concluded. 'I didn't realise I was like a f***ing guru before I got a cellphone.' I have a feeling that the British neuroscientist Joseph Jebelli, 39, would enjoy this sketch. He is a fan of just staring out the window on the bus — not to mention hugging trees and meandering through forests with no real agenda except to discover the 'soft fascinations' that plants and flowers can offer. He takes long baths and daily naps. He lies in bed — his 'sleep temple' — daydreaming and only surfaces when he feels rested. He even plays 30 minutes of computer games each day. Even better, he has overcome any guilt associated with idleness. He claims that working only four to six hours a day with frequent breaks has transformed his life and enlarged his brain, enabling him to think in completely new ways. Jebelli is not alone in making claims for the productive powers of idleness — see also business gurus like Fergus O'Connell (The Power of Doing Less, 2013) and activists like Evie Muir (Radical Rest, 2024). But he does bring some scientific rigour to the subject, having written books on Alzheimer's and brain evolution. It's all about activating the 'default network', the circuit of neurons that enables us to daydream, think reflectively and imagine the future (as opposed to the 'executive network' that we use to complete specific tasks). The default network fans out across the brain, occupying the frontal, parietal and temporal lobes. It's active only when our minds can roam free. Jebelli explains how he used to put in long hours at the University of Washington until he began to understand that the default network is really 'your brain's hidden superpower' and that accessing it can 'enhance your intelligence, creativity, social empathy and long-term productivity'. Overwork is the monster Jebelli is determined to 'slay'. He cites Roger Federer's 12 hours of sleep each night (plus two hours of naps) and Maria Carey's 15. He rails against the capitalist imperatives of relentless labour, as well as the pressure to socialise. 'We're trapped in a self-erected maze of commitments, missing the beauty and insight beyond its boundaries,' he says, urging the reader to embrace activities like staring into space for 20 minutes. 'Boredom remains one of the most misunderstood and wrongly disparaged mental states.' He wants to reframe boredom as an opportunity for discovery and invention, and overwork as a 'pandemic' that's killing us. 'The scariest thing about the work pandemic is that, unlike other pandemics caused by viruses and bacteria, there is no means of contact-tracing, no methodical approach to the control and spread of the infection. We are all carriers. We are all at risk.' If this sounds hysterically alarmist, it's backed up by some hair-raising stats. The World Health Organisation has called long working hours 'the single deadliest occupational risk factor'. Jebelli says our culture of overwork cost Britain £20.7 billion in 2022 from workers going off sick with everything from cases of stress, depression or anxiety to work-related musculoskeletal disorders. Millennials are the worst affected generation: 58 per cent of us overwork, apparently, compared with 31 per cent of baby boomers. These figures represent a 38 per cent increase since 2019, which is worrying. Jebelli urges readers to prioritise sustained wellbeing over 'short-term productivity' and recognise the early warning signs of work burnout. He runs through all the stages, which will feel distressingly familiar to anyone who has experienced it: a subtle feeling of dissatisfaction, followed by stress and emotional exhaustion, that quickly leads to cynicism. • How to supercharge your brain — the experts' rules 'Next comes dehumanisation,' he warns, which manifests as an 'emotional hardening' towards your colleagues. You start complaining about everything, which leads to irrational worry and a 'heavy, suffocating feeling of dread'. Your mind stores feelings of guilt, hopelessness and incompetence that you wear 'like a skin'. Then the most alarming sentence: 'Once it sets in, it can take up to three years to recover.' In the case of Jebelli's father, Abolfazl, though, it's probably too late. As with his 2017 book, In Pursuit of Memory — in which Jebelli described his grandfather's struggle with Alzheimer's — this book is fuelled by a painful personal narrative, in this case what Jebelli calls his family's 'toxic relationship with work' since they emigrated from Iran to England in the early 1980s. It's a classic immigrant story: the family threw themselves into jobs of 'soul-crushing monotony' to make the family back home feel proud. For Abolfazl, who worked long hours in an office, 'this new world was efficient, yes, but desolate'. One day, after he came home shouting, he quit his job and never went back. He was diagnosed with a major depressive disorder and hasn't worked since. He now sleeps most of the day. The pressure has fallen on Jebelli's 68-year-old mother, who runs a day care centre but suffers from diminished sight and dangerously high blood pressure that she never has time to address. It's a continuing source of anguish for Jebelli, who insists that the sacrifices they have made on their health are 'not in vain, for it taught me the value of rest'. He struggles with a 'debilitating' anxiety disorder', alleviated by embracing the Dutch art of niksen, a verb that literally means 'to nothing'. He doesn't just stare into space. He forest bathes (walks in the woods), goes for long runs, finds solitude in ten-day solo retreats in remote cabins and plays a fair bit of Mario Kart and zombie shooter games. Still, there are several moments when Jebelli's assertions seem more borne of personal preference than actual research. I don't believe that computer games are better for your health than socialising (an 'unhealthy obsession' of the modern world, he believes). Similarly, he conflates scrolling TikTok with watching a TV show on Netflix, which is apparently full of 'complex storylines' and 'moral dilemmas', which overtaxes your brain. I'd be interested in seeing him go head to head with the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, the author of The Anxious Generation, on this one. 'Here's what's really bad,' Haidt has said. 'iPad time by yourself. It's solitary.' • Read more book reviews and interviews — and see what's top of the Sunday Times Bestsellers List Nor does Jebelli address the gendered nature of rest. Women at work who slack off face far more stigma. In my present co-working space, I have a running joke with my male colleagues — or 'leisure dads' as I've dubbed them — about their hour-long lunch breaks in the park and 11.30am starts after a rock climbing session. But perhaps we could all learn from the leisure dad class. I don't see them suffering from burnout. The revolution has to start somewhere and I think Jebelli's spotlighting of the cognitive benefits is supremely helpful. For all my niggles, The Brain at Rest is inspiring and practical and, I hope, signals a wider change in how we think about work. 'We need to set firm boundaries so that saying 'no' becomes a respected choice, not a sign of weakness, a mark of wisdom, not a failure.' The Brain at Rest: Why Doing Nothing Can Change Your Life by Dr Joseph Jebelli (Torva £20 pp256). To order a copy go to Free UK standard P&P on orders over £25. Special discount available for Times+ members 1. Walk slowly through a forest. This helps to improve our creativity and problem-solving abilities. While you're there, hug a tree, which reduces cortisol and activates your brain's default network. 2. Listen to sad music. Not only does it improve your mood, it's also associated with stronger mind wandering, which can enhance your intelligence, creativity, social empathy and emotional processing. 3. Try to nap for 30 minutes daily. It reduces stress, regenerates damaged brain cells and makes your brain bigger. One study suggests that nappers' brains are 15 cubic centimetres larger.
