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Harry and William united over BBC investigation
Prince William and Prince Harry stand united in wanting to know the truth about the circumstances of their mother Princess Diana’s explosive 1995 Panorama interview.
A source close to Harry told The Times of London that the suggestion that he was failing to support Prince William in protecting their mother’s legacy was “utterly horrid and offensive… Sadly, some people are not just seeing this as a drive for truth, but also trying to use this as an opportunity to try to drive a wedge between the brothers.”
“You do not need a public statement to imagine how he (Harry) is feeling privately, people know how much his mother means to him,” the source added. “He has bravely spoken out in the past about loss and grief, and the immense impact it has had on him.”
Earlier this week William welcomed the announcement of a BBC-commissioned independent inquiry into how Martin Bashir secured the interview with Diana, in which she famously said here were three people in her marriage to Prince Charles—a reference to Camilla Parker Bowles. William called the inquiry “a step in the right direction.”
Bashir is alleged to have overseen the production of fake documents which fed the paranoia of Diana. He has not commented yet. The source told The Times, “Harry is getting regular updates and is aware of everything that is happening.”
Harry and William’s uncle, Diana’s brother, Earl Spencer has already questioned the effectiveness the inquiry, asking how it could uncover possible criminality. He wrote on Twitter: “As I’ve told the BBC this evening, I’m not at all satisfied with the parameters they’ve set around their inquiry into the BBC Panorama interview with Diana of 25 years ago.”
A source close to the earl told the Mail: “He is not going to sign up to this, in its present form. He is impressed by Lord Dyson, who is one of the country's most eminent former judges [Dyson is the former Master of the Rolls who will lead the inquiry], but he does not believe he is going to be able to uncover the criminality involved because of the way the BBC has—very concerningly—tightly drawn up the terms of reference.
“He wants to know if this is truly a public inquiry to get to the bottom of what happened, or if this whole thing has been dressed up to ensure the inquiry is hamstrung from the start. He is not going to endorse an investigation that lets anyone get away with what he clearly thinks is criminal action.”
The Crown reveals Buckingham Palace’s mouse problem
As cameos go, it is perfect.
In the opening moments of episode three of the fourth season of The Crown, a lingering wide shot of a sitting room at Buckingham Palace is punctuated by a little mouse scurrying across the bottom of the screen.
As unlikely as it is that the film makers intended the mouse to make an appearance, their decision to leave it in the final cut when it could have been digitally removed not only telegraphs a sense of the rot at the heart of the House of Windsor, but also paints a very accurate story of the steady dilapidation of the royals castles and palaces in real life.
The theme is returned to again in the fifth episode of the show, “Fagan,” which tells (albeit with a very generous dollop of creative license) the extraordinary story of the unemployed and troubled painter-decorator Michael Fagan, who broke into the palace not once but twice, and, on the second occasion, ended up in Her Majesty’s bedroom.
Although Fagan has maintained they did not have a lengthy conversation in the fictional version portrayed by The Crown, they do just that.
Included in this heavily imagined conversation is Fagan’s criticism of the state of the palace.
He expresses bemusement that “the richest woman in the world” does not even have an electric toothbrush and delivers a withering verdict on the decor of BP: “That’s the thing about this place, it’s even posher than you’d think and yet more run down.”
“Run down?” objects the queen.
“Well yeah,” says Fagan. “Corridors and state rooms, shocking. Chipped paint. Peeling wallpaper. Stains. I’m a decorator. Can’t help noticing.”
“Is that what you do?” replies the queen, trying to shoehorn this extraordinary encounter back into a familiar garden party format.
“Painter-decorator,” Fagan replies. “You should hire me. You might need a glazer too. I broke a window this time.”
That was in 1982 and things got steadily worse. As well as being infested with mice, roofs and walls are full of asbestos, buckets are used to catch rainwater, and Princess Anne only narrowly avoided being killed by a falling chunk of masonry when she was stepping out of a car to visit her mother a few years back. The ancient piping system includes boilers dating from before the Second World War.
Finally, this year, a huge, long-delayed. renovation program was begun. Works are expected to cost some $500 million and to be finished in 2027.
Thirty-nine percent of royal buildings, which the Royal Household is duty-bound to maintain, are in an unacceptable state, the British Public Accounts Committee found in 2014.
Harry and Meghan may never return to U.K.
As The Daily Beast reported yesterday, in the clearest sign yet that Meghan Markle and Prince Harry will never return for any meaningful length of time to the U.K. they have rented their official U.K. home to pregnant Princess Eugenie and her husband Jack Brooksbank.
In classic Meghan and Harry style, the deal was kept quiet and then presented as a fait accompli to senior royals.
The Sun on Sunday says that Eugenie and Jack moved in two weeks ago, and the queen was not informed until after the event. The Sussexes’ possessions were reportedly moved out of Frogmore Cottage under cover of darkness to make way for their new tenant.
A source said: “Removal vans pitched up in the dead of the night and cleared out the cottage. They definitely did not want to be seen. Emptying their home and handing over the keys is a pretty strong sign Harry and Meghan have no plans to return. It appears they are tying up loose ends as they plan to extend their stay in the US perhaps permanently.”
Eugenie and Jack announced in September they are expecting their first child in the New Year.
Harry, 36, has always been close to Eugenie, youngest daughter of Prince Andrew and ex-wife Sarah Ferguson. Andrew and Fergie live together four miles away from Frogmore at Royal Lodge, Windsor Great Park.
Buckingham Palace told the Mail on Sunday it could not comment on whether Princess Eugenie and her husband are going to be paying rent on the Crown Estate property or how long the arrangement was due to last.
A Buckingham Palace spokesman said: “Frogmore Cottage is the private residence of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and as such any arrangements are a matter for them.”
The reported change in occupier comes after Harry and Meghan reimbursed taxpayers in full for the $3 million of public money used to renovate the Windsor home.
Good impression
Kieran Hodgson is, no exaggeration, a genius. Every Crown fan must watch this, which is a brilliant cavalcade of spot-on impressions by the British comic. It is also the best distillation of season four of the Netflix drama—in 2 minutes 15 seconds—you could wish for.
It's hard to choose a favorite line, when even the queen/Olivia Colman’s “Oh dear” is so perfect, but they are all there—a miserable Prince Charles suggesting marriage to Diana, Margaret Thatcher confessing to shooting Argentines, and Princess Margaret’s brilliant: “I’ve decided to become a priest or something.” Extra points for the queen noting that the entirety of her encounter with Michael Fagan was fabricated.
Just watch it. And again and again.
The queen thought very carefully about her referendum intervention
It was the most nakedly political overt intervention of her reign. Days before the Scottish independence referendum in 2014, the queen advised her subjects North of the Border to “think very carefully about the future.”
Many think her intervention could have shaped the vote, which the pro-status quo side won 55/45 (to the queen’s huge relief; David Cameron said she “purred” down the phone when he told her the result.)
The intervention was always characterized by the royals as being an impulsive moment but as we all know, the queen doesn’t really do impulsive.
Now, new information has emerged that the comments were a well-laid plan.
Lionel Barber, former editor of the Financial Times, alleges that Prince Andrew told him over lunch a week before the referendum that the queen was preparing to intervene on the vote.
Barber says that he met the Duke of York and Ma Kai, the former Chinese vice-premier, at Buckingham Palace on September 11, four days after a poll had stunned Downing Street by putting the “yes” campaign ahead for the first time.
Three days after the lunch, the queen told a member of the public outside Crathie Kirk—the church near her Balmoral estate—that she hoped Scots would “think very carefully about the future”. It proved to be one of the biggest talking points of a campaign that the “no” side went on to win 55%-45%.
In Barber’s diaries, published this month, he says the prince gave him “a nod and a wink” and made some “pretty bloody amazing” comments about how the queen was preparing to step into the debate.
He told The Sunday Times: “That was interesting. They had clearly planned it. It was very artfully done… Andrew knew about it.”
A Buckingham Palace spokesman said, somewhat archly: “We never comment on people’s recollections of what were private conversations.”
The Crown ignored widow’s request over ski tragedy
More awkward questions for the makers of The Crown as it transpires that the widow of the Prince’s friend who was killed in the Klosters avalanche dramatized in the show wrote to producers, asking them not to dramatize the death of her husband Major Hugh Lindsay in March 1988.
Sarah Horsley has told The Sunday Telegraph she was “extremely upset” after discovering the streaming giant had pressed ahead with using the accident as a central part of the new series.
She has also condemned the makers of The Crown for suggesting Lindsay’s death convinced him to commit himself to his relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles.
She said: “I was horrified when I was told it [the episode] was happening and was very concerned about the impact on my daughter. I’m very upset by it and I’m dreading people seeing it. I wrote to them asking them not to do it, not to use the accident. I suppose members of the Royal family have to grin and bear it, but for me it’s a very private tragedy.”
The Klosters disaster, is the central theme of the ninth episode of series 4 of The Crown, titled “Avalanche.”
Major Lindsay’s wife, who was still working at her job in the press office at Buckingham Palace, had stayed at their south London home because she was pregnant with their daughter, Alice.
This week in royal history
On November 26, 1992, it was announced that the queen was going to pay taxes on her private income. The move came after rising public disquiet over the rising cost of the royals, as well as the cost of the damages incurred by the Windsor Castle fire.
Unanswered questions
It now transpires that a contact of Meghan’s was authorized to talk directly to the authors of Finding Freedom; will more evidence in Meghan’s court case reveal this happened more than once? And what will the fresh investigation into how Martin Bashir secured his shocking interview with Princess Diana reveal?
