Prince charles

Tuesday

Tessa Dunlop

How ballet lessons transformed Princess Diana

From our UK edition

There is something undeniably sweet about this book. On one level, in line with the cover’s pretty pink text, it is a simple, unpretentious story about a girl who loved to dance. But on another level, the unfolding tragedy is Shakespearian – an effect amplified by the unfussy prose of Anne Allan, a long-time professional dancer and choreographer. Years after everyone else cashed in their Diana chips, the Scottish-born author has finally decided to tell her story. The book opens in 1981. Allan is a dancer and ballet mistress with the London City Ballet, and the performance is Swan Lake; but the drama happens offstage when she receives a call from Anne Beckwith-Smith, lady-in-waiting to Diana, Princess of Wales.

Wednesday

Kara Kennedy

Princess Beatrice… the betrayer?

Their ranks may be dwindling, but Mr. and Mrs. Meghan Markle do have a few key supporters left on the other side of the Pond. What their fabulously rehearsed "fly-on-the-wall" documentary set in stone is who was gone for good: Wills and Kate. The poor Waleses were absolutely slandered. In fact, the only realistic thing about the whole show was the visceral hatred the Sussexes had for the pair. Harry despises his big brother almost as much as Jeremy Clarkson hates Meghan, and would certainly see him strung up in the streets, but of course, you can’t print that in Britain. Team Windsor may be pretty strong in numbers, but the "we-just-want-to-be-normal-but-don’t-you-dare-forget-the-title" team do have two major players: the Princesses of York.

princess beatrice

Tuesday

Ross Anderson

The sartorial splendor of King Charles III

Much ink has been spilled over the clothes in Netflix’s fifth season of The Crown, which debuted last week. The award-winning show about Britain’s royal family has reached the scandalous “Diana Affair,” in which every outfit of Ms. Spencer's is seen as a rapier against the formal codes of the Firm. Her looks are meticulously replicated by costume designer Amy Roberts (or as much as possible given the slimmer, taller frame of Elizabeth Debicki, who plays Diana). Despite their spousal difficulties, a talent Diana and Charles shared was dressing. His attention to playfully using fundamentals (color, cut, textile quality) lends to a personal style that is both timeless and surprisingly contemporary.

Wednesday

Alexander Larman

A subtly mournful Crown lands in the post-Elizabeth era

Nobody ever expects Peter Morgan’s royal soap opera The Crown to deliver unfettered accuracy, but even by its own standards, the fifth series has taken a battering in the British press. Former prime ministers John Major and Tony Blair — both of whom are depicted this time round — have come forward to denounce the scenes in which they appear as "injurious and untrue" (Major) and "complete and utter rubbish" (Blair). There has even been pressure on Netflix, as yet unbowed to, for each episode to feature a disclaimer stating that it is a work of fiction. The cynical might argue that politicians and actors — step forward, Dame Judi Dench — savaging a streaming service’s flagship show is the best imaginable publicity for it.

Monday

Cockburn

JustStopOil protesters attack waxwork King Charles with chocolate cake

The JustStopOil activists are on the loose around Europe again. This time they’ve chosen to stop off at Madame Tussauds in London — the museum of life-sized wax replicas of famous celebrities and icons. So, who did they set their sights on? Kylie Jenner? Taylor Swift? Or any of the other gas-guzzling, private plane flying celebs? Nope. This time twenty-year-old Eilidh McFadden and twenty-nine-year-old Tom Johnson covered a waxwork model of King Charles III with chocolate cake. https://twitter.com/JustStop_Oil/status/1584491199771316225 Perhaps in their simple minds, this gesture made sense. Two fingers up to the Establishment and all that. But the new king is known for his extensive environmental campaigning.

charles

Tuesday

Alexander Larman

Queen Elizabeth II made a difference — to Britain and the world

“The Queen is dead, boys, and it’s so lonely on a limb.” So the ever-provocative Morrissey sang on the title track of the Smiths’ 1986 album. At the time, his wishes were regarded as little more than republican throat-clearing, shot through with satirical wit. In the same song, he imagined an unlikely encounter with the Queen, who remarks caustically, “Eh, I know you, and you cannot sing.” Some of his detractors might agree. But now, thirty-six years on, the Queen really is dead. Queen Elizabeth II, the longest-reigning monarch in British history, died on September 8, 2022 at the age of ninety-six. The second Elizabethan age — one that surpassed the first for both achievement and longevity — has come to an end.

queen elizabeth ii

Thursday

Roger Kimball

An American remembrance of the Queen

I write as an American patriot who is also a confirmed Anglophile. So when I got the sad news this morning that the Queen’s health had taken so dangerous a turn that the palace had summoned her family to Balmoral, I steeled myself for bad news. Alas, the bad news has now been confirmed. Queen Elizabeth II has died. It says a lot that when I say “the Queen” even American readers know I can mean only one person. The ninety-six-year-old had just celebrated her platinum anniversary this summer — seventy years on the throne, the longest of any English monarch. Elizabeth was far and away the most admired head of state in the world. Her good sense, her generosity of spirit, her thoughtful but active reticence have made her one of the most successful monarchs in history.

queen elizabeth ii
Cockburn

Britain reeling after Queen’s health announcement

Cockburn is saddened by the news emerging from Britain about Queen Elizabeth II earlier, after Buckingham Palace announced that they were "concerned for her health." The Palace statement said, “Following further evaluation this morning, the Queen's doctors are concerned for Her Majesty's health and have recommended she remain under medical supervision," adding, "the Queen remains comfortable and at Balmoral." After the news, king-in-waiting Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall made their way to Balmoral, the Queen's Scotland home. They were followed shortly after by Prince William and his wife Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge. The Queen's other children, Anne, Andrew and Edward are also on their way to Balmoral.

Saturday

Mark Hollingsworth

How Prince Charles’s €1m bagman infiltrated the British establishment

From our UK edition

The Queen rarely – if ever – accepts invitations to dinner at private houses, no matter how grand. But in the summer of 2014 the oil and gas rich Gulf state of Qatar became the first ‘official partner’ of Royal Ascot and secured branding rights for the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth II stakes. The Qataris also agreed to pay for the upkeep of the Castle of Mey which is owned by the royal family. And so breaking with tradition the Queen accepted a dinner invitation and joined the ruling family of Qatar and assorted guests. The Qataris had just spent an estimated £75 million on their London mansion at Dudley House, Park Lane, and so were delighted.

Thursday

James Heale

Inside the clash between Boris and Charles

From our UK edition

Boris Johnson is the kind of prime minister who believes that rules are there to be broken. This certainly seems to apply to his relations with the Crown. Conversation between the government and the monarchy is, by convention, kept strictly confidential. But when Prince Charles privately described the government’s Rwanda deportation policy as ‘appalling’ within political earshot, word leaked out suspiciously quickly – via Westminster channels. Johnson then chose to fuel the story at the Commonwealth summit in Kigali by telling broadcasters that Charles should keep ‘an open mind’.

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters: How to face death

From our UK edition

Be prepared Sir: The advice of Jeremy Clarke’s Aunty Margaret that he ‘must “get right with the Lord” as a matter of the gravest urgency’ in the light of his cancer diagnosis is spot on. I say that not just because I’m a vicar, but because I have sat at innumerable bedsides of people in the last days of their lives and have often found myself thinking: ‘You really should have prepared for this a long time ago.’ But by then they were too sick, too tired or too drugged up to think straight about spiritual matters and I have always felt that I would be intruding if I forced the issue. Deathbed conversions such as Lord Marchmain’s in Brideshead Revisited are, in my experience, almost nonexistent.

Thursday

Boris Kálnoky

‘It’s in my blood’: Why Prince Charles loves Transylvania

From our UK edition

For the first time since the pandemic, Prince Charles has returned to Transylvania. When he visits the small village of Miclosoara, or, as the Hungarian locals who live here know it, Miklósvár, the weather is perfect. There’s a small breeze and a light rain has fallen, but the sun is now out. ‘Look at that!’ someone exclaims in surprise and points a finger in the air. It’s a rare sight: over the mossy rooftops, an angry jay is chasing off a stork. The storks returned weeks ago, and while some are still busy perfecting their nests most already have chicks to feed. Prince Charles looks around. The bird must be defending its own chick, he says. And there it is, a few yards down the dusty lane – a jay chick clumsily looking for a place to hide.

Saturday

Peter Hunt

Prince Charles is playing with fire

From our UK edition

Charles is a prince on a perilous path. It’s a well-trodden one that is proving more problematic the closer he gets to having a crown placed on his head. He has opinions, who doesn’t. He wants to share them, like the rest of us. His decades long predicament is that he occupies a privileged position which should limit his ability to hold forth. His once private – and not denied – belief that the government’s plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda is ‘appalling’ is not the consensus view. A man teetering on the edge of inheriting a unifying role as Head of the Nation has entered a divisive debate very firmly on the side of Boris Johnson’s opponents.

Thursday

Harry Mount

A royal affair

The cover blurb, from “Lady Anne Glenconner” on this huge book proclaims: “Brilliant. Tina Brown has inside knowledge and writes so well.” The credit for the author of the 2019 bestseller, Lady in Waiting: My Extraordinary Life in the Shadow of the Crown should in fact be “Lady Glenconner”. You might not think it matters much these days that, over and over again, Tina Brown gets the titles wrong in this book. But this is supposedly the ultimate insider’s look at the royal family over the last forty years or so. And titles are at the heart of the Firm — think of the agony of Prince Harry and Prince Andrew at no longer being able to use their HRH titles and having to give up their honorary military roles.

royal brown

Tuesday

Alexander Larman

This isn’t the beginning of the Charles Regency

From our UK edition

One of the cruellest and most accurate remarks made about Prince Charles is that he is less king-in-waiting and more the perennial prince, forever hanging about in his mother’s shadow and increasingly desperate to assume the throne. Yet he is now 73 years old, and will be the oldest monarch to ascend the throne since William IV, who became king aged 64 in 1830. This is a source of endless frustration to Charles. Newspaper briefings by well-placed courtiers have suggested he longs for greater involvement in the day-to-day running of ‘the Firm’, perhaps even culminating in an official Regency, given his mother’s declining health.

Wednesday

Alexander Larman

The Prince Andrew conundrum

From our UK edition

Prince Philip’s memorial service yesterday was an affecting occasion. The hymns, including Guide Me O Thou Great Redeemer and Britten’s Te Deum In C were well chosen, and the Dean of Windsor’s well-judged sermon acknowledged both the Duke of Edinburgh’s sincere but never pious religious faith and his energetic, at times abrasive personality. The Dean suggested, rightly, that the Duke would never have wanted to be remembered as a plaster saint. After the low-key Covid-necessitated funeral service of last year, it was a public reminder that the royal family can still command both dignity and respect. So why, then, have today’s headlines been so dreadful?

Sunday

Chilton Williamson, Jr.

Liberalism and existential insecurity

After 1789, conservatism was the party of insecurity, pessimism and fear, liberalism the party of confidence, optimism and eager anticipation, down to the early years of the twenty-first century when the mood of hubristic triumph that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union deflated almost overnight, in the United States especially, where liberal democrats have come to resemble the “normal American of the pure-blooded type” whom Mencken described as going “to rest every night with an uneasy feeling that there is a burglar under the bed, and... [getting] up with a sickening fear that his underwear has been stolen.

liberalism

Monday

Alexander Larman

Getting ready for Queen Camilla

"The Queen is dead. Long live the Queen." This isn’t quite the announcement that will be made when Elizabeth II finally dies; the crown will be passed onto Prince Charles. But the Queen’s public statement over the weekend that the Duchess of Cornwall will become Queen Consort, and will therefore be referred to as Queen Camilla, is a remarkable vote of confidence. It suggests she believes in her daughter-in-law’s ability to offer a stable, successful public face to the monarchy that has been disrupted so dramatically by the antics of Prince Harry and Prince Andrew in recent years. The Duchess’s public standing has been carefully managed over the decades, thanks in part to the PR expert Mark Bolland, who served as Charles’ Deputy Private Secretary from 1997 to 2002.

camilla

Thursday

Michael Arditti

A scrapbook of sketches: James Ivory’s memoir is slipshod and inconsequential

From our UK edition

James Ivory and Ismail Merchant formed the most successful cinematic partnership since Michael Powell and Eric Pressburger. Between the founding of Merchant Ivory in 1961 and Merchant’s death 44 years later, the company produced 42 films, more than half of which were directed by Ivory himself. Although its range was wider than is often allowed, the company’s fame rests on its adaptation of late 19th- and early 20th-century novels, among them Henry James’s The Europeans, The Bostonians and The Golden Bowl, E.M. Forster’s Howards End, A Room with a View and Maurice, and Jean Rhys’s Quartet.

Friday

Alexander Larman

Is Prince Charles the royal racist?

It has been a mystery that would have baffled Perry Mason or Ellery Queen. Since Meghan Markle and Prince Harry informed a shocked Oprah Winfrey in their bombshell interview that "there were concerns and conversations" about "how dark" the skin color of their first child-to-be was likely to be, the couple have slowly dripped information into the public domain. It's been made clear that it was a "senior royal" who expressed the opinion, albeit neither the Queen nor the Duke of Edinburgh. Although given the latter’s public remarks on race and nationality, it might have been easiest if the soon-to-be-late Prince Philip had simply claimed responsibility. Now, the "senior royal" has finally been fingered, and the alleged guilty party is Prince Charles.

charles