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 …
Harry and Meghan’s Montecito prison
Jeremy Clarkson’s savage polemic against Meghan Markle, with its sick fantasy of splattering her naked body with mud, may be of interest to, of all people, philosophers. Philosophers of language talk about “performatives”, meaning bits of language which get something …
My Prince Harry moment
I became a priest on a hot summer’s day at Lichfield Cathedral. I was as prepared as I thought I could be for the vows I was about to take. What I wasn’t prepared for, though, was the whole paraphernalia …
Why Harry couldn’t be a hero
Prince Harry has finally taken up the role he was always destined to fill. If Diana was, as Tony Blair dubbed her, the Princess of Hearts, Harry is her true heir: the Prince of Lolcows.
A “lolcow”, for those who …
Prince Harry’s Faustian bargain
One of the characteristics of fame is that it is essentially Faustian in nature; to become a celebrity, one must sell one’s soul to the devil. It’s a highly questionable idea — why should there be such a price for …
Prince Harry’s unbrotherly resentment
It is all in Genesis IV.
“Now Abel kept flocks and Cain worked the soil. In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of soil as an offering to the Lord. And Abel also brought an offering …
Prince Harry’s unbrotherly resentment
It is all in Genesis IV.
“Now Abel kept flocks and Cain worked the soil. In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of soil as an offering to the Lord. And Abel also brought an offering …
Harry and Meghan’s moral exile
Harry and Meghan divide opinion very much along the lines of whether one believes we have obligations beyond our control. I still remember a Christmas family row, me a stroppy teenager, that concluded with me insisting: “I didn’t ask to …
Why Prince Harry went to war
Every few generations, the Windsors produce unhappy princes: men who can neither leave nor stay. Prince Albert, the older brother of George V, was one, but he politely died of pneumonia before he could take the throne. Edward VIII was …
Our Queen’s sacrifice
It seems that it should be a near spiritual ritual of Britishness to live through the end of the reign of one sovereign and the beginning of another. The emotions around the death of a monarch are, for those who …
Princess Diana didn’t change Britain
It was one of journalism’s greatest corrections. “We apologise for the Princess Diana page-one headline ‘Di goes sex mad’, which is still on the stands at some locations,” announced the National Enquirer. “It is currently being replaced with a special …
Is Elizabeth II a bad mother?
It is perhaps not seemly to dwell on the failures of Elizabeth II during the Platinum Jubilee, but they are here, flotsam around the ship. Monarchy is a shared national delusion: that we are special because we have a witch-goddess …
Brexiteers must sacrifice the Queen
In a sure sign that normality is back, the Royals are off on their travels. Next month, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge embark upon a twelve-day official visit to the Caribbean. If Putin conquers all of Europe, then at …
The hidden virtue of reality TV
Noel Coward once said that “television is for appearing on, not watching”, but I’m not convinced. Since the turn of the century, I’ve turned down a vast array of reality shows, starting with Celebrity Detox and ending with Celebrity Big …
