A selection of the FT’s biggest stories and best reads every Friday

Hello from the world of tech — an industry powered by hype. Ever since stories circulated about advertisers showing women online ads for baby products before they knew they were pregnant, I’ve been fascinated by the claims made about targeted advertising. The sector is built on the back of mass data collection that campaigners say violate our online privacy. So why am I still seeing ads for things I’ve already bought and things I’ll never buy? It’s a question I tackle in my column this week, linked to below.

I’ve hope you enjoy my pick of FT stories — and a couple from elsewhere you shouldn’t miss. Click here if you’d like to receive Long Story Short by email every Friday.

1. ‘Concerns and conversations about how dark his skin might be’

Meghan Markle’s claim that an unnamed member of the royal family asked about the colour of her baby’s skin has been running through my mind all week. I’m not the only one. This article on Markle and Prince Harry’s interview with Oprah Winfrey was one of the most-read on the FT website this week. It’s a story that seems to have something for everyone: royalists and republicans, ITV investors and Piers Morgan critics. The tabloids have come out fighting against the couple. As one UK academic says:

“If they can portray them as prince and princess of woke in opposition to the establishment they will be tempted to do so.”

2. ‘We will be doing all we can to help and support those jobs’

Farewell then, Greensill. Supply-chain finance is one of those knotty concepts that stays under the radar until it explodes, as in this case. Now that the finance group has filed for administration, focus has shifted to the other businesses that will be most affected. Notably, that of Sanjeev Gupta, once dubbed “the saviour of steel”. The metals entrepreneur has admitted that the collapse has created a “challenging situation”. His businesses, which employ about 35,000 people worldwide, are among those in the spotlight:

“Ceaseless dealmaking won Gupta political support . . . but drew scepticism over how his businesses were able to keep writing the cheques.”

3. ‘A cuckoo in the planetary nest’

Remember those happy pictures of smog-free skies over LA and Delhi in the early days of the pandemic? Hopes that they might become the new normal have already evaporated as global carbon emissions return to pre-lockdown levels. Martin Wolf writes that the way in which we have bent the planet to our will puts the onus on us to reconsider our actions. In the short run, many of us will need to constrain our own consumption. Wolf writes:

“We are, in sum, at a historic juncture. It has fallen to our generation to take responsibility for the planet as a whole.”

4. ‘An earthly paradise’

Historian William Dalrymple goes searching for the home of Zahir-ud-Din Babur, founder of the Mughal empire, in what is now Uzbekistan. The poet-prince’s descriptions, written in his 16th-century memoir The Baburnama, make the land sound like a paradise of wild violets, tulips, roses and pomegranates. There is no plot twist — Dalrymple finds a high-altitude Eden untouched by Soviet industrialisation attempts. You’ll read this wishing you had a bowl of pistachios and a bottle of melon juice by your side.

“Even in complete ruination, you could still sense the grandeur and might of this place in its Timurid glory days.” 

5. ‘Oscar for Husavik’

The reviews were terrible but Will Ferrell’s silly Netflix comedy, Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga, was perfect lockdown escapism. Now Husavik, the remote Icelandic fishing town where the film was set, is hoping Oscar-nominated song “Husavik (My Home Town)” will bring tourists back when travel resumes. Visitors will find walking tours of the film’s locations and the Jaja Ding Dong bar at the Cape Hotel. The managing director of the local tourism promotion agency is optimistic:

“I think now we have another image too — some kind of fairytale Eurovision town. So I think it’s going to be a good year.”

Quick hits

OTHER FT STORIES THAT HAVE CAUGHT MY EYE THIS WEEK

• If Big Tech has all of our data, then why are online adverts so rubbish? I spent the week trying to find out for this FT Magazine column.

• Lockdown sceptic and former Covid adviser to the Trump administration, Scott Atlas has Lunch with the FT and puts forward his (unconvincing) case for herd immunity in the face of devastating death tolls.

• Helen Thomas made her debut as the FT’s new business columnist this week with a punchy piece on the UK’s need for the sort of simple industrial strategy that can be summarised in three tweets.

• Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has delivered an ominous ultimatum to multinational organisations: move your regional HQ to the kingdom or forget about securing government contracts. 

• On the Lex column, we took a look at superstar fund manager Cathie Wood, whose bold, concentrated bets on Tesla and other hot tech names have drawn attention to her ARK investments.

Best of the rest

WHAT I’VE BEEN READING ELSEWHERE

1. ‘Late-stage pandemic is messing with your brain’ I am a sucker for reassuring articles about why it’s not my fault that I can’t remember how to hold a conversation with a stranger. The Atlantic says we have been living in a pandemic for so long we’ve forgotten what normality feels like. (The Atlantic)

2. ‘Speaking of Britney . . . what about all those other women?’ The early 00s were an era of ballet flats, low-rise jeans and a weird obsession with “badly behaved” young female celebrities. In the wake of the New York Times’ documentary on Britney Spears, this deep dive explains why it’s time for a reappraisal of their treatment. (The New York Times)

3. ‘Royal bodies’ The outpouring of think pieces on the British royal family this week made me think of this 2013 article by Hilary Mantel on what the public expects from the royals and the women who marry them. (London Review of Books)

Before you go

As I trudge off on yet another walk, The Rest Is History podcast has become one of my favourite companions. Historians Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook take buzzy topics like witchcraft, fascism and sex in the 18th-century, and make all sorts of unexpected connections. Holland is the cheery classicist and Sandbrook the dour modern historian, and the pair seem genuinely to enjoy one another’s company. Whatever the audio equivalent of pressing a book into your hands might be, that’s what I’m doing with this podcast.

Thoughts, feedback and The Rest Is History fandom are all welcome, so drop me a line at elaine.moore@ft.com or email us at longstoryshort@ft.com — and have a lovely weekend.

Elaine
Deputy head of Lex