Royals

Isn’t Meghan fabulous? Hasn’t she totally brought the monarchy into the 21st century? Doesn’t she make Kate look like such a square? We were so bored of Sloaney English roses, weren’t we? Meghan Markle is widely considered to be the best thing to have happened to the royal family — and Britain — in a long time. The newspapers are ecstatic, and not just the patriotic ones. There will be pictures, pictures and more pictures to come. Or fake pictures, if that’s what sells. The Sunday Sport recently ‘discovered’ a fake topless picture of Prince Harry’s squeeze, stuck it on the front page and ran with the headline ‘Harry’s Meghan in nude phone photo shock’.

We are congratulating ourselves and the royal family on overcoming prejudice by welcoming Meghan Markle’s engagement to Prince Harry. But in fact this welcome is cost-free: Ms Markle’s combination of Hollywood, mixed ethnicity, divorced parents, being divorced herself and being older than her fiancé ticks almost every modern box. It was harder, surely, for Kate Middleton. She was simply middle-class, Home Counties, white, and with no marital past — all media negatives. Her mother was a former flight assistant. People made snobby jokes about ‘cabin doors to manual’. There was nothing ‘edgy’ about Kate that could be romanticised.

A Royal engagement is dominating the headlines once again. Here is how The Spectator has marked royal engagements over the years, from Prince Albert's 1839 proposal to Queen Victoria, through to Prince Charles popping the question to Diana in 1981: 30 November 1839: Queen VictoriaNow that it is certain the Queen has done with declining and is going to conjugate, Speculation, like a tasked schoolboy, is once more turned down to discover the potential, the imperative, the conditional, and all the other moods of the political future... All things are possible through marriage; and Prince Albert’s present sigh conjugal putting every affair, as has been said, in the potential, may cause even the welfare of an entire nation to be translated in some unforeseen manner.

It has long been my belief that whereas the quality of gentiles drawn to Judaism is very high (Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, myself), the dregs are drawn to Islam. And leaving aside the dozy broads who gravitate to it for kinky reasons after watching one too many Turkish Delight ads (Vanessa Redgrave, Lauren Booth), there is something about this religion which attracts the very weakest of Western men. We think of those often half-witted types who learn to build a bomb online. Then there are the imam-huggers of the left who never met a wife-beating mad mullah they didn’t like. A lot of the reason left-wing men seem to have so much time for Islamism is to do with suppressed feelings of resentment towards the march of feminism, which they could never in a million years admit to.

Bestselling author Pippa Middleton has written this week’s Spectator diary*, in which she takes on her critics directly: ‘I have been much teased for my book, Celebrate. Lots of journalists are saying that my advice is glaringly obvious... It’s all good fun, I know, and I realise that authors ought to take criticism on the chin. But in my defence, let me say this: Celebrate is meant to be a guide to party planning and, as such, it has to cover the basics. If I were to write a cookery book, for instance, I would be compelled to say that, to make an omelette, you have to break at least one egg.

It is no secret that the Prince of Wales is a plant-whispering greeny; but the precise nature (and bias) of his ministerial lobbying is to remain secret. Republic, the gloriously self-important but sparsely supported campaign to boot out Brenda & Co, have been using Freedom of Information laws to expose what suggestions Prince Charles has made to government; but their attempts have been blocked, ironically, on grounds that publication would damage the future king's claims to impartiality. The revolutionaries claim: ‘The Attorney General’s decision is all about protecting Charles and the royal family from scrutiny, putting his demands above the rights of the British people.

Mr Steerpike is no Middleton fan, but it has to be said that the Duchess of Cambridge has maintained her composure remarkably well in the wake of topless photos of her appearing in the foreign press. Keeping her chin up while continuing the royal couple’s tour of the South Pacific, she even managed to keep smiling when greeted with open arms by a topless women in the Solomon Islands. This would have been prime gaffe territory for Prince Phillip, but there wasn’t even a hint of an a joke despite the unfortunate timing. For shame!

The Diamond Jubilee — a historic occasion when British people from a variety of races, religions and cultures united to thank the queen for her sixty years of service and to celebrate her reign. This was a truly national event, which is why I disagree with the view, expressed by some, that black and ethnic minority people did not participate as much as white people. I may have been off-camera when I was at the flotilla on Sunday, but there were people around me of all ethnicities, joining in the jubilation. I don't have any statistics about the ethnic breakdown of street parties, but I can describe the last few days as I saw them.

It was beautiful and a bit strange this morning, sitting in St Paul's Cathedral with the rest of the congregation, waiting for the Queen to make her entrance for the national thanksgiving service. We were hushed and awed — I was up in the press gallery — under the great dome of the stupendous cathedral. This was a religious occasion, yet there was no escaping the fact that it was also a high society event, everyone in their finest feathers. A reporter next to me whispered to her colleague the details of the outfit Her Majesty would be wearing (something ‘mint green, Swarovski-studded’) and the designer brands of the Duchess of Cambridge's dress and hat. We in the press pack were not, as a whole, aligning ourselves to the things of the spirit.