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Harry and William “sign off” on Diana statue
Could this mean the rift between Harry and William is easing? The Sun on Sunday reports that Princes Harry and William have “signed off” on a final design for Diana’s statue, set to be unveiled this summer at Kensington Palace July 1, on what would have been her 60th birthday.
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A source close to sculptor Ian Rank-Broadley told the paper: “It will have been signed off by William and Harry, that much I do know. I know he did work closely with the boys and I think it will be incredible.” Rank-Broadley has now sent the statue off to be cast, the paper says.
Relations between the brothers have reportedly been chilly for some time, and matters were not helped by Harry and Meghan’s interview with Oprah Winfrey, in which they said a member of the family had queried the possible darkness of the then-unborn Archie’s skin. Speculation has ranged as to who the identity of who the “royal racist” is, with William responding to one reporter’s inquiry on the matter: “We’re very much not a racist family.”
Meghan and Harry face new palace briefing wars
Of course, cynics would say that any real hope of peace breaking out between Montecito and Buckingham Palace hinges less on agreement on statues and more on everyone putting their guns down.
Alas, any lingering hopes that Buckingham Palace really did intend to deal “privately” with the ongoing fallout from Harry and Meghan’s Oprah interview have been shot to pieces, yet again, by an intensively briefed piece in The Telegraph slamming Meghan and Harry for having held talks with potential commercial partners, including a now-defunct streaming platform, well before their departure from the royal family.
The piece also alleges Meghan and Harry told palace functionaries “you can’t stop us from doing what we want,” when challenged about their commercial plans. The Telegraph suggests this is hypocritical because they told Oprah that they had “no plans” to strike a deal with Netflix or Spotify before they left Britain and only did so out of financial necessity. Harry said he was “literally cut off financially.”
However, The Telegraph says the pair were in talks with Quibi, a now-defunct video streaming service, from early 2019 until after they quit as working royals last January.
The Telegraph claimed Prince Harry returned from the so-called “Sandringham summit” to meet executives from the American company in London.
The couple were negotiating to provide content in the shape of ten-minute videos on the platform but the app failed after the coronavirus pandemic struck.
The newspaper also reported Meghan Markle continued to consult her US-based advisors, including her lawyer Rick Genow, business manager Andrew Meyer, talent agent Nick Collins and PR Keleigh Thomas Morgan, while she was a working royal.
This frustrated aides in Britain found it difficult to keep track of commercial deals the couple were planning, it is claimed.
Anthony Blunt passed details of royal Nazi sympathies to KGB
Given that the British Royals have direct German ancestry, it is perhaps unsurprising that there has always been some lingering speculation about whether or not some members may have secretly supported the Nazis.
Now a new documentary claims that British spy Anthony Blunt passed a collection of royal letters to the KGB written by the queen’s uncles, which showed their Nazi sympathies.
Blunt, who was Surveyor of The Queen’s Pictures, was only publicly exposed as a spy in 1979, and passed secrets to the Russians for decades.
A new Channel 4 documentary Queen Elizabeth and the Spy in the Palace alleges Blunt passed to the KGB copies of royal correspondence to Prince Philipp of Hesse, a descendant of Queen Victoria and one of Hitler’s most powerful aristocratic henchmen, the Daily Mail reports.
The Daily Beast’s Clive Irving says in the documentary: “Churchill [and] George VI … both understood the threat potentially caused by knowledge of how far back this sympathy with the Nazis ran through the Royal Family. If this came out, the monarchy would be very, very jeopardized.”
Blunt was interviewed 11 times by MI5 between 1951 and 1964, when the American FBI told their British colleagues they had identified him as a spy. But he was offered immunity and continued to work at the Palace, even receiving a knighthood in 1956. In 1979 he finally lost both his job and knighthood.
He died in 1983 at the age of 75.
How Margaret turned on Diana
Andrew Morton’s new biography, Elizabeth & Margaret: The Intimate World of the Windsor Sisters, promises to provide an amazing insight the sisters’ complex relationship, and into the imperious Margaret’s consistently extraordinary behavior.
Morton says, in an excerpt published in the Daily Mail, that Margaret became Princess Diana’s fiercest critic after her Panorama interview, in which Diana—when referring to Camilla Parker Bowles—famously said there were “three people” in her marriage. She sent Diana a “wounding and excoriating” letter accusing her of letting everyone down. She had obviously been “incapable of making even the smallest sacrifice,” she wrote.
The queen’s sister’s ire persisted post-Diana’s death. She argued Diana should merely have a a “private funeral”, complained about the smell of rotting flowers piling up outside the gates of Kensington Palace which she called “floral fascism,” and said the churned-up mud in the park recalled the First World War battle Passchendaele.
Morton says: “Margaret did her best to expunge Diana’s memory, destroying scores of letters written by her.”
Harry goes to the beach. Daily Mail goes predictably mad.
Given the continuing criticism around him and Meghan, and the news of Harry’s new job as a chief impact officer with mental health business Better Up, their fans can take some comfort from the latest pictures of Harry playing with his black labrador Pula on a Santa Barbara beach. Harry was wearing a white T-shirt, blue cargo shorts, and wore a baseball cap. They are cute pictures of Harry on a beach with his dog, and so naturally the Mail is apoplectic—in a super-weird article which shows just how deranged the British press is towards the couple... and a man with a dog on a beach.
Piers Morgan to “go nuclear”
Piers Morgan’s new publicity sell is that he’s breaking his silence—this from someone who never shuts up. Ever. He relentlessly criticized Meghan Markle on Good Morning Britain, criticism that became truly extreme following the Oprah interview. Morgan believes Markle (and Harry, but his most venomous ire is reserved for her) lied about what she claimed to Oprah, and appears furious about the “damage” she and Harry have done to the royal family.
He first “broke his silence” around walking away from Good Morning Britain—following some politely stated on-air criticism of him by colleague Alex Beresford (which he flounced off set during)—in the Mail a few days ago. Several thousand words later, his silence will again be broken in an interview with Tucker Carlson on Fox News scheduled for Monday night, in which he will “go nuclear” according to the Sun on Sunday. This should hardly make viewers tremble in anticipation. “Going nuclear,” for Morgan, is his usual setting.
“Piers won’t be pulling any punches,” a “source” told the paper. “He is still very disappointed about the way things finished at GMB. For a while there was anger, but now that’s switched to a determination—a determination to continue standing up for what he believes in. He remains 100 percent convinced he was right about what he said with regards to the Meghan and Harry interview. And he remains 100 percent convinced walking away was the right decision.
“Piers felt, in the end, he actually had no choice. For a long time he felt certain people at ITV—not all—wanted him to tone down his style. But there was no chance of that. Piers wears his heart on his sleeve and in the end walking away became a point of principle.”
Inevitably, Morgan is now selling himself as a victim of cancel culture, even though—like so many who whine about the same thing—he does so from large media platforms. “Piers senses there is a real momentum building among people who don’t want to be told how to think or how they should express their opinions,” the source continued. “He’s been inundated with letters, emails and cards from people saying they will tune in wherever he pitches up next. Piers therefore thinks he has a duty to return to the screen and provide a voice for all the people who don’t have the platform which he is lucky to occupy.”
This week in royal history
Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles married on April 9, 2005, so a happy 16th anniversary to them—although given the last few months (Prince Philip’s illness, Meghan and Harry blowing everything up, the hunt for a “royal racist”), one might not be surprised if the toasts are a little muted.
Unanswered questions
How close are Harry and William close to reconciliation? And, dear Daily Mail, please enlighten us: What is so strange about Harry, who is living in California, going for a walk on a beach with his dog, wearing a T-shirt and shorts?
