When Mohammed bin Salman rose to power in 2017, says Ahmed Al Omran in the FT, the top cleric in Saudi Arabia was asked what he thought of the young crown prince’s plans to lift a ban on public entertainment. “Music concerts and cinema are harmful and corrupting,” replied grand mufti Sheikh Abdulaziz al-Alsheikh, adding that liberalising such “promiscuous” pleasures would degrade Muslim culture and values. MBS ignored him, lifting the ban, sidelining the old theocrat (who died last week) and vowing to destroy extremism. “We want to live a normal life,” he said, a life of “tolerant religion” and “good values and norms”.

In the years since, the crown prince has embarked on the most radical transformation of Saudi Arabia since his ancestors teamed up with the Sunni fundamentalist Wahhabis to found the state in the 18th century. He has reined in the religious police, limited the power of judges to interpret sharia law, cut the amount of religious education in schools and “all but abandoned” public gender segregation. Shops that used to close five times a day for prayer are open around the clock. “The message that comes from Mecca resonates through the Islamic world,” says former US diplomat David Rundell, as does the “money that comes from Riyadh”. Both used to “promote an intolerant view”, but no longer. MBS argues that liberalisation returns Islam to the course it was on before the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the siege of Mecca’s grand mosque by Sunni Islamists, when his family gave clerics licence to impose extremist religion so they wouldn’t challenge the royal family’s political power. Today, concerts and film screenings sell out, young Saudis don’t ask whether things are halal or haram, and the clerics have been “replaced by lawyers, social media influencers and life coaches”.

THE COUNTRY ESTATE Brimpstead Estate, near the village of Dartmeet, Devon used to belong to the King, says Country Life, who sold it in 1993 under the condition that he could still use the property’s private access to the River Dart for fishing with 24 hours’ notice. On the ground floor are the kitchen, a dining room, a drawing room, a library, a study, a ballroom, a gunroom and a “gentleman’s room”. Upstairs are six bedrooms, four of which are ensuite, as well as a family bathroom and a hydropool. The property is set within nine acres of private grounds. £4.5m. Click on the image to see more.

Do you know your “zombies” from your “simps”?

Older readers probably know at least some Gen Z dating slang already: “breadcrumbing”, “ghosting” and so on. But how about “sneaky links”? “Zombies”? “Simps”? And as Molly Langmuir explains in The Atlantic, it’s not just language that the younger generation has changed. Nowadays, having sex on a first date is no big deal – what really freaks people out is going on a first date and holding hands.

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