What everyone is talking about this week: Are people marrying younger?

Are people marrying younger?

The media would have you believe that Glastonbury 2025 was a wildly political affair. From where I was sitting, it was more of a romantic one. Pop megastar Charli XCX asked a 60,000-strong audience if they were ‘in love tonight’ before launching into a song about romantic bliss on the Amalfi coast; The Script and The Prodigy both dedicated their sets to former band members gone too soon; and, at the tender age of 22, Olivia Rodrigo seems to have endured so much heartbreak that she was able pack out the Pyramid Stage with a set almost entirely about failed relationships.

I didn’t hear John Paul Young’s Love Is In The Air at any point at Worthy Farm, but I felt it. Others did, too. On the first night, I witnessed a marriage proposal beneath the Glastonbury sign on Worthy Hill; as I exited the festival on Monday morning, I met a 25-year-old couple who had just become affianced.

In the past month, four of my closest friends have got engaged to their partners — the oldest among them is 28. The most recent figures from the Office for National Statistics, dated 2020, suggest the average age of marriage in Britain stands at 35.3 for men and 33.2 for women in opposite-sex relationships and older still for those in same-sex pairings. Yet, say the laws of gravity, what goes up must come down. Every generation tends to react against that which came before it: millennials are getting married and having children later than any other in history, so it should follow that Gen Z (born after 1997) will do things differently.

The return of cultural conservatism may have something to do with it, but that’s not the full picture. The young fiancées I’ve spoken to have cited all sorts of reasons: the rise of endometriosis (which can affect fertility); fear of an ageing population; and a yearning for a more insular existence after lockdowns. Naysayers will ask pertinent questions: are your friends Catholic, traditional, or simply wealthy? These are all reasons why, historically, one might once have got married earlier. This time, however, there appears to be more at stake.

All I want for Christmas is a… damehood?

With Glasto hangovers now well and truly past, the cultural attention is turning to the second biggest music event of the summer — and I’m not talking about Oasis. You may remember that, back in March, His Majesty The King let us in on what are allegedly his favourite songs, including Grace Jones’s La Vie En Rose and Kylie Minogue’s The Loco-Motion. He might soon add Mariah Carey’s Fantasy to that list, as the American songstress (pictured) prepares for a once-in-a-lifetime concert at Sandringham — yes, Sandringham — on August 15.

The event is being put on by Heritage Live as part of a wider line-up that also includes Nile Rodgers and the Pet Shop Boys. Ms Carey, for her part, will head straight to the north Norfolk coast from East Sussex, where she is playing at Brighton Pride—a move some might deem more conventional for a pop diva than a concert at The King’s country retreat. Then again, royalty attracts.

The perplexity of cars

Country Life readers likely spent the weekend at Goodwood Festival of Speed in West Sussex, but, for most Britons, cars seem to inspire more perplexity than they do awe. A new study by car marketplace Motorway has revealed exactly how far off the mark we are when it comes to valuing vehicles, using those from beloved films as a starting point. Only 16% of UK respondents who had watched Four Weddings And A Funeral were able to guess the value of the film’s classic red Mini (£5,975; above) and less than one in five knew the worth of the Aston Martin DB5 driven by James Bond in Tomorrow Never Dies (£450,000).