The greatest role models in the world? Emma Raducanu and her fellow teenagers

It's hard to admire gen Z without a twang of discomfort. They present qualities - strength under pressure, maturity, humility - that the middle aged should have nailed down

When Mr Z wakes up earlier than me, which is always, it's my habit when I stir to ask him what is going on in the world. My plan is to trick him into feeling like an all-seeing Hermes character (the god, not the delivery firm), rather than a man who married someone really lazy.

When this happened on Sunday, he told me: Everyone's talking about Emma Raducanu." I knew she had won the US Open already because we had had a late night. I would have known anyway; the build up to the match had a fairytale quality. She was so young and her potential victory so laden with significance - the first British woman to win a grand slam singles title since Virginia Wade, 44 years ago - that it had taken on an air of inevitability, at least to those of us who didn't have to do anything but watch.