Country pop star and self-described Kennedy fan Taylor Swift is dating a member of the US political dynasty who is four years her junior, two newspapers have said.

The New York Post ran photographs showing Ms Swift, 22, and Conor Kennedy, who turned 18 last week, holding hands and looking very much like a couple at the Kennedy family compound in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, over the weekend.

The Boston Herald punned that the six-time Grammy winner had “Swiftly taken up” with the teenager and that she had been seen at a number of locations with Kennedy family members, including church on Sunday.

It recalled that Ms Swift and Mr Kennedy were also photographed leaving a pizzeria outside New York last week, hours after Mr Kennedy applied to a court to oversee the estate of his mother Mary, who committed suicide in May at the age of 52.

Ms Swift, whose fourth studio album is due out in October, spoke of her fascination with the Kennedys in an interview in Vogue magazine in February.

She also declared she would never keep her love life under wraps.

Earlier this month, the Robert F. Kennedy Centre for Justice and Human Rights said it will honour Ms Swift at a gala in December with its Ripple of Hope Award in recognition of what it called her “commitment to social change”.