Since the Princess of Wales withdrew from public life in January for planned abdominal surgery, her continued absence and relative Palace silence have prompted a frenzy of ever more deranged internet speculation. As the legacy press vacillated between fawning and …
Why we demand Kate’s sacrifice
Since the Princess of Wales withdrew from public life in January for planned abdominal surgery, her continued absence and relative Palace silence have prompted a frenzy of ever more deranged internet speculation. As the legacy press vacillated between fawning and …
Kate is the first internet princess
It’s a strange reversal, for us to be the ones waiting for Kate. At the start of her public career, the narrative was that she was the one patiently biding her time. Nicknamed “Waity Katie” by the tabloids, she was …
Britain doesn’t need a sick king
If we were living in the world of mythology, King Charles’s cancer might have some dire consequences. It’s possible that the entire economy would collapse, famine would kill off millions of citizens and those who survived might perish of plague. …
King Charles and the twilight of the Boomers
God Save The King. The announcement yesterday that King Charles is receiving treatment for cancer has sent another tremor through a Britain that feels frailer by the day.
And yet, this reminder of our King’s frailty, at 75, also stands …
Coronation is a ritual humiliation
As the coronation of King Charles and Queen Camilla approaches, a subset of progressive opinion can’t help but vent disdain for the ancient ritual. Just Stop Oil is refusing to rule out disruptive action (we’re facing “civilisational collapse”, after all). …
Why doesn’t King Charles like me?
I have a bone to pick with Charles III. Some years ago, while he was still a lowly Prince of Wales, he granted an audience to some Rhodes scholars from Oxford at a time when I was teaching there. “Who …
Britain needs King Charles the Weird
As the rain lashed Parliament Square this week, and Rishi Sunak’s bizarre police bicycle escort shouted its way through Whitehall, the capital resembled a drizzly, gothic Burning Man festival. Crowds of Extinction Rebellion protestors stood huddled from the weather in …
How the King conquered Essex
In 1953, every child in Essex was given a slim hardback volume published by Essex County Council and printed, quite beautifully, in Dagenham. Royalty in Essex, its weighted inscription explained, was published to mark the “occasion of the coronation of …
Why doesn’t Scotland love King Charles?
When the Queen died at her country estate in Scotland, crowds lined the streets as her hearse crept its way from Balmoral to Edinburgh. There were no indications that her subjects north of the border mourned her any less than …
Paris Hilton teaches Prince Harry a lesson
If you’re a female celebrity memoirist — and especially if you happen to be white, hot, blonde, and possessed of a net worth in the tens of millions — you are expected to make a privilege disclaimer: to marinate in …
What if King Charles were your landlord?
Nansledan is a partially built village on a hill at Newquay: the wind blows through, almost knocking me off my feet. The Cornish housing crisis is a paradigm of the national one: towns filled with holiday lets and Airbnbs while …
Will royal ridicule save the monarchy?
Notoriously asexual, the Prime Minister seems finally to have achieved an erection — even though it took execution by hanging to do it. Outside the Crown & Anchor pub on the Strand, he swings from a rope against the (similarly …
Was Prince Philip a womaniser?
Was Prince Philip a player right up until the end of his life? That’s the implication made, albeit discreetly, in the latest series of The Crown, which depicts the Duke of Edinburgh’s appreciation for Penny Romsey (later Countess Mountbatten) during …
Charles will be the People’s King
Melancholic Autumnal splendour was soon overtaken by the instant decay of a new administration. But lest we should have forgotten the Queen’s funeral and the new royal accession, King Charles has now twice reminded us that the Spring of his …
