Patrick Jephson

In Los Angeles this week, much of the talk was about the weather. Sunny California was copping a bomb cyclone of rain and snow, with the Sussexes’ home in Montecito in the path of the wild weather, though any witty meteorological metaphors fall flat in the face of such very real damage and suffering. One welcome side-effect of the storm was a westerly wind that blew my flight back to Washington ahead of schedule, so I was up bright and early to enjoy the appetising variety-pack that is American breakfast TV. Somewhere between news of a nurses’ strike and a six-year-old who shot his teacher, a public figure appeared, talking about his mental health issues, his work for charity and his family, who are also famous.

On a long-ago Remembrance Sunday, it fell to me, as a new service equerry, to present the Prince of Wales with his wreath to lay at the Cenotaph. The fact that the Cenotaph in question was in Hong Kong — still a British Crown Colony at the time — gives the memory a sepia tint. Adding to the retro imperial theme, His Excellency the Governor wore full dress uniform, complete with pith helmet and ostrich feather. As I waited nervously to play my walk-on part, I had time to realise how lucky I was to witness such vanishing theatre. The rest of Hong Kong cheerfully went about its business while we performed our solemn rite. Yet any locals who paused to watch the immaculate little ceremony couldn’t have guessed that a tetchy protocol impasse had only narrowly been averted.

The past week has seen another media splash about the self-exiled Duke and Duchess of Sussex. Following the recent ruckus over the statue of Princess Diana, the latest crisis to come off the royal conveyor belt was news that the Duke has written what his publishers sedately describe as a ‘literary memoir’. Cue general outrage. I was duly put to work by a weekend newspaper on an article that was expected to follow the anti-Harry orthodoxy but somehow it wandered off course. None of us has all the facts about why he and his family have moved to California, yet that hasn’t stopped pro- and anti-Sussex camps mobilising with a fervour more appropriate to a medieval war of religion.

‘Oh God, not more Diana.’ We’ve all heard it this summer and Di-fatigue is unlikely to be reversed by the official programme of remembrance. The Wembley concert was truly moving in parts, especially the video inserts which recalled Diana at her spontaneous, compassionate best. I’ll admit they reduced me to tears, and not just because here and there I caught glimpses in the background of a younger, slimmer, more idealistic me. Tears may also be shed in the relatively modest surroundings of the Guards Chapel when on Friday 31 August the Princess is remembered by a carefully vetted congregation. Another cocktail of sentiment, though probably of a brand more acceptable to royal traditionalists.