Alexander Larman

There has been a recurring theme when it comes to meetings between the Duke of Sussex and his now estranged family in recent years. If he has any such meeting, sympathetic media outlets (if such a thing exists) will somehow learn of the contents and a (typically pro-Harry) story will appear shortly afterwards. Unsurprisingly, the royals have long since become sick of this and so Prince Harry and, by extension, Meghan have been treated with the kind of caution that most people would reserve for alluring women approaching them in late-night bars.  It was therefore a strictly observed proviso of the King’s meeting with his prodigal son two weeks ago that the details of their brief encounter remained between the two of them. Somewhat surprisingly, this held.

It is tempting to imagine Prince Andrew and his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson enduring a mutually resentful existence in Royal Lodge. Like an aristocratic version of Roald Dahl’s The Twits, perhaps. Or, to be vulgar, one might call them The Twats instead. The less-than-grand old Duke of York has now spent several years beset by stories linking him to disgraced paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein, and there seems to be no way back for him in any kind of public role. Yet, at the beginning of the week, he might have thought the tide had turned for a couple of days.

The news that the once-beloved, now-beleaguered coffee chain Starbucks is to fire nearly a thousand staff and close dozens of shops in both North America and Britain may not come as a surprise to many. Like many other relics of the Nineties – such as the Friends theme tune, Cool Britannia and vodka Red Bulls – Starbucks tends to be regarded with a mixture of affection and exasperation by its once-faithful patrons. Now it seems like an anachronism as suited to 2025 as dial-up internet Certainly, it was once the go-to spot for coffee in any cosmopolitan town or city, and carefully cultivated an air of proto-hipster chic that was at odds with the sugary, overpriced concoctions it served. But that was then, and now it seems like an anachronism as suited to 2025 as dial-up internet.

Sarah ‘Fergie’ Ferguson, the beleaguered Duchess of York, may have finally met her reputational Waterloo. Despite showily cutting off all contact with the late paedophile and financier, Jeffrey Epstein, after his 2008 conviction and imprisonment for sex offences, it has emerged that she sent Epstein a toadying email in 2011 calling him a ‘steadfast, generous and supreme friend to me and my family’. Fergie also insisted in the leaked message that she had not called him a paedophile (ironic, really, because he very much was). After the email came to light this week, she was dropped by several of the charities where she was a patron.

Royalist or republican, you have to feel some sympathy for King Charles. In the past ten days alone, not only has he been largely responsible for ensuring that the first part of Donald Trump’s unprecedented second state visit went smoothly but before that, he had an audience with his hitherto estranged son, Prince Harry. It was a condition of the meeting that no readout of their conversation be leaked to the press. So far, this has been adhered to, but it has not stopped a ‘royal insider’ – who bears a suspicious resemblance to a member of the Sussex camp – from offering their spin on what this might mean for father and son in the future.

In the end, the Sundance Kid died in his sleep. The death of the actor, director and Sundance Film Festival founder Robert Redford at the age of 89 removes one of the last great American icons of cinema from the world stage. Redford was prematurely youthful, even towards the end of his life, never quite losing that shock of blonde hair that first made him stand out as a star of the Sixties and Seventies. However, he was never a dumb blonde, being one of the most politically savvy actors of his generation, as well as an astute businessman who managed to avoid falling foul of the changing shifts in fashion and taste. His status as a Hollywood legend was assured long before he died, but now it will be cemented in history.

Many people reacted differently after the assassination of Charlie Kirk last week, but the actor Chris Pratt chose to behave in a way that few, if any, of his A-list Hollywood peers would have been comfortable with. The Guardians of the Galaxy star put a short video on X showing him praying, with his eyes tightly closed, and then he directed his fans – I almost wrote "followers", but he does have over eight million of them on the platform – to go out and do good works. With almost self-parodic seriousness, the erstwhile Star-Lord tells them to “go outside, get some sunshine, touch some grass... you’ve got time to reach out to someone in need and share this prayer with them”, before concluding, naturally enough “Amen”.