Alexander Larman

Prince Harry used to be fun. It is easy to forget this given the Meghan-Montecito-highly litigious incarnation of the Duke of Sussex, but there was a reason why, for many years, he was the most popular and accessible member of ‘the Firm’. Less stiff than his brother and considerably less cerebral than his father, he conveyed a sense that he was Harry Wales, the royal you’d want to go for a pint with. Or, as we now know, to have ‘movie snuggles’ with journalists, with whom he could complain about being ‘hungover again for the third day running’.

The news that Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie will not be attending the royal family’s Easter service at St George’s chapel in Windsor might initially strike the uninitiated as insignificant. After all, every family has their own commitments over Easter, and given that both the princesses have young families of their own, they might be forgiven for choosing to prioritise lower-key private events over a get-together of the royal clan. Yet there are two things that make this noteworthy. The first is that it has been (subtly) briefed that the princesses have not been made welcome this year, with the telling statement that they have made 'alternative plans' for Easter.

After a period of several months in which attention has been mainly focused not on Prince Harry but on his uncle, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the pendulum looks as if it is swinging back to Montecito all over again. The news over the past week or so has not been good. Firstly, it was announced that the Sussexes’ much-ballyhooed deal with Netflix is spluttering to a close. Their last few projects have failed spectacularly, chief among them the ridiculed With Love, Meghan.  Secondly, Tom Bower’s latest exposé of all things Brand Sussex, Betrayal, is about to be published. Harry and Meghan have already denounced the book as a 'deranged conspiracy', but that hasn't stopped it selling briskly on Amazon.

Under normal circumstances, King Charles’s message to the Commonwealth would be a carefully crafted and anodyne series of platitudes, designed for little more than to fulfil its brief and to keep the other Commonwealth leaders happy. However, this year, the King is faced with two pressing issues. The first is international, in the shape of the war in Iran – something that Charles himself has little direct influence on. The second, however, is rather more personal and concerns the continued embarrassment that his younger brother Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has brought on the royal family.

For future royal historians, the date 19 February may take on the same totemic significance as the abdication of Edward VIII on 10 December. It was the date that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, eighth in line to the throne, was arrested on the day of his 66th birthday – it is fair to surmise this wasn’t a coincidence – and taken to Aylsham police station. Before yesterday, Aylsham was an unexceptional North Norfolk market town, perhaps best known for the presence of a firm of fine art auctioneers. Now, it will forever go down in history as the place where the former Duke of York was taken, put in the cells, and interrogated.

Ever since the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, no member of the Royal Family has been arrested. Which makes this morning’s news that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has been taken into police custody under suspicion of misconduct in public office all the more seismic. And with a certain grim irony, his arrest comes on his 66th birthday, of all days. This arrest represents not so much the beginning of the end as the point at which the Rubicon has been crossed, forever This development had seemed inevitable for a considerable amount of time now. Remarks from both Buckingham Palace and Sir Keir Starmer in the past few days seemed to indicate that both the King and the Prime Minister expected that the once-unthinkable would happen sooner rather than later.

The news that the Scottish beer company BrewDog has put itself up for sale has been greeted with a mixture of sorrow and shrugs by drinks commentators and enthusiasts. Those who have been stalwart fans of BrewDog – an organisation that always valued PR stunts as much as it did brewing –will mourn its diminished presence in our high streets and pubs, as well as the potential end of beers like Punk IPA and Elvis Juice. While those who viewed the company as a triumph of style over substance may now feel vindicated by their belief that the craft beer renaissance in Britain was always driven as much by hype as good drinks.