When Prince Harry and wife Meghan visited Australia in 2018 as working royals they were “welcomed by rapturous crowds”, said The Guardian. There was “little sign” of that “ecstatic reception” today when the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, who stepped down as working members of the royal family in 2020, arrived in Melbourne, said Reuters.

The couple have embarked on a tour that includes “engagements covering sport, mental health and veterans’ affairs”, but in their capacity as private citizens – an arrangement that has raised some eyebrows among their hosts.

Commercial activities  

During their four-day visit Harry will make a solo stop-off in the capital, Canberra, to meet military veterans. He and Meghan will then attend a ⁠mental health summit in Melbourne before rounding off the joint leg of their trip with sailing and rugby events in Sydney. It “still looks very much like a royal visit” even though “officially, it very much is not”, said ABC News.

But unlike on their previous visit, they’ll also “undertake commercial activities”, said Reuters. Meghan will host a wellness retreat at a luxury beachside hotel in Sydney, which will include yoga, manifestation and sound healing. Tickets cost A$2,699 (£1,417) including accommodation, or A$3,199 (£1,680) for a more VIP experience, including a group table photo with Meghan.

Meanwhile, Harry will be a star speaker at InterEdge’s “psychosocial safety” summit, a two-day professional development event with ticket prices as high as A$2,378 (£1,249) for the platinum option. For both of them, their sojourn in Australia is not only “private” but also “promotional”, said The Guardian.

Royal expert Giselle Bastin told the ABC that the commercial aspect of the tour was “unusual” and said the royal family would not be impressed that the Sussexes were “monetising their visit to Australia”.

Quasi-royal disaster

The “quasi-royal tour” was “already a disaster” before they set off, said The Times last month. “Early signs” showed that Australians “aren’t all that excited about their visit”; a recent Ipsos Australia poll found that only 40% of Australians view Harry favourably, while 46% view him unfavourably. Meghan “fares even worse”, with 55% holding a negative view of the US-born duchess.

The “honour” of this visit “comes with a hefty price tag”, said Bevan Shields in The Sydney Morning Herald. Although their travel expenses for the visit are being privately funded, ⁠local media reported that some of the policing costs would be paid by Australian taxpayers. Harry and Meghan are “laser-focused on building a healthy bank balance” now that their lucrative deal with Spotify has “imploded” and most of their Netflix projects have “fallen flat”. “Does anyone seriously believe they are coming to our shores for reasons other than financial and reputational?”. Our warm welcome back in 2018 clearly made Australians “look like a soft target”, so now they are back to “use us as an ATM”.

I “can’t begrudge them trying to make a living”, said Hello! magazine’s royal editor, Emily Nash. The reception of the Australia tour will be a “real litmus test for what else they may do this year”, with an Africa visit potentially on the cards, but it is also “something for the wider royal family to watch”. “The sorry saga” of the former prince Andrew and ex-wife Sarah Ferguson is a “reminder of how blurred the lines can become when titles and influence are mixed with personal gain”. If the Sussexes are able to “effectively operate alongside the working royals, but outside the carefully managed framework that governs royal duties”, that would represent a “headache” for the King.

Prince Harry and King Charles shared a private tea in London on Wednesday, marking the first time the pair had met in 19 months.

Although “we know very little” about what transpired during the 54-minute meeting at Clarence House, Harry, “his family and we, the public” are now all left pondering, said Caitlin Moran in The Times. “Have we missed him after all? Now that things have died down a bit, would it be kinda cool to have him back?”

Despite years of friction – from the bombshell Oprah interview and the publication of his memoir “Spare” to a legal battle over the prince’s security – “as long as the royal family aren’t actively firing on Harry, there’s still a way back”.

We’re all aware that “when it comes to real star power” in the royal family, “the only real big-hitters left on active duty are the King, the Queen and William”, said Moran. “And that’s just not enough manpower.” In due course, the prince will “have to come back to the franchise where it all started”.

It will take more than ‘a cup of tea’

Harry’s “brief pseudo-royal tour” is a reminder of the prince’s “instinctive and eye-catching common touch”, which at one time made him one of the most popular royals, said Richard Kay in the Daily Mail.

But it’s likely that “it will take more than an act of philanthropy and a cup of tea” to bury the hatchet. “Overtures are one thing, but a proper thawing of relations is fraught with peril.”

And “while not yet catastrophic”, polling isn’t exactly leaning in the royals’ favour, said Tessa Dunlop in The Independent. In 1983, when the British Social Attitudes survey was first carried out, a “staggering 86% of the population endorsed monarchy”. By 2023, that number had plummeted: just 54% of the population “expressed any commitment to royalty”, and supporters skewed older. Younger generations have “signed out”, and as long as this “unseemly royal impasse persists”, they have little incentive to sign back in.

Harry “retains a reach and appeal in areas where traditional monarchy is at its weakest”, so he may be just what the royal family needs to recover – “after all, William is many things, but cool is not one of them”. Now, it may be up to William to embrace forgiveness – “an important life skill”, especially “essential” for a future monarch.

‘There’s always a reunion’

Despite it being “19 months in the making" and under an hour in duration, the private tea between Harry and the King “marked a first step in the family reconciliation”, said Emily Nash in Hello! magazine.

The meeting was “very much what Harry has been longing for”, but details on what was discussed likely won’t emerge for some time. If the detente is to work, “it’s vital for the King to know that he can trust his youngest son to keep their discussions private” – especially following the publication of “Spare”, the prince’s candid memoir, in 2023.

With the prince looking “happier and more relaxed on home turf than I’ve seen him for a long time”, we can only hope “this marks a fresh start for the King and his son”. After all, “it doesn’t matter how febrile the break-up was”, said Moran. From the Spice Girls to Fleetwood Mac, “in the end, there’s always a reunion”. In general, people are “irrevocably compelled to try to get the band back together”. So, even if this trip doesn’t seal the deal, at some point soon “the healing will begin”.

Soho House has made an "ambitious move" to get its "mojo back", striking a £2 billion takeover deal to take the international members' club private after four years listed on the New York Stock Exchange, said The Telegraph.

The takeover, led by one of the largest hotel operators in the US, could give the company a much needed boost. "Can Soho House become the playground of the rich and famous once again?"

Star appeal

Nick Jones opened the first Soho House three decades ago. Located above his restaurant, Cafe Boheme, on London's Greek Street, it was envisioned as a "networking destination for 'creatives'", as opposed to the corporate clientele that dominated other social clubs, said the Daily Mail.

It soon became a "favourite hangout spot for celebrities"; in 2016, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle chose the club's Dean Street Townhouse as the location for their very first "clandestine rendezvous", said The Telegraph, reflecting the brand's "enticingly exclusive appeal".

Soho House has since turned into a "sprawling global empire" with around 200,000 members in 46 outposts around the world, including Paris, Mexico City and Hong Kong. Membership – which costs around £3,400 for global access – isn't easy to secure; applicants must be nominated by two existing members and provide a biography detailing their career and interests. Kim Kardashian was reportedly denied membership multiple times because the process was "too selective".

After the pandemic, the group relaxed its "stringent" membership requirements and "ballooned" in size. But the rapid expansion brought fresh issues as members began complaining about crowded clubhouses and "lacklustre service".

Soho House's "glamorous star has faded" and the group's share price has plummeted since it was listed back in 2021. Last year, the New York-based short seller GlassHouse published a "damning criticism of the company's 'broken business model and terrible accounting'". The chain, which appointed Andrew Carnie to replace Jones as CEO in 2022, said it "fundamentally rejects" the report.

A return to form?

Soho House has spent decades styling itself as an edgy hangout for creatives seeking to set themselves apart from "boring old City suits", said the Financial Times. But the buy-out means the "finance crowd" has finally managed to "elbow its way in".

While MCR Hotels is leading the takeover, a group of existing shareholders, including Nick Jones, will retain their stakes in the company. Hollywood star Ashton Kutcher will also invest and join the new board of directors.

The "upshot" is that the deal will bring together investors with experience of running successful hotels and expert financiers, while keeping "faithful insiders" as part of the journey. "But make no mistake: faith is exactly what's needed to turn this into a good deal for the buyers."

The acquisition valued Soho House at a "punchy" 16 times its ebitda (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation) this year. In order to deliver a solid return, the company will need to "find more members, charge existing ones more, or spend less on showing them a good time", and "probably all three".

Still, the deal will "undoubtedly" free Soho House bosses from the "expensive and time-consuming requirements from life on the stock market", said The Telegraph. And there are already signs that it is "rekindling its reputation as the place to be seen", with Dua Lipa hosting a star-studded after-party at the White City venue in June.

Members are "hopeful" that the buy-out will mark a "return to form", transforming the global chain into something closer to the "exclusive refuge" it once represented.

Senior aides representing King Charles and Prince Harry reportedly met last week, sparking rumours of a possible reconciliation between the pair.

The Mail on Sunday published leaked images of the meeting, with an unnamed source saying that there was a "long road ahead, but a channel of communication is now open for the first time in years".

The Duke of Sussex's team was "understood to be frustrated" by the publication of the images, denying it had leaked them, said The Telegraph. The worry now is this has "jeopardised the fragile peace operation".

'A bid to start afresh'

The meeting was allegedly a "bid to start afresh", with both the prince and the King's teams "recognising that an open communications channel would benefit them all". But these are "sensitive talks" over a relationship that has been "almost non-existent in recent years".

"Given the animosity", it is "interesting" that the summit was able to happen at all, said The Times. Harry's "past behaviour" makes "rebuilding a relationship with his family" particularly "tricky", but he "wants to see his father" and is also keen to be "welcomed back with open arms". But for this to happen, the King may "require" an apology from Harry rather than the other way around.

However, it would be the "right thing" to take in someone who "is in as much pain as Harry clearly is", said Sarah Vine in the Daily Mail. He is still suffering "complex, deep-seated emotional wounds" from the death of his mother, Princess Diana, and Meghan Markle has "re-opened or even rubbed salt" in those wounds" and "helped him turn his back" on the royal family. It "would be miles better" for both sides if the Sussexes were to be "brought in from the cold".

'Back to business as usual'

No matter how reconciliation begins, any "positive effects" from the clandestine meeting have been "immediately jeopardised by the leak", said Alexander Larman in The Spectator. Harry's team has "loudly insisted that it is not behind" the leak, which seems plausible. But some of the Sussexes' choices have been "similarly nonsensical" and, "given everything that has happened", not many will be fully "convinced that this is the beginning of a renewed bond between father and son".

For now, things are "back to business as usual" as the "two camps are bickering over who leaked the details" to the press, said New York magazine. Having the "two sides fighting over their attempt to stop fighting" isn't a "good sign".

There is still hope that this "first step" is the start of a "long road towards reconciliation", said People. Sources "close to the palace" have "downplayed the long-term significance of the meeting", and it has been painted as a "professional exchange" between royal staff. However, it still means "lines of communication appear to be reopening" for a "dialogue" that "hasn’t taken place in the recent past".

Sir Geoffrey Vos's judgment last week "was delivered politely and calmly", said Hugo Vickers in The Independent, bringing to an end a years-long legal battle over Prince Harry's security. The Court of Appeal judge found that the decision to downgrade Harry's police protection after he stepped back from royal life in 2020 was legally justified – though he said he understood Harry's fears and his "sense of grievance".

Harry had lost, and at this point, anyone else in his position would have retreated to quietly nurse their wounds (and pay their significant legal fees). But not Harry, said Rebecca English in the Daily Mail. Instead, he gave a "frankly extraordinary" interview to the BBC in which he described the decision as a "good old-fashioned establishment stitch-up", and claimed it wasn't safe for him to bring his wife Meghan and their children to the UK. He even set hares running over the health of the King, who is battling cancer, saying: "I don't know how much longer my father has. He won't speak to me because of this security stuff."

As Harry tells it, said Sarah Vine in the Daily Mail, he and his family "are victims of a massive conspiracy", perpetrated by an "utterly ruthless organisation called 'the Royal Household'". "They" are trying to kill him by removing his police protection; "they" use security to control members of the family. "On and on it goes, an endless litany of perceived injustices" – wilfully ignoring the fact that Harry deliberately chose to step away from royal life and all its trappings, including security.

After firing off those "missiles", said Roya Nikkhah in The Sunday Times, Harry then had the gall to say he hoped for "reconciliation" with his family. He still doesn't get it, does he? To go on the attack just as the royals were about to commemorate VE Day "goes to the very heart of what he keeps getting wrong".

"The interview was awful, slick with entitlement and ignoring the harm done by his own hostility," said Libby Purves in The Times. But Harry is clearly suffering, and the magnanimous thing at this stage would be for his brother and father to grit their teeth and try to welcome him back into the fold (though of course, with his history of spilling royal secrets, they would have to watch what they said).

The King should accept his "wounded" son's appeal for reconciliation, agreed Peter Hunt in The Observer. If not, this family sore will continue to "fester" – casting a shadow over Charles's reign. According to Harry, his father once implored: "Please, boys – don't make my final years a misery." The King should avoid turning that prophecy to reality

Meghan Markle has revealed how she's making memories for her children by creating them each a "time capsule". She has created "secret" email accounts for Archie, five, and Lilibet, three, and, "almost every night", she mails them a message.

Her messages could include a photo from that day, a little anecdote or a note of something funny that child said. "I used to have scrapbooks and photo albums but we're past that generation now," the Duchess of Sussex explained on "The Jamie Kern Lima Show" podcast. Archie and Lilibet don't have access to their accounts, so won't see the emails until "maybe when they're 16 or 18", and can look back on them "and go, 'Oh my gosh, she has loved us so much!'"

'Small, everyday moments'

The Duchess' nightly ritual is "particularly meaningful", said Daniella Gray in Newsweek, because, unlike so much parental memory-making, "it doesn't focus exclusively on milestones or achievements". Instead, Markle is collecting a treasure trove of the "small, everyday moments which can typically get lost in fast-paced family life".

Her emails will become a "breadcrumb trail of identity" for her children, Dorcy Porter, founder of the Conscious Co-Parenting Institute, told Newsweek's Gray. They will be "a reminder that they were always loved, always witnessed. That's not just emotional, it's foundational."

This could be the best parenting idea Meghan's ever had, said Charlotte Cripps in The Independent.

Piling on the pressure

But there's a danger it could set "unrealistic parenting standards" for others, and add to the pressure to "make memories" from every day.

The social-media "cult of making memories" is one of the "more nauseating phrases to emerge from social media", said Claire Cohen in Vogue. We all do our best to preserve memories for our kids but there's a "huge difference between Pritt Sticking a few pictures into a notebook" and having them wake up on their 16th birthday to "somewhere north of 4,000 emails to read".

"Bad days, mess, and intolerance" are all a part of family life but you wouldn't know it from all those "perfect family shots on Instagram", said The Independent's Cripps.

This constant sharing online under the "core memory" hashtag is all part of the expectation that parents "spend ever more time and money educating and enriching their children", said Claire Cain Miller in The New York Times. Last year, the US surgeon-general even issued a warning, classifying parental stress as "an urgent public health issue – putting it in the same category as cigarettes and Aids" and citing the "intense culture of comparison, exacerbated by the internet".

Perhaps, rather than copying Markle daily missives, "a photo dump in one email once a year" is more attainable for the average parent, said Cripps. "At the end of the day, it's a wonderful gift" to your children, "and it's never too late".

Prince Harry was just 20 when he visited Lesotho during his gap year, said Tessa Dunlop in The Independent. His adolescence had been turbulent and self-destructive, but in the tiny landlocked country he found "meaning" and purpose. Two years later, he and Prince Seeiso of Lesotho founded Sentebale – a charity dedicated to orphans of the Aids epidemic – in memory of their late mothers.

The cause was clearly very close to Harry's heart, and he raised millions for it; so "no one was surprised" when Sentebale (which translates as "forget me not", his mother's favourite flower) remained in the Sussexes' portfolio after they left the UK. Last week, however, Harry revealed that he had made the "devastating" decision to stand down as its patron, in solidarity with its trustees. Mainly members of his "establishment old guard", they had resigned following a power struggle with its new chair, Sophie Chandauka, a Zimbabwean lawyer and former trustee.

In the war of words this triggered, few facts are agreed, said Roya Nikkhah in The Sunday Times. The trustees have briefed that Chandauka had wasted vast sums on consultancy fees, in a failed effort to attract US donors. She denies this, and counter-claims that the charity had been damaged by the "toxicity of its lead patron's brand" – arguing that Harry's fall out with his family had deterred commercial partners. She says the trustees refused to discuss this, and accuses them of weak management, bullying, "misogyny and misogynoir".

She also implies that Harry had used the charity to enhance the Sussex brand. She claims that he forced a fundraising polo match to be moved, so that he could bring a Netflix camera crew; and that he'd ordered her to issue a public defence of his wife Meghan, who had turned up at the event unexpectedly, and been criticised for seeming to "manage" Chandauka out of a photocall with Harry. Now, she says the duke is playing the "victim card", while "unleashing the Sussex machine" against her.

Chandauka aimed her attacks well, said Richard Kay in the Daily Mail. She has turned Harry's victim status against him, and undermined his claim to be "awake" to injustice. And she has a point about the charity's funding: these days, it doesn't look good for a charity serving Africa's poor to be mainly funded by white men playing polo. Still, you have to feel for Harry. Sentebale was his passion project and, without it, his in-tray will look even emptier, while his wife's is "overflowing". Whoever is to blame, this dispute is surely "a crushing blow" for the prince.

If "all publicity is good publicity", said Town & Country's Victoria Murphy, Netflix should be "delighted" by the reaction to Meghan Markle's new show.

"With Love, Meghan" has been a "hot topic" on social media and beyond after landing on the streaming service this week, as viewers dissect the Duchess of Sussex's "personal tips and tricks" for cooking, homemaking and party planning. Who would have thought that "feel-good lifestyle content could spark such an explosion of backlash"?

'Accidental comedy classic'

Anyone who thought this eight-episode series would be a "smug, syrupy endurance watch" that "you would rather fry your eyeballs than sit through" was wrong, said Carol Midgley in The Times. "It is so much worse than that."

The duchess gets a reported $100 million to "tit around in a farmhouse" draped in cashmere as part of the Sussexes' Netflix deal. Yet she presents the trappings of her "mind-bogglingly exclusive lifestyle" in California as though they are possible for any "working mom" to replicate "on a budget". It's enough to make you "retch into your (rosemary-scented) sick bag".

At least it has "the makings of an accidental comedy classic", said Allison Pearson in The Telegraph. But Meghan is "incapable of laughing at herself" in this "outlandish fantasy, in which a mother of two small children has time to make her own bath salts". Back in the real world, if she gave her "bleakly wholesome, additive-neutral party bags to some actual children", they would "tell her where to shove her manuka stick".

'Sweet titbits'

The "overly perfect presentation" and the "saccharine" tone definitely "isn't for a British crowd", said Sky News' royal correspondent Rhiannon Mills. But that doesn't mean it won't be a hit. "Love her or loathe her", people will still "want to watch a project that's had so much promotion".

The celebrity cameos won't hurt either, said Asyia Iftikhar in Metro. Chef Roy Choi, Hollywood star Mindy Kaling and Meghan's former "Suits" co-star Abigail Spencer are among those who join the duchess as she shares "sweet titbits" about her life with Harry and their children, Archie and Lilibet. To "see her wrest her story out of the hands of online trolls" is "heartening". "Goodbye exiled royal, hello lifestyle guru."

This show "may represent a last stand at holding on to her place in the public eye", said Variety's Daniel D'Addario. It is "a sort of celebration of all things Duchess of Sussex". Her "serene, unruffled world" represents a sort of dream, not least because it's not even shot in her home. "With Love, Meghan" is indeed "made with a great deal of love – in the sense that the greatest love of all is the one that a person has for herself".

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle might have hoped that their decision to exile themselves from the royal family five years ago would temper the lurid gossip and intense speculation about their private lives. But if anything, absence has made the heat grow stronger.

The latest article about them by ­Vanity Fair – which has "American Hustle" on its cover – "has proved to be difficult reading for the Sussexes", said The Times. The feature made several claims about their marriage, community relations in Montecito, California, and business challenges, which the couple reportedly found "distressing".

Markle in particular has taken considerable flak recently. Her public support of the Los Angeles wildfires relief efforts, where she was filmed on a walkabout in the badly affected Altadena and Pasadena districts, saw "'Princess Markle'" being "castigated for being no better than an 'ambulance chaser' in a city where she doesn't 'live'", said The Independent. Then her "With Love, Meghan" cookery series on Netflix, originally due to begin last Wednesday, was delayed "as we focus on the needs of those impacted by the wildfires in my home state of California". But that announcement was also met with cynicism.

It appears the "actor-cum-duchess can't do right for wrong. And to trawl back, beyond the recent fire-disaster, is to be reminded that it was ever thus."

'Mean Girls'

Accusations of bullying levelled at Markle date back to 2018, said The Times, when palace staff were said to have been left in tears by her behaviour.

Last week, Vanity Fair spoke to people who had worked for Markle. They said that it was "very painful". One staff member described how there was "talking behind your back" and "gnawing at your sense of self" in a manner reminiscent of teenagers in the movie "Mean Girls". According to Vanity Fair, one former employee who was excited to begin working with the couple on media projects did not believe reports that Markle had bullied palace aides. After working with her, this person realised: "Oh, any given Tuesday, this happened," it is alleged. Sources close to the Sussexes said that previous employees had gone on record in the past to dispute these claims.

"Even the Sussexes cannot deny, however, that they have an unusually high team turnover," said Tatler. Their chief of staff, Josh Kettler, recently left his position after just three months in what was reportedly a mutual decision, with both sides agreeing "it wasn't the right fit". But Kettler himself has called the couple "dedicated and hardworking", while Ben Browning, the couple's former head of content at their foundation Archewell, told Us Weekly that he had found the pair to be "positive and supportive", adding: "The narratives we've seen suggesting the contrary are untrue."

'Misogyny and racism'

So is there something more insidious behind the hatred towards the Sussexes, and Markle in particular? The recent furore over her new Netflix show "marks a sad and tedious continuation of the misogyny and racism" surrounding her, said Vogue. Many of the comments accuse Markle of stealing the IP of Emma Thynn, Marchioness of Bath. "Because the world doesn't have space for more than one Black woman married to an English aristocrat who happens to cook on television."

The "act of hating her" has "evolved into the art of projecting the various wrongs of the world onto a woman", said Mamamia. The accusations of bullying have seen her "become a stand-in for every person who has treated us badly in the workplace or within our own families and is still publicly adored".

After the backlash over the wildfire relief efforts, publications such as People magazine later confirmed the couple worked a full day at an evacuation centre, "but that was not the story that rose to the surface", said Mamamia. The desire to be "the first one to the Meghan Markle commentary or critique has overridden our desire to look for the truth, the empathy or even the humour".

"Welcome to Meghan Markle's influencer era," said The Independent. The Duchess of Sussex has launched a new Instagram account with a "straightforward but somehow slightly grandiose mononymic username, @meghan", that will take us "behind the scenes" of her life with Prince Harry in California.

Markle's debut post is a "brief, ever-so-casual clip" that shows her running barefoot towards the ocean dressed in a flowing white shirt and jeans, leaning down to write '2025' in the sand with her finger in "a moment of perfectly rehearsed spontaneity".

The unveiling came as the first trailer dropped for her gleaming new Netflix series, "With Love, Meghan", that will celebrate the "joys of cooking, gardening, entertaining and friendship", said Claudia Cockerell in London's The Standard.

'Queen of Huns'

It seems Markle is on track to "follow the Goop playbook", said Cockerell. The foundations are clearly being laid for Markle to establish herself as an influencer, but things have changed considerably since she launched her lifestyle blog, "The Tig", in 2014.

To be successful on Instagram she'll need to give people "confessional pieces to camera" and "a look-in at the life that she and Harry lead". It simply isn't enough to share "wordless, faceless videos on beaches".

I have "always had a soft spot for Meghan", but the whole thing feels, "for lack of a kinder word, cringe", said Rebecca Reid on the i news site. "But then maybe that's the key?" Perhaps Markle should "bypass cool and head straight for cheugy". As long as she avoids hiring "anyone who knows anything about social media", she "might enjoy a renaissance as Queen of the Huns".

'Meghan, the trad wife'

"We've had Meghan, the actress, Meghan, the people's princess, and Meghan the wound-licking, Oprah-confiding ex-royal", said The Times. Now it seems the Duchess of Sussex has a "new guise": "Meghan, the trad wife".

If the "honey-hued trailer" for Markle's new Netflix show seems "a little Stepfordy for a self-identified and vocal feminist, then you wouldn't be wrong". But it's not exactly surprising given the "fickle nature" of the internet trend cycle: "ostentatious displays of domesticity are de rigueur". With the popularity of housewife influencers soaring, and Instagrammable dinner party tables becoming a "status symbol", it seems "With Love, Meghan" is "bang on the money".

Of course, opening up her life online will inevitably draw an "extra dose of criticism", said The Independent. For every person who follows her account in "good faith", another will be "keeping tabs" on her only to "build ammunition to attack her with".

Still, "a 'hate follow' is still a follow" and Markle will be able to "capitalise on that obsession". "Social media offers the potential to make money from her detractors – it might just give Meghan the last laugh after all."

Prince Harry is looking at ways to repair his relationship with his father as the first step in a potential return to the royal fold, the Mail on Sunday has reported.

Having grown increasingly "dissatisfied" with advice from US-based image experts, the Duke of Sussex has sought out former trusted aides in a bid to "rehabilitate" his image and "mastermind a return from exile in the US", where he has lived with his wife, Meghan, and their two children since 2020.

But "well-placed sources" told the BBC's royal correspondent Sean Coughlan that Prince Harry "is not planning a permanent move back to the UK" as it is "understood that concern over his and his family's security in the UK remains an issue". 

Operation bring Harry in from the cold

"Harry is feeling more and more isolated in California, which is why he has been reconnecting with old friends back home", a source "close to his inner circle" told The Sun. The 39-year-old royal "feels as though he has lost his way since moving to the US and has become 'The Spare' again" after being "overshadowed" by his wife, LBC reported.

Part of a strategy dubbed "Operation Bring Harry In From The Cold" in the Daily Mirror may involve performing "very low-key royal duties" to rebuild public trust, although sources have been quick to stress the couple would not move back to the UK permanently.

"He is clearly reaching out thinking, 'I need to do something different because what I'm doing is clearly not working'," said one source. "In short, he is rethinking the way he operates.

"If Harry comes back to the UK with zero fuss, and does zero publicity and attends very mundane events, he could prove himself and win over the British public again." 

But there is an "ongoing, labyrinthine legal wrangle with the Home Office over his security status in the UK", said the BBC's Coughlan, which "has become a thorny issue in any discussion about a return".

Healing royal relationships

William and Harry have not been on speaking terms for years, but were last week spotted in the same room for the first time since the May 2023 coronation of their father.

The Sun said Harry and William both made an appearance at the funeral of their uncle, Lord Robert Fellowes, in Norfolk. They arrived "very discreetly", a source told the paper with a local adding "but we never saw them speak to each other and they were keeping their distance".

Last month, People reported that Harry's recent texts, letters and phone calls to William have gone unanswered, with a royal insider describing the rift between the brothers as "very bad" if not "irreparable".

"Unless matters change very considerably, it is unlikely that either the King or Prince William will countenance any kind of formal return for Harry into the royal family," said The Spectator's Alexander Larman. It would be too humiliating after what has happened, and would risk making the institution a laughing stock.

Harry has, however, been trying to repair his relationship with his father for some time, said The Times, with the paper reporting in February that he was willing to return to a temporary royal role in the UK to support the family as the King was treated for cancer.

Although Harry had sought a position that involves limited royal duties but allows him to continue living in the US, Buckingham Palace has "opposed such an arrangement" said the paper, sticking to the line of his late grandmother, Elizabeth II, who insisted he could not be "half in, half out".

Ever since the Oprah Winfrey interview in 2021 in which the Duchess of Sussex reported that a senior member of the royal family had speculated over the colour of her unborn child's skin, there has been public fascination with the identity of the so-called "royal racist", said Alexander Larman in The Spectator. 

The Duchess never named any names, bar assurances it was neither the late Queen nor Prince Philip. But last week, with the publication of Omid Scobie's book about the royal family, "Endgame", all was revealed. The English version was tactfully silent, but the Dutch translation asserted that not one but two royals expressed "concern" about Archie's likely skin colour: King Charles and the Princess of Wales. 

Scobie said the revelation was a mistake: a "translation error". But the Dutch translator said she had merely translated what she was given – leading to suspicions that this "accident" was in fact a tawdry publicity stunt. 

Inside scoop?

Some of us are bound to wonder what part Harry and Meghan played in this book, said Allison Pearson in The Daily Telegraph. In it, Scobie takes various swipes at Catherine, calling her "Katie Keen" and painting her as a "Stepford Wife", and at the King. 

Scobie has repeatedly denied acting as the Sussexes' "mouthpiece", and says the couple had no direct input into this book. But last year, Meghan had to apologise in court for "failing to remember" that she'd authorised a senior aide to supply information for his previous one. At any rate, "Endgame" will have made the prospect of a family reunion any time soon still more unlikely. 

A 'ridiculous' row

The whole royal racism saga is pretty ridiculous, said Trevor Phillips in The Times. It's normal for families to speculate about who the baby is going to look like. I have no idea what the King said to Meghan, but having met him a few times, I very much doubt that he would express "antediluvian" views on the subject: he has, after all, "probably met more black folk than any public figures outside Africa". 

I am not naive about the "depth of racial prejudice" that exists in some British families. But this particular issue is trivial, and worse: talking about it endlessly "sends a sour, unwelcoming message" about Britain out "across the globe".

A new book that promises to make the royal family feel "ashamed" may prevent a "thawing in relations" between the King and Prince Harry, experts warn. 

In "Endgame: Inside the Royal Family and the Monarchy's Fight for Survival", Omid Scobie, who is "famous for writing about Harry and Meghan", makes a number of "highly controversial allegations" about the royals, said The Telegraph.

These days, "warts-and-all tell-alls seem to be as integral to the Windsor brand as weddings, jubilees and blockbuster funerals", said The New York Times. But what is in this book and what has the reaction been?

The background

Scobie is one of the UK's most prominent commentators on the royal family, and has taken a particular interest in the lives and thoughts of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.

In 2020, Scobie co-authored a book about the couple with US journalist Carolyn Durand. "Finding Freedom: Harry and Meghan and the Making of a Modern Royal Family" sold more than 31,000 copies in the UK in its first five days on the shelves.

"In revealing the depth of the divide that developed between William and Harry after Meghan came on the scene, it cemented Scobie in many people's eyes as Meghan's cheerleader, crusader and chum," said The Sunday Times.

The latest

His new book promises to be as explosive as its predecessor. "Tone-deaf, racist and financially reckless” are three charges "hurled" by Scobie at the monarchy, said The New York Times. 

Scobie writes that "when Queen Elizabeth II was at the helm she managed to keep much of it at bay". But the new King "comes in for a walloping", with allegations that  Charles is "often envious" of his sons' popularity. 

The book is equally critical of Prince William, who is portrayed as "snapping at Charles' heels" as the "ambitious" prince eyes the throne, said The Independent. The heir apparent is cast as a "hot-headed" company man who is "increasingly comfortable with the Palace's dirty tricks and the courtiers who dream them up".

Scobie claims that Harry was "left completely by himself" after the Queen's death. Meanwhile, the Princess of Wales considered her future sister-in-law Meghan a "rival" from the moment she appeared on the scene in 2016, according to Scobie.

Indeed, the book "rips into every member of the royal family – apart from a certain couple in California", said The Sunday Times. Harry and Meghan have denied any connection to "Endgame". Asked by the paper if Meghan contributed to the book, Scobie replied: "No, and I'm not her friend." But he admitted that he does share "mutual friends" with the duchess – something he says "helps with getting information and breaking details" about the royal family.

The reaction

Readers "hoping for a final death blow of gossip will be disappointed", said The New York Times, because "we've heard much of it before". But the book is "crammed with gripping gems about the bilious backbiting among the royal family" and is a "pacey, well-written account of where the modern monarchy could be heading if it doesn't adapt and appeal to a new generation".

Experts said that the new biography is "threatening a potential thawing in relations between the King and his youngest son", the Daily Mailreported. The royal family is in for a "bumpy ride", said Honey.

Buckingham Palace has declined to comment on the extracts from Scobie's book. Nevertheless, said the BBC, the royal family "continues to provide inspiration for authors, book editors and television commissioners", so we can expect plenty more. 

For "royal critics, fans and observers alike", it's "not going to be a quiet week", said Deadline.

“When the Duke and Duchess of Sussex announced their $20m, multi-year deal with Spotify in 2020, it was hailed as the centrepiece of the couple’s growing business empire,” said Nadia Khomami in The Guardian.

Last week, however, news broke that the partnership was coming to an end. The decision was described as mutual, but insiders reported that the couple had failed to meet a “productivity benchmark”, and would not be getting the full payment.

In other words, said Reaction, Spotify had looked at their total output – 12 episodes of Meghan’s dreary Archetypes podcast, in which she interviewed some of her famous friends about the “labels that hold women back” – and concluded that it just wasn’t good enough. One senior executive went rather further, by implying that the couple had conned the firm. Speaking on his own podcast, Bill Simmons declared that Meghan and Harry should have produced a show called “The F**king Grifters”.

To be fair, this isn’t just about the Sussexes, said James Warrington in The Daily Telegraph. It’s also “the latest sign that Spotify’s big bet on podcasting has gone sour”. Four years ago, the music-streaming giant started splurging millions on headline-grabbing podcast deals, hoping that “ad dollars would follow”.

It even created a dedicated campus in LA called Pod City. But the expected revenue hasn’t materialised, and it is now laying off staff and rethinking expensive deals. Signing the Sussexes generated useful media buzz, but relative to other podcasters, Meghan produced very little content, and seems not to have hauled in the listeners: having initially topped the charts, her series is no longer even in the top 100.

That doesn’t surprise me, said James Marriott in The Times. In a market crowded with limp celebrity podcasts, the show was notably bad – the “distilled essence of purest Californian banality” – and Meghan was awful on it: she introduced fascinating guests, then covered them in “gush” (“you’re choosing liberation and newness; I love that so much”) until they became boring, which is “the opposite of good interviewing technique”.

Spotify doesn’t release listener figures, but my guess is that Archetypes’s were very low, and that is worrying for the Sussexes. They can’t keep droning on about the horrible royal family. What with Harry’s book and the Netflix documentary, it’s a story they’ve “milked to within an inch of its life”, and there are signs that people are getting tired of it. But the failure of Archetypes suggests that no one wants to listen to them talk about anything else.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s involvement in what they called a “near catastrophic car chase” with US paparazzi in Manhattan has been put under the microscope amid claim and counterclaim from those involved.

Harry and Meghan were attending the Ms. Foundation’s Women of Vision annual gala at the Ziegfeld Ballroom, during which the Duchess of Sussex was honoured by Gloria Steinem for her “global advocacy to empower and advocate on behalf of women and girls”, reported Good Morning America.

But the night turned sour when, according to the couple’s spokesperson, they were “involved in a near catastrophic car chase at the hands of a ring of highly aggressive paparazzi”.

The spokesperson added: “This relentless pursuit, lasting over two hours, resulted in multiple near collisions involving other drivers on the road, pedestrians and two NYPD officers.”

New York police gave a rather different account, saying that while there were “numerous photographers that made their transport challenging”, the pair “arrived at their destination and there were no reported collisions, summonses, injuries, or arrests in regard”. Sukhcharn Singh, who drove the couple on part of their journey, said the description of the situation as “catastrophic” was “exaggerated”.

‘Impossible not to think of Princess Diana’

Speaking to Sky News, the couple’s press secretary Ashley Hansen said: “I have never experienced their vulnerability as much as I did last night. They were incredibly scared and shaken up.”

Journalist Omid Scobie, who has written biographies of the royal couple, told BBC Newsnight that it was “impossible not to think of Princess Diana when we hear about car accidents and this kind of aggressive paparazzi chase”.

The Sussexes’ account of “a relentless pursuit” is a “percussive succession of coincidences and details that will make the blood of every right thinking person boil”, agreed The Independent’s Samuel Fishwick.

“Let us not forget the terms on which the prince began his campaign of retribution against the press in that infamous Oprah Winfrey interview back in 2021,” added Fishwick.

“The clicking of cameras and the flashing of cameras makes my blood boil,” he told Winfrey. “It makes me angry and takes me back to what happened to my mum and my experience as a kid.”

‘Cynical timing’

A photographer familiar with the market for celebrity pictures in New York suggested to The Guardian that “the claims could be designed to play into the Diana, Princess of Wales narrative, given how popular she was in the US”.

They told the paper: “‘Americans are a bit more sympathetic to the couple than the Brits right now.’”

“There are jokes, too, that photographers are tipped off by the couple themselves,” said The Guardian’s Edward Helmore, recalling the “sniping” of former TV anchor Megyn Kelly when Meghan was photographed going hiking with friends in California on the day of her father-in-law’s coronation.

“A cynical observer might question the timing of their bombshell statement”, wrote The Telegraph’s associate editor Camilla Tominey. It came “just a day after Harry’s lawyers appeared in the High Court arguing that it was not only wrong of him to be stripped of his armed Metropolitan Police protection when he is back in the UK, but unfair for him to have been denied the right to reimburse the taxpayer for it”.

The events on the streets of Manhattan “don’t form part of the case against the tabloid press which Harry is fighting in London, but they neatly, some say conveniently, embolden his cause”, agreed Sky News’s US correspondent Mark Stone.

“As is often the case with the British royal family,” said Intelligencer, “there’s still plenty of confusion and controversy surrounding the incident.”

Before becoming a member of the royal family, Meghan Markle’s professional portfolio consisted of acting, philanthropic endeavours and running a self-published lifestyle blog, The Tig.

The website described itself as “a hub for the discerning palate – those with a hunger for food, travel, fashion and beauty”. It featured recipes, travel guides and beauty tips, as well as interviews with highly successful women including Elizabeth Hurley, Ivanka Trump and Priyanka Chopra.

Closing The Tig in 2017 was “among the sacrifices” Markle made when she entered royal life, said Tatler. But the New York Post reported last week that the Duchess of Sussex could be “staging her old blog” for “a major comeback soon”.

The Tig’s origins

After launching in 2014, Markle’s site “was well on its way to becoming the next Goop”, the lifestyle and wellness brand launched by Gwyneth Paltrow in 2008, said Cosmopolitan.

The Tig took its name from the Italian wine Tignanello. Markle said in the site’s bio that a sip of this wine suddenly made her understand “what people meant by the body, legs, structure of wine”. It was “an aha moment at its finest”, she wrote. And so Tig became Markle’s “shorthand for the feeling of suddenly understanding something”, said The Cut.

Though the blog may have closed, “thankfully, nothing on the internet is ever truly gone for good”, said Cosmopolitan. And “ever since the site was excised from the web”, The Tig “has become a source of fascination”, said Grazia. Its content reveals “unexpected insights” on its founder’s “attitude to life”.

“She’s fully sold on meditation,” the magazine recounted, but was not such a fan of baking: “There’s something about the technicality of it that stifles my inner rebel; no dash of this or extra spoonful of that.”

Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray Love inspired the future duchess to spend a month in Italy, and her favourite drink at the time was “red wine hot chocolate”, a concoction that she said “combines two of every lady’s classic loves, wine and chocolate”. She’s also a strong “advocate” for “alone time”.

Farewell friends

Markle bid farewell to her “passion project” in a post published in 2017. She thanked her “amazing community of inspiration, support, fun and frivolity” for “three beautiful years” of “adventure”.

It was “the end of an era” for Markle, said People. There was speculation that the site’s closure was due to the future duchess’s relationship with Prince Harry, which had recently been made public. A source told the site that those reports were “false” and that the project was brought to an end so that Markle could focus on shooting the upcoming season of US TV drama Suits.

But earlier this month The Mirror reported that Markle could be preparing to go “head-to-head with Gwyneth Paltrow” in the lifestyle blogosphere again by taking on the “mega-successful” Goop. Documents filed with the US Patent and Trademark Office indicate that “a potentially rebooted version” of The Tig could be in the pipeline, said the New York Post.

Twig take two?

Markle previously renewed The Tig’s trademark in 2019, sparking speculation that she could be planning to relaunch the site. But her spokesperson told People that the trademark’s continuation was to “prevent false branding, to avoid others purporting to be the Duchess or affiliated with her”.

Now, “having taken her final curtsy as a working royal”, Markle is “in a different position”, said The Cut. With a podcast, books and Netflix documentary already among her and Prince Harry’s post-royal projects, “why not add a blog to the roster?”

A revival of The Tig “could open up a new avenue for the duchess’s independent career”, said Tatler. According to the filed documents, Markle might also “take on an agony aunt role on the site”, providing “commentary in the field of personal relationships”, said the Mirror.

Some commentators are sceptical about the prospect of Tig 2.0. “Behind every successful female lifestyle brand is the straightforward science of envy,” said Celia Walden in The Telegraph. “But how many women want Markle’s life? Personally, I don’t know any.”

Daniela Elser in the New Zealand Herald agreed that a new chapter of The Tig would be a “disastrous idea”. But the trademark’s renewal may prove to be nothing more than evidence that “a canny lawyer” is trying to ensure “no enterprising sorts can get their mitts” on The Tig “to sell Sussex merch”.

Buckingham Palace has announced that Prince Edward will be the new Duke of Edinburgh.

King Charles III conferred the title on his brother, the former Earl of Wessex, in celebration of Edward’s 59th birthday today. It will be held for his lifetime.

Sophie, the former Countess of Wessex, is now the Duchess of Edinburgh and their 15-year-old son James, Viscount Severn becomes the new Earl of Wessex.

The former Duke of Edinburgh was Prince Philip, who died in 2021, and who was given the title in 1947 on the day of his wedding to Princess Elizabeth, who later became Queen Elizabeth II, noted the BBC.

“It was Prince Philip’s wish that the Earl of Wessex should inherit his title,” said The Telegraph, and the King chose to “coincide the recreation of the dukedom” with Edward’s visit to Edinburgh today for a reception to mark the first year of the war in Ukraine.

In an interview with The Telegraph in 2021, Sophie recalled how, two days after their engagement, Philip asked his son if would be willing to become the next Duke of Edinburgh. “We sat there slightly stunned,” she said. “He literally came straight in and said: ‘Right. I’d like it very much if you would consider that.’”

Philip’s death “was two years ago, however”, noted the Daily Mail, and “there has been much to-ing and fro-ing behind the scenes on the issue ever since”.

It added that the “issue for Buckingham Palace” was that Edward is “now 13th in line to the throne and will only slide further down the order of succession” and “there was concern that the most senior titles associated with a nation of the United Kingdom would be passed on to an ever more junior branch of the family line”.

The title change is not the first this week. The royal family’s official website has been updated to reflect the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s children’s new titles, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet, noted ITV News.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have been asked to "vacate" their residence at Frogmore Cottage, a spokesman for the couple confirmed on Wednesday.

Harry, Meghan, and their two children live in Southern California, and have used Frogmore Cottage as their home base during visits to the United Kingdom. Frogmore is part of the Crown Estate, and Harry's late grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, gave it to them as their primary residence when they still lived full-time in England. In his memoir Spare, Harry wrote that Frogmore was "charming, full of potential" and it was "a dream come true" to live there. In January 2020, when Harry and Meghan quit being working royals, they repaid the $3.2 million of taxpayer money that had been used to renovate the property.

Harry also went into detail in Spare about his fraught relationship with his family, but expressed optimism that he could get back to a good place with his father, King Charles III, and brother, Prince William. It's not clear if his public airing of grievances had anything to do with Charles' Frogmore decision, or if it's because there will be "a major government review of royal household finances" after his coronation in May, The Washington Post reports. Buckingham Palace declined to comment on the matter.

The British tabloid The Sun is claiming that Charles' younger brother Prince Andrew has been offered Frogmore, which the Post said would be "a downgrade" from his current residence at the Royal Lodge, a larger property in Windsor. In January 2022, Andrew was stripped of his titles and patronages after being accused of sexual abuse; he settled with the accuser, Virginia Giuffre, in February 2022.

The Princess of Wales has hired a PR guru known for her “straight talking” to “shake things up a bit” after the turmoil that followed the publication of Prince Harry’s autobiography.

Alison Corfield, a “brand management expert”, replaces Hannah Cockburn-Logie, a former diplomat with the Foreign Office, with Kate having “actively sought out a ‘different kind of courtier’” for the private secretary role, according to The Telegraph.

Corfield, 51, is “‘loud’, ‘persuasive’ and ‘straight talking’”, a source told the paper, and is expected to “shake things up a bit”. The princess is seeking to “step up her public work” and have it “make more of an impact”.

The position of private secretary is “a vital role within any royal household” and is a “ varied and important” job, said Tatler. Responsibilities include the “smooth-running of the princess’s day” including tasks like “event briefings; overseeing the scheduling of engagements; or co-ordinating social media output”.

Who is Alison Corfield?

Corfield grew up in Croydon, south London, and unlike many royal appointments, she “doesn’t have a background in the civil service”, wrote Tatler. She began her career working as cabin crew at Virgin Atlantic in 1993, before taking on numerous roles within Virgin. She worked her way up at the British company to eventually become brand director of Virgin Media in 2005.

Since leaving Virgin in 2006, she has become “no stranger to working for high profile people”, said the Evening Standard. Most notably, she is “credited with masterminding Jamie Oliver’s childhood obesity and free school meals campaigns”, added Tatler, which will “will no doubt prove valuable experience” when working on the Princess of Wales’s charitable endeavours.

As well as Oliver, the mum of three has worked with Irish chef Clodagh McKenna, as well as Labour MP Stella Creasy, “on her campaign to recruit more mothers as Labour parliamentary candidates”, according to the Daily Mail.

Corfield is known as a “ball-breaker, a real straight-talker, very passionate, dynamic and genuinely funny”, a source told The Sunday Times. “She makes things happen and will really push things forward at the palace.”

Why has she been hired?

Corfield replaces Hannah Cockburn-Logie, who held the role for two and a half years and was often described as Kate’s “right-hand woman”, said Hello!.

The hiring of Corfield is a “highly significant gear change from what has gone before”, said The Telegraph, and she’ll be charged with taking “Brand Kate to the next level” as well as taking on the “the task of besting Meghan Markle”.

Since the publication of Prince Harry’s book Spare, the Princess of Wales has “rarely been out of the public eye” while the Duchess of Sussex, “who has unquestionably become her nemesis, has retreated to the shadows”, the paper said.

The princess unveiled her “life’s work” last week, launching a charitable initiative called Shaping Us, aimed at “shining a spotlight on the critical importance of early childhood”, said the Mail.

It is thought that Corfield will spearhead this campaign and turn it into the “sort of brand that will outlive the Princess” and make it “part of the national psyche”, like the Duke of Edinburgh awards and the Invictus Games, said The Telegraph.

The new initiative and the hiring of Corfield is a clear sign the Princess of Wales “is redefining herself now that she has this new role”, a source told the paper. And now she has a “greater platform”, she needs “the right team to deliver for her”.

Prince Harry’s final round of TV interviews ahead of the release of his autobiography Spare tomorrow may have ended any hope of a future royal reconciliation as he “once again twisted the knife on his closest family members”, said the Daily Mail.

In pre-recorded interviews on ITV and CBS, which aired last night, along with another on Good Morning America (ABC) today, the Duke of Sussex tried to row back on claims his family is racist while still suggesting the institution needs to do more to address unconscious bias within palace walls. At the same time he doubled down on previous allegations, accusing his brother and sister-in-law of “stereotyping” his wife, Meghan, because of portrayals in the British media, and stating that “certain members” of his family had been cosying up to journalists, or as he put it “getting in bed with the devil”.

Since copies of his tell-all memoir were accidentally leaked early by a Spanish retailer last week, Harry has faced a huge backlash from the British press and public, with polling showing that he and his wife are now the least popular senior royals apart from Prince Andrew, according to the Financial Times.

What did the papers say?

“Harry had time to decide his message, and again it was his family who took the direct hit,” wrote Sky News’s royal correspondent Rhiannon Mills.

Speaking to ITV’s Tom Bradby, Harry said his family had “shown absolutely no willingness to reconcile up until this point. And I’m not sure how honesty is burning bridges. You know, silence only allows the abuser to abuse.”

Mills said: “For all his efforts to say how much he still loves them, it felt like another huge betrayal as he compared them to abusers.”

Prince Harry insisted he is “100%” confident he can reconcile with his family and multiple news outlets have reported that King Charles is also keen to mend relations with his youngest son. The King reportedly wants to extend an invitation to the Sussexes to his coronation, which will take place in May.

“Charles wants to project an image of unity for the royal family and would like a genuine rapprochement with his youngest son,” reported Vanity Fair. However, the magazine cited “sources close to the King” who have also said that Charles “will not tolerate Harry attacking his wife and that Harry may have crossed a line by speaking about Camilla”, whom he accused of planting stories in the press and being a “villain” who “needed to rehabilitate her image”.

What next?

A source told The Daily Telegraph that King Charles “has never given up hope of reconciling with the Duke of Sussex”. The paper said that “despite all of the recent revelations and allegations fired from California, Charles believes he will one day be reunited with his son and they will move forward”.

Until then, however, “the two sides appear to have reached a stalemate, each keen to build bridges but convinced that the ball is in the other’s court”.

As it stands the divisions in the royal family are being mirrored in wider society. The Times reported that “Megxit”, the term used to describe the Sussexes’ decision to leave the royal family and move to the US, “has become the new Brexit, splitting families by pitting Gen Z against boomer, woke against traditionalist”.

King Charles’s biographer, Catherine Mayer, told The Guardian that prospects for reconciliation were remote even before the book, “but there is a strong incentive for King Charles to initiate some kind of truce”.

Mayer noted that the alleged racism, bullying and image manipulation inside the royal family are not being examined and that “left alone, they have the power to dissolve faith in the idea of a hereditary head of state”.

David Yelland, editor of The Sun between 1998 and 2003, agreed that “while the British press and public’s support for the royal family was solid, Spare still presented serious problems for Buckingham Palace, which has refused to comment on any of the allegations.”

Yelland told the FT: “The bigger issue is that Harry, in theatrical terms, has broken the ‘fourth wall’ and let light into an institution that has survived for centuries in the dark. The risk to the palace is that the monarchy becomes a soap opera. The more light you shine, the less likely it is to survive.”

Prince Harry has confessed he was "probably bigoted" before he started dating his wife, Meghan Markle.

Harry spoke with Anderson Cooper for 60 Minutes in an interview set to air Sunday to promote his new book, Spare. In a preview clip, he reiterated his argument that the "race element" of the British press' coverage of Meghan made it a "very different" situation compared to what other royals have gone through. But he added he was "incredibly naive" about this beforehand.

"I had no idea the British press were so bigoted," he said. "Hell, I was probably bigoted before the relationship with Meghan."

Harry clarified he doesn't "know" if he was bigoted but "didn't see what I now see."

Harry has said that racism against Meghan was a major factor in their decision to step back as senior members of the royal family and leave the U.K. He previously told Oprah Winfrey that the "U.K. press is bigoted, specifically the tabloids," though he added this is not true of the U.K. as a whole.

In the Netflix documentary Harry & Meghan, Harry also argued there is a "huge level of unconscious bias" within the royal family.

"The thing with unconscious bias is it's actually no one's fault," he said. "But once it's been pointed out or identified within yourself, you then need to make it right. It's education, it's awareness, and it's a constant work in progress for everybody, including me."

The royal family have revealed their plans for Christmas Day as they prepare for their first festive season without the late Queen.

The announcement from Buckingham Palace came “just minutes” after the Duke and Duchess of Sussex unveiled a trailer for another Netflix show they have in the works, less than a week after debuting their “bombshell docuseries” Harry & Meghan, said The Mirror.

As a turbulent year for the royals draws to a close, the paper predicted that this year’s festive season will be an “emotional occasion” for the family, “who are still mourning the loss of their mother, grandmother and great-grandmother”.

Return to Sandringham

Buckingham Palace has confirmed that King Charles, Queen Consort Camilla and other senior royals will celebrate Christmas at Sandringham for the first time in three years.

The decision marks a return to royal tradition, after Queen Elizabeth spent the festive season at Windsor Castle during the pandemic.

Royal Christmases at the Norfolk estate usually include a “morning visit to St Mary Magdalene Church”, said Yahoo! News, followed by a “family lunch and a gathering round the television to watch the monarch’s televised address to Britain”.

Charles will be giving his first King’s speech, “and he's likely to pay tribute to his late mother with his words”, said The Mirror.

Prince Louis is also set for a “starring role” in the celebrations, “after stealing the show at the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee”, according to the paper’s Lucy Thornton. The four-year-old prince will reportedly join the family’s traditional Christmas Day walk to church for the first time, amid hopes that he can “give proceedings a lift” – although a “final decision” about the “important Sandringham milestone” will not be made until the big day, Thornton added.

Scaled-back plans

Experts have predicted that the royals’s “much-loved Christmas traditions” will be “scaled back” this year, said Cosmopolitan, and will centre around a “low-key Christmas lunch”.

Former BBC royal commentator Jennie Bond told OK! magazine that without “the linchpin of the Queen holding together an often fractured family, they may suddenly decide to do their own thing”.

The King’s Christmas plans “might be up in the air a bit”, she added, and “the younger royals will probably want to spend time with their own families”, so “two- or three-day celebrations” may be “a thing of the past”.

Frozen out?

According to The Sun’s royal editor Matt Wilkinson, the Sussexes are being “frozen out” of Charles’s first Christmas dinner at Sandringham as monarch. The King and Camilla have “invited large numbers of those dubbed ‘The Loyal Family’”, said Wilkinson.

The guest list is expected to include Camilla’s children, Tom Parker Bowles and Laura Lopes; the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and their three children; Prince Edward and his family; and princesses Beatrice and Eugenie plus their husbands and children.

But Harry and Meghan are expected to spend Christmas in California with their children Archie, three, and Lilibet, 18 months, although “it is believed they will share presents with William and Kate”, said Wilkinson.

Prince Andrew ‘masterstroke’

The King’s Christmas guest list is also expected to include Prince Andrew. His ex-wife Sarah Ferguson has reportedly been invited to join the royals for Christmas too, for the first time in 30 years.

A Sandringham source told The Mirror’s royal features writer Jennifer Newton that the former couple would be staying at Wood Farm, a five-bedroom cottage set away from the main house on the 20,000-acre estate.

Royal biographer Ingrid Seward said the decision to allow the disgraced prince and his ex to attend while keeping them “tucked out of sight” was a “masterstroke”.

Charles is “not an unkind person”, Seward told the paper. “There were many times Camilla had to hide away like a fugitive so he understands Andrew’s situation only too well.”.

But the King cannot risk his image “being tarnished by Andrew”, she added, and “he will not allow it to happen”.

A controversial article about Meghan Markle by British broadcaster Jeremy Clarkson has drawn a record number of complaints.

The Top Gear host recently wrote in The Sun that he hates the Duchess of Sussex "on a cellular level" and dreams "of the day when she is made to parade naked through the streets of every town in Britain while the crowds chant, 'Shame!' and throw lumps of excrement at her." He also suggested he hates her more than serial killer Rose West.

The article quickly sparked fierce backlash, and The Guardian reports that the Independent Press Standards Organization has received over 17,500 complaints about it as of Tuesday morning, setting a record for the most complaints the regulator has ever received about an article. For comparison, the watchdog only received 14,355 total complaints in the entirety of 2021.

Clarkson's article has since been removed from The Sun's website. In a statement on Twitter, he said he "put my foot in it" by making a "clumsy reference to a scene in Game of Thrones and this has gone down badly with a great many people." The HBO show features a scene where a character, Cersei Lannister, is forced to walk naked through the streets of King's Landing.

"I'm horrified to have caused so much hurt and I shall be more careful in future," Clarkson said, though he faced further criticism for not offering a more direct apology.

Member of Parliament John Nicolson on Monday wrote a letter to the chief executive of ITV, arguing Clarkson's "deplorable" comments offer an "insight into a disturbed mind" and that he should not "appear on our television screens again."

The controversy over Harry and Meghan’s Netflix series has led to speculation over how his late mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, might have felt about her younger son’s actions.

Piers Morgan, a long-standing critic of the couple, wrote on Twitter that Diana “would be appalled” at how Harry is “trying to destroy the Monarchy & attacking Britain”.

However, others have drawn parallels between Harry’s experiences and behaviour and those of his late mother.

A ‘burn-it-all-down gesture’

In her book The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor – the Truth and the Turmoil, author Tina Brown suggested that Diana might have approved of her younger son’s actions.

Harry expresses his “lasting contempt for the press” with “tortured, vocal, frequently ill-judged condemnation, a never-ending flurry of lawsuits” and “a burn-it-all-down gesture that his mother… might have well understood”, she wrote, in a passage adapted for Vanity Fair.

“Have we forgotten the lessons learned from Diana’s experience?” asked MSP Karen Adam in The National. She was commenting on Jeremy Clarkson’s controversial column for The Sun in which he wrote that he was “dreaming of the day” when Meghan is “made to parade naked… while crowds chant, ‘Shame!’ and throw lumps of excrement at her”.

Harry “clearly just wants to keep his family safe”, wrote Adam, because he “knows where this could all end”.

Diana ‘would be ashamed’

But could Harry be manipulating the media in the same way his mother was accused of?

Diana was a “media mastermind”, said Elle, and an “unabashed spin doctor of her own wounded cause”. She was “hunting for a chance to strike back against her separated husband” and as “she knew the power of media”, she “decided to use it”, in the form of her bombshell Panorama interview in 1995.

The director of the Netflix series “works hard to foreshadow the Sussexes’ experience in Diana”, said The Cut, “framing her largely as a victim of the tabloids”. However, it added, the reality was “more complicated – a symbiotic relationship with the outlets that cemented her superstar status”. Diana was “known to have orchestrated her own leaks” and “sometimes called the paparazzi on herself”.

Sky News Australia host Rita Panahi said that Diana would have been “appalled” by the Netflix series and the Daily Mail’s Dan Wootton said Harry’s mother would be “ashamed of her youngest”.

There is also speculation that there is intense disapproval from Harry’s older brother. The Prince of Wales is said to be “livid” at his brother’s “antagonistic” use of Diana’s Panorama footage in the Netflix series, Vanity Fair’s Katie Nicholl told OK! magazine.

“William has campaigned for that footage to never be screened again,” said Nicholl, “so for it to be used in his brother’s own reality TV show will be very frustrating for William.”

In recent days, the news has been “awash with stories of suffering and struggle”, said Michael Deacon in The Daily Telegraph. Children going to school hungry. Nurses using food banks. Pensioners deciding between heating and eating. Between all this, we have been seeing trailers for a Netflix documentary in which two multimillionaires who live in a mansion in California sob about how hard their lives are.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have been complaining about their lot for three years. Last week, the first tranche of their six-part series – part of a $100m deal they struck with Netflix – finally aired, and Deacon wondered: did this couple, who “pride themselves above all else on their empathy and compassion”, pause to consider how their pity party might appear to the eight billion or so people in the world who are less fortunate than they are?

‘Hollow selfmythologising’

“‘What are we doing?’ the couple wonder more than once, as they reflect on their actions in this fever dream of self-aggrandisement,” said Jessie Thompson in The Independent. Harry and Meghan say they want to tell their story – a story they felt unable to tell before, but which they now “seem to tell professionally, for a living”.

The first three episodes, released last week, focus on their early lives and courtship. It is mainly anodyne stuff: a “mix of melodramatically soundtracked, soft-focused photo montages, doeeyed soppiness and hollow selfmythologising”, plus a “relentless amount of intimate material”. This is a couple who seem to have a “pathological need” to document their lives. They have video diaries, and a photo for every moment; we are even treated to a clip of Meghan whispering down the phone to a friend, as Harry prepares to propose.

They have every right to reveal details of their lives on their terms, but it’s too much: we get it, you are a lovely couple, perfectly in love. Or, as Harry tells us, in one of several scenes that feel curiously unnatural, “This is a great love story, and the craziest thing is, I think it is just getting started.”

Those hoping for bombshells will be disappointed, said Alexander Larman in The Spectator. The first part of this “interminable” documentary goes over wearily familiar ground, as it contrasts life in stuffy Britain (largely seen in monochrome) with sunny California.

There are a few sideswipes at Harry’s family. King Charles may have been hurt by his son’s assertion that he was “brought up” in Africa. The Prince and Princess of Wales may have been irked by Harry’s claim that whereas he married for love, other royals have had to marry women who “fit the mould”. But there is no “full-frontal assault” on the family. Instead, we get an “earnest history lesson” (courtesy of David Olusoga, who offers context on racial issues), “self-consciously goofy romantic comedy, and a salutary reminder of how awful the British press is”.

‘Heroes of social justice’

If Harry seethes with rage, you can hardly blame him, said Ayesha Hazarika in The i newspaper. This is a man who spent his childhood in the glare of publicity; who was paraded for the cameras days after his mother had been killed fleeing the paparazzi. Of course he wanted to protect Meghan from the misery inflicted on Diana and other women who have married into the institution – especially when, on top of the usual meanspirited scrutiny, she had to contend with racism, unconscious and otherwise, including a torrent of filth online.

And when Harry talks about royal briefing wars, planted stories and “dirty tricks”, he is not wrong, said Rob Lownie on UnHerd. There is good evidence that other royal households were briefing against him and Meghan.

Sections of the right-wing press feasted on it, said Jim Waterson in The Guardian, because they found that their readers relished stories about the Sussexes. Now the couple’s documentary is driving more traffic to the very news outlets they condemn.

The liberal left went the other way, and decided the couple were “heroes of social justice”, said Ian Dunt in The i newspaper, which is equally absurd. Some of what they say makes no sense. For instance, Meghan claims she had no idea that she’d have to curtsey to the Queen (she says she thought it was a “joke”, then mocks the procedure). What kind of situation did she think she was entering when she opted to marry a prince?

She says she was given no preparation for royal life, said Jennie Bond in the Daily Mirror. If that is true (and royal insiders say it is not), Harry is partly to blame. He should have taken more time to explain to her, for instance, that in the Firm, there is a hierarchy – and that she’d have to conform to it, however stultifying that might be.

Harry was struggling with it himself, said Tanya Gold on UnHerd; and in Meghan, he found someone strong enough to take him away. But he is only half free, because he is still a prince, “with all the expectations” of a prince, and still relying on the “attention without merit” that his royal status bestows. He may have moved to California, but he has not travelled all that far.

The final three episodes of Netflix's highly anticipated documentary about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, Harry & Meghan, were released Dec. 15. Here are the biggest revelations from the series:

Harry and Meghan met over Instagram

Much of the first episode of Harry & Meghan focuses on the start of their relationship, and it reveals they met thanks to Instagram.

"I was scrolling through my feed and someone who was a friend had this video of the two of them, like a Snapchat [of Meghan] with [a] doggy ears [filter]," Harry explains. "That was the first thing. I was like, 'Who is that?'"

The friend, Meghan says, emailed her saying that a "friend of mine asked about you" and "maybe you'd like to meet him." Meghan then asked if she could see Harry's Instagram feed.

"So that's the thing," Meghan says. "When people say, 'Did you Google him?' No, but that's your homework. You're like, 'Hm, look, let me see what they're about in their feed. Not what someone else says about them, but what they are putting out about themselves.'"

Harry was late for their first date

Harry and Meghan say they got each other's numbers and were "constantly in touch" until they met in London and got drinks while she was there for Wimbledon.

"You were late!" Meghan tells Harry. "And I couldn't understand why he would be late."

Harry was apparently texting Meghan the whole time apologizing that he was stuck in traffic, but Meghan initially wasn't sure if he was making her wait intentionally. But then, "when I walked in a hot, sweaty, red ball of mess, she was like, 'Oh, that's not what you are,'" Harry adds, noting he was "panicking" and "freaking out."

Meghan's mom speaks out

The Netflix documentary reveals the first ever on-camera interview with Meghan's mother, Doria Ragland, who provides commentary throughout the second and third episodes.

"The last five years has been challenging," Ragland says. "I'm ready to have my voice heard."

Ragland speaks out about her ex-husband, Thomas Markle, staging photos to sell to the paparazzi in 2018, saying she was "stunned" he would "become part of this circus."

Ragland also says she regrets not having a "real conversation" with Meghan when she was growing up about "how the world sees you" because she is mixed race, and Meghan says that before she came to the U.K., "most people didn't treat me like a Black woman." But Ragland recalls telling Meghan, after her relationship with Harry became public, "This is about race. … You may not want to hear it, but this is what's coming down the pike."

Ragland describes Meghan as a "very empathic child," who once told her she felt like her "older, controlling sister" rather than her mother.

Meghan claims paparazzi paid neighbors to set up a live stream in her backyard

A major focus of the first three episodes of Meghan & Harry is the intrusive nature of the paparazzi in the couple's lives. At one point, Meghan describes how it "felt like all of the U.K. media descended upon Toronto" after her relationship with Harry was revealed, and her house was "surrounded" by "men sitting in their cars all the time" waiting for her.

Meghan claims "they had paid certain neighbors to put a live stream camera into my backyard," though she doesn't provide details.

Meghan also recalls going to the police in Toronto and saying that "if any other woman" told them she has "six grown men who are sleeping in their cars around my house and following me everywhere," this would be called "stalking." But she claims police told her, "Yes, but there's really nothing we can do because of who you're dating."

Meghan's first meeting with William and Kate

Meghan describes a jarring first meeting with Prince William and Kate Middleton in the second episode of the Netflix series.

They came over for dinner, Meghan recounts, and "I was in ripped jeans and I was barefoot." She recalls going in for a hug because "I'm a hugger," only to realize "that is really jarring for a lot of Brits."

"I started to understand very quickly that the formality on the outside carried through on the inside," she says, noting this was "surprising to me."

Royals allegedly thought the relationship wouldn't last

Harry says that while the royal family was "incredibly impressed" when they met Meghan, they also thought the relationship was fleeting.

"The fact that I was dating an American actress was probably what clouded their judgment more than anything else at the beginning," Harry says. "'Oh, she's an American actress. This won't last.'"

Meghan chimes in that "funnily enough," the "actress thing was the biggest problem" because it was "easy for them" to "typecast" her based on their perceptions of Hollywood.

Meghan dishes on engagement interview

When asked about their 2017 BBC interview about their engagement, Meghan immediately shoots back, "Orchestrated reality show, yep."

It "was rehearsed," she continues, including in the sense that she was told ahead of time about how "there'll be a moment when they'll want to see the ring, so show the ring." But until now, she claims, "We weren't allowed to tell our story because they didn't want [us to]."

Harry takes aim at 'royal experts'

Harry lays into British tabloids all throughout the Netflix documentary, but perhaps his most pointed comments come in the third episode. Meghan asks if "people can just call themselves royal experts" in the media, and Harry opines that "anyone can be a royal expert," a title that's intended to "lend legitimacy" to news articles.

"That press pack of royal correspondents is essentially just an extended PR arm of the royal family," he alleges. "So it's been an agreement that's been there for over 30 years."

Meghan speaks out against her estranged sister

In the third episode, Meghan discusses her relationship with her estranged half-sister Samantha Markle, who slammed her in the tabloids and wrote a tell-all book titled The Diary of Princess Pushy's Sister Part 1.

Calling Samantha "my half-sister who I hadn't seen for over a decade, and that was only for a day-and-a-half," Meghan says, "I don't know [her] middle name. I don't know [her] birthday." She also says she and Samantha never had a "fallout" because "we didn't have a closeness to be able to have that."

Meghan was given 'painful' guidance to not invite niece to her wedding

Meghan did, however, develop a close relationship with Samantha's daughter, Ashleigh. She appears in the Harry & Meghan documentary, and Meghan says they "hit it off," while Ashleigh describes Meghan as a sister and best friend. Ashleigh suggests there was "resentment" toward Meghan on her mother's part.

But in the third episode, Ashleigh notes that communication between her and Meghan eventually became "less and less frequent," and Meghan claims she was given "guidance" not to invite Ashleigh to the royal wedding because "how do we explain that this half-sister isn't invited to the wedding but that the half-sister's daughter is?"

Meghan calls this "painful," while Ashleigh says she was "hurt" but "understood where it was coming from." But Ashleigh chokes up saying it's "hard" that because of her mother, this "important" relationship with Meghan was "taken away."

Harry addresses his Nazi uniform

While discussing his own unconscious biases when it comes to race, Harry addresses wearing a Nazi uniform to a party in 2005, when he was 20.

"It was one of the biggest mistakes of my life," he says. "I felt so ashamed afterwards. All I wanted to do was make it right." He continues that while he could have ignored the controversy and "made the same mistakes over and over again in my life," he instead "learned from that."

Harry says Meghan 'doesn't have a father' anymore

The end of the third episode delves into Meghan's falling out with her father, Thomas Markle, and allegations that he staged photos to sell to the paparazzi. (He later admitted this was true.)

Meghan says she confronted her father about this, and though he denied the claims, she didn't believe him. Later, TMZ reported that Thomas wouldn't be attending Harry and Meghan's wedding after suffering a heart attack, and Meghan says she found this out through the media. While trying to get in touch with her father, Meghan says she suspected his phone was "compromised" after getting "really weird" texts that didn't seem to be written by him. "That's not my dad," she recalls thinking.

Ultimately, Harry concludes that Meghan "had a father before this, and now she doesn't have a father," and he blames himself. "If Meg wasn't with me, then her dad would still be her dad."

Harry suggests royals were upset over Meghan 'stealing the limelight'

The documentary posits that the large amount of media attention Meghan received after joining the royal family created issues at Buckingham Palace. After a trip to Australia, "[Harry and Meghan] were so popular with the public, the internals at the palace were incredibly threatened by that," Meghan's friend Lucy Fraser claims.

Harry also suggests it upset his family that Meghan began "stealing the limelight" and "doing the job better" than people who were "born to do this." As an example, he recalled an instance where the entire royal family attended an event, but The Telegraph's front page was only about Meghan.

"You've been led to believe that the only way your charities can succeed, and the only way that your reputation can be grown or improved, is if you're on the front page of those newspapers," he says.

Harry 'hates' himself over how he dealt with Meghan's suicidal thoughts

The documentary also expands on Meghan's previous revelation that she had suicidal thoughts after joining the royal family. "It was like, all of this will stop if I'm not here," she says.

Meghan's mother, Doria Ragland, confirms Meghan told her that she "wanted to take her own life," while Harry admits he didn't "deal with" this "particularly well."

"I dealt with it as institutional Harry, as opposed to husband Harry," he says. "And what took over my feelings was my royal role. I had been trained to worry more about, 'What are people going to think if we don't go to this event, we're going to be late.' Looking back on it now, I hate myself for it."

Harry suggests William's communications office worked against his

The second part of the documentary puts a target on Prince William's back pretty quickly. In the fourth episode, Harry suggests William's office would work against his, including by planting stories about him and Meghan.

"If the comms team wants to be able to remove a negative story about their principle, they will trade and give you something about someone else's principle," he alleges. "So the offices end up working against each other."

Harry implies he's specifically referring to William's office, going on to say he and his brother "both saw what happened in our dad's office and we made an agreement that we would never let that happen to our office," noting, "I would far rather get destroyed in the press than play along with this game or this business of trading."

But Harry suggests William violated this agreement. "To see my brother's office copy the very same thing that we promised the two of us would never, ever do, that was heartbreaking," he says.

Harry alleges the palace leaked other stories about him and Meghan

Harry also alleges other instances where the palace allegedly leaked stories about him and Meghan. For one, he describes a plan for them to move to South Africa, noting the palace signed off on this, and the offices of his father, brother, and grandmother knew about it. "No one else knew," but it was leaked, so the plan had to be "scrapped," Harry says.

Harry says he then began speaking to his father about the possibility of moving to Canada, and Charles asked him to put that in writing. Harry says he was reluctant given the previous leak, but he did so, sending his father emails about it; one of the emails allegedly said that he and Meghan would be "willing to relinquish our Sussex titles." Soon, though, all of this leaked again.

"It became clear that the institution leaked the fact that we were going to be moving back to Canada, and the key piece of that story that made me aware that the contents of the letter between me and my father had been leaked was that we were willing to relinquish our Sussex titles," Harry says. "That was the giveaway."

Their decision to step back from the royal family came not long after that, Harry says.

Attorney Jenny Afia also alleges, "I've certainly seen evidence that there was negative briefing from the palace against Harry and Meghan to suit other people's agendas."

Harry was allegedly blocked from seeing the queen

While discussing plans to move away from the U.K., Harry describes trying to meet with the queen before allegedly being blocked from doing so, with the palace telling him she was busy after she told him she was free.

"I rang her and I said, 'I'm now told that you're busy,'" Harry recalls. "She goes, 'Yes, I didn't know that I'm busy. I've been told that I'm busy. I've actually been told that I'm busy all week.' I was like, 'Wow.'"

Harry alleges the royals planned 2020 meeting around not inviting Meghan

After the 2020 announcement that Harry and Meghan planned to step back from the royal family, a meeting of the royal family was held at Sandringham to discuss the situation. Harry suggests this meeting was planned around making sure Meghan, who had left for Canada, wouldn't be there.

"Imagine a conversation, a roundtable discussion, about the future of your life, when the stakes are this high, and you as the mom and the wife and the target in many regards aren't invited to have a seat at the table."

Harry adds, "It was clear to me that they planned it so that [Meghan wasn't] in the room."

Harry alleges William screamed and shouted at him

But Harry did attend this Sandringham summit, during which he alleges his brother berated him. "It was terrifying to have my brother scream and shout at me and my father say things that just simply weren't true," he claims, adding that the queen "quietly" sat there to "take it all in."

Harry also says he was given "five options" during this meeting ranging from being "all in" or "all out" of the royal family. He chose option three, which would involve being "half in" and "half out" by having their own jobs but continuing to work to support the queen. But he says it soon became clear this was "not up for discussion or debate."

Harry claims the palace put out a statement with his name on it without permission

After that Sandringham meeting, a joint statement was put out in Harry and William's names denying a story that William bullied Harry out of the family. But even though Harry's name was attached to this statement, he claims it was released without his approval or knowledge.

"I couldn't believe it," Harry says. "No one had asked me permission to put my name to a statement like that. ... Within four hours, they were happy to lie to protect my brother, and yet for three years, they were never willing to tell the truth to protect us."

It was at this point that Harry says it became clear there was "no other option," and he told Meghan, "We need to get out of here."

Harry says Meghan 'never asked' to leave the royal family

Harry slams the British press for blaming Meghan for their royal exit, noting, "In fact, it was my decision. She never asked to leave."

Harry admits reuniting with his family 'felt cold'

Harry and Meghan discuss their last official engagement as working royals in 2020, when they attended a Commonwealth Day ceremony. "The first time that we saw the other members of the family was in public at Westminster Abbey," Meghan says.

Harry recalls they were "nervous" seeing the family, which felt like "living through a soap opera," and he admits, "I felt really distant from the rest of my family … It looked cold, but it also felt cold."

Harry blames British tabloid for Meghan's miscarriage

In the documentary's final episode, Harry directly blames the Mail on Sunday for Meghan suffering a miscarriage in 2020. Meghan and Harry were battling publisher Associated Newspapers at the time, following the Mail on Sunday publishing portions of a private letter Meghan wrote to her estranged father.

"I believe my wife suffered a miscarriage because of what the Mail did," Harry says. "I watched the whole thing. Now, do we absolutely know that the miscarriage was caused by that? Of course we don't. But bearing in mind the stress that that caused, the lack of sleep, and the timing of the pregnancy, how many weeks in she was, I can say from what I saw, that miscarriage was created by what they were trying to do to her."

William texted Harry after the Oprah interview — and Beyoncé texted Meghan

The aftermath of Harry and Meghan's bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey is explored in the documentary, with Meghan noting she expected the "biggest takeaway" would be her opening up about her suicidal thoughts rather than allegations of racism in the royal family.

Sometime after the interivew airs, we see Harry show Meghan his phone, and she notes he "just got a text from his brother," though Harry doesn't share what William wrote with viewers.

Meghan, meanwhile, reveals she received a text from Beyoncé after the interview aired telling her she "admires and respects my bravery" and believes she was "selected to break generational curses that need to be healed."

William was accused of authorizing former aide's witness statement

The final section of the documentary focuses heavily on Meghan and Harry's lawsuit against Associated Newspapers. At one point, they voice frustration over the role of Jason Knauf, a former adviser to Prince William. In 2021, Knauf gave a witness statement and provided texts suggesting Meghan wrote the letter to her father at the center of the lawsuit with the "understanding that it could be leaked." The documentary alleges William himself authorized Knauf to do this.

"There's just no way he could have done that without the authority of his bosses," attorney Jenny Afia claims.

We see Meghan and Harry reacting to this, with Meghan clearly frustrated. "It's your brother, I'm not going to say anything about your brother, but it's so obvious," Meghan tells Harry. Harry also says it's "obvious that they'll try and cover it up," adding that this is "why I'm now living in a different country."

In a statement to Netflix, a representative for Knauf called Harry and Meghan's allegations "entirely false," adding he was "asked to provide evidence by both The Duchess of Sussex and Associated Newspapers." Meghan's attorney disputed this, claiming he "was not asked to provide a witness statement by The Duchess or her team."

Update Dec. 15: This piece has been updated to include details pertaining to the second part of the documentary.

The first three episodes of Netflix documentary Harry & Meghan may only have aired last week, but it has already created waves on both sides of the Atlantic and beyond.

While the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are no strangers to the media spotlight, the release of the highly anticipated series has brought global attention to the woman behind it: Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker Liz Garbus.

Initially hesitant to take on the task of documenting the couple’s break from the royal family, the project is in fact “something of a culmination of the issues Garbus has chronicled for the past two decades”, said The New York Times.

What is her background?

Born in New York in 1970, Garbus’s father Martin was a prominent civil rights attorney hailed by The Guardian in 1992 as “one of the world’s finest trial lawyers”. His clients included Nelson Mandela, actors Al Pacino, Marilyn Monroe, Robert Redford and Sean Connery, First Lady Nancy Reagan and Vietnam-era whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. Her mother Ruth was a writer, therapist and social worker.

After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in history and semiotics from Brown University, Garbus interned at Harvey Weinstein’s Miramax production company. It was there she met fellow documentary maker Jonathan Stack, with whom she made her directorial debut in 1998 with a documentary called The Farm: Angola, USA, which focused on America’s most notorious and largest maximum-security prison, Louisiana State Penitentiary.

The film won Garbus the first of her two Oscar nominations, followed in 2016 for What Happened, Miss Simone?, about the life of troubled jazz singer Nina Simone.

Over her 25-year career Garbus has become known for her “critically acclaimed exposés and documenting the stories of survivors”, said Hello magazine. She has also been hailed for her handling of “complicated stories, ranging from systemic injustices to the lives of troubled public figures”, CNN added.

Whether it’s “social justice seen through the lens of the prison system” – The Farm: Angola, USA and Girlhood – or “uncovering the troubled personal stories” of famous yet enigmatic figures – Bobby Fischer, Marilyn Monroe and Nina Simone – mental health and righting systemic wrongs are “topics she returns to time and again”, said The New York Times.

In 2019, Garbus and her husband, producer Dan Cogan who previously ran documentary finance company Impact Partners which won an Oscar for Icarus, formed their own production company, Story Syndicate. The couple have a daughter, Amelia, and a son, Theodore.

Why did she want to direct Harry & Meghan?

With Meghan Markle “already a fan long before the two were considering working together”, she has been described by the London Evening Standard as a “natural choice” for the Netflix documentary “for many reasons”. However, Garbus was not in fact originally slated to direct the series.

According to Page Six, the Duke and Duchess initially turned to Garrett Bradley, director of Netflix’s documentary miniseries about tennis star Naomi Osaka. But they “reportedly clashed over the direction of the show” with both sides disagreeing on the tone of the series, said the Daily Mail.

It meant the Sussex’s own production company, Archewell Productions, captured as much footage as they could before Garbus was hired. Even then it was “not all smooth sailing” for Netflix bosses and Garbus who also “clashed” with Meghan and Harry over the “content of the series, which the couple wanted to heavily edit”, Page Six claimed.

At first Garbus was “sceptical”, said The New York Times. Far from an avid royal watcher, she knew the broad strokes of the decision by the couple to leave the British royal family and had seen their interview with Oprah Winfrey, but she assumed that the “stiff upper lip emblematic of elite British society would not make for a compelling documentary – too guarded, too interested in hagiography, too much of an all-around royal pain”, said the paper. “Then she saw the footage.”

“It’s very personal and raw and powerful, and it made me appreciate the incredible weight that went into their decision,” she said. “It also affirmed the choice I had made about wanting to unravel how this historic break came to be.”

Lancaster University media lecturer Laura Clancy on what the first episodes of Harry & Meghan reveal about Meghan Markle’s reputation within The Firm

As an expert in the contemporary British monarchy, I watched the first three episodes of The Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s new Netflix docuseries, Harry & Meghan, closely.

What came across most was how Markle’s gender, race and class intersected in her treatment both by the media and by “the Firm” (an unofficial nickname for the British monarchy and its staff that describes the institution as a business) itself.

As with their 2021 Oprah interview, this documentary is a forum for the couple to account for their treatment by the Firm. These kinds of royal confessionals risk damaging the monarchy, as they cast a light “behind the scenes” of an institution which relies on magic and majesty to maintain its image.

Patriarchy and women’s bodies

Princess Diana’s traumas in the royal family have been well covered over the decades, including by the Panorama documentary she used to tell her own story in 1995. Like Markle, Diana Spencer spoke about her mental health and a lack of support from the Firm. Harry & Meghan also makes comparisons between Spencer and Markle, claiming that both women were hounded by the paparazzi throughout their royal lives.

Markle talks about “men sitting in cars all the time” outside her house, waiting for her to leave. In any other situation, she says, this would amount to stalking. As Markle mentions, gender matters here. Celebrities like Britney Spears have spoken out about the unique pressures women face from tabloid intrusion.

The economy surrounding these women encompasses multiple industries, from cosmetic surgery to fashion brands, who benefit from paparazzi exploitation. Britney Spears’ body became an economy in itself as paparazzi pictures of her were worth so much money.

For royal women, this takes on a new imperative. The monarchy is reliant on women’s bodies for its reproduction – literally, the reproduction of heirs. Royal women’s bodies are fetishised as reproductive of the nation, as they birth the next “symbol” of Britishness. This also accounts for the hidden meaning behind those questions from within the royal family about the colour of Archie’s skin – they are asking how “British” (or rather, how white) her baby might look.

It is not just about clothing and branding, but about how royal women’s bodies take on meaning that connects femininity and the nation. This is a patriarchal institution that uses women’s bodies for its own ends.

Respectability politics

As the documentary shows, for Markle this is not just about gender. Race and class come to play a part in the intersectional pressures she was placed under. Headlines like the Daily Mail’s “(Almost) Straight Outta Compton” are discussed as evidence of the racist coverage of the early days of the couple’s relationship.

Markle also mentions the Firm’s discomfort with her acting career. She explains that there are assumptions made about Hollywood and the people who work in it. Acting is seen as too déclassé a profession to marry into the royal family, despite the fact that the Firm operates like a celebrity industry in and of itself.

Around the time of their wedding, tabloids were also representing Markle’s father’s (Thomas Markle) side of the family in ways reminiscent of “white trash” discourses. “White trash” is an American slur (equivalent to the UK’s “chav”) for an abject working class figure.

The Daily Mail reported on Markle’s aunt and cousin spending the royal wedding wearing cardboard browns in a Burger King, a fast food chain associated with working-class stereotypes. Their meal was positioned in contrast to the upper class and aspirational one taking place at the same time in Windsor.

Black studies scholars like Brittney Cooper have referred to condemnation of the actions of people of colour as “respectability politics”. Inclusion into typically white spaces is undertaken through observing white, middle class norms, including being “mainstream, articulate, and clean cut, black but not too black, friendly, upbeat, and accommodating”.

Of course, the monarchy is perhaps the pinnacle of “respectable”: an institution enshrined as the peak of British society. The racism which has plagued Markle, and the fact she was never allowed to achieve racial uplift, demonstrates how whiteness, gender and upper classness are used to police the boundaries of respectability.

Femininity and the nation

Women in the royal family are always subject to more pervasive attention than the men. Princess Diana and Kate Middleton have received intense scrutiny, from what they say and wear to speculation about what’s going on in their wombs.

As Harry points out in the documentary, though, Markle’s situation was unique. Her story tells us something fundamental about the British monarchy’s relationship to patriarchy and whiteness, and how the two are inseparable.

And as media scholar Raka Shome writes in her book, Diana and Beyond, white femininity “is always a doing and not a being. It is always pushed and pulled, routed and rerouted to script national desires.”

The hounding of Markle is one site of this push and pull. The scripts of white femininity, and therefore of nation, were fought and continue to be fought, over representations of her.

Laura Clancy, lecturer in media, Lancaster University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's Netflix documentary hasn't premiered yet, but even its brief trailers have already generated controversy.

The trailers for Netflix's highly anticipated documentary about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are facing criticism for the use of stock footage that critics have labeled misleading, BuzzFeed News and BBC report.

Harry & Meghan's trailers tease a series that will delve into Prince Harry's criticism of the British press' treatment of his wife, and the royals are depicted as being relentlessly hounded by the media. "I didn't want history to repeat itself," Harry says in one trailer, referring to the death of his mother, Princess Diana. But critics noticed the teasers make use of completely unrelated footage of paparazzi who were not, in fact, attempting to take photos of Harry and Megan.

One of the trailers includes a shot of photographers implied to be taking pictures of Harry and Meghan, when in reality, this reportedly appears to be from a 2011 Harry Potter premiere. The full trailer also cuts between a shot of Harry and Meghan and a shot of paparazzi reportedly taken from the sentencing hearing of model Katie Price. Another shot shows paparazzi swarming a car, but Michael Cohen is getting into the vehicle, not Harry and Meghan.

Additionally, Evening Standard editor Robert Jobson took issue with a shot of a photographer taking pictures of Harry, Meghan, and their son Archie from above. While Jobson argued it suggested an "intrusion by the press," he said it "was taken from [an] accredited pool," adding, "Only 3 people were in the accredited position. [Harry and Meghan] agreed [to] the position."

It wasn't immediately clear if the contentious shots are present in the documentary itself or were only used for marketing. The first volume of Harry & Meghan will hit Netflix on Dec. 8.

A trailer for the new Netflix documentary Harry & Meghan has added a new twist to the royal saga between Princes Harry and William.

The series, which comprises six episodes and is rated 15, will tell the inside story of why the couple decided to step down from royal duties. Although the show has no official release date, the teaser trailer itself revealed a series of previously unseen photographs as well as footage of Meghan wiping away tears.

‘Declaration of war’

The trailer’s release “could hardly have been timed for more explosive impact”, said Louis Chilton in The Independent. The appetiser for the “unprecedented new documentary” comes “just a day after the late Queen’s lady-in-waiting, Lady Susan Hussey, resigned from the palace over a racism scandal”.

And it was only last year that the Duchess of Sussex told Oprah Winfrey in a two-hour TV interview that when she was pregnant with her first child Archie there had been “concerns and conversations” among unnamed members of the royal family “about how dark his skin might be when he was born”.

Dan Wootton, writing for Mail Online, described the 59-second “vile” Netflix trailer as a declaration of “all out war on the British Royal Family”.

Wootton also focused on the timing of the release, but instead claimed it was “specifically designed to derail William and Kate’s already troubled US tour”, the Prince and Princess of Wales having arrived in Boston on Wednesday for a three-day trip centred around William’s Earthshot Prize climate charity.

“It’s confirmation that, despite the hopes of a grieving King Charles, the relationship with his youngest son and daughter-in-law is now forever smashed,” Wootton continued. He added that “there’s no going back after this full-throttled attack on the British monarchy” and called on the King to “go nuclear too by stripping his son and his wife of their royal titles”.

Writing in The Times, Hilary Rose agreed with Wootton, sarcastically declaring the timing of the trailer release a “happy, scene-stealing coincidence”. Rose believes the Sussexes, while their true motivation is anyone’s guess, are attempting to “suck the oxygen out of every single thing the Waleses do between now and kingdom come”. She even admitted to feeling sorry for William and Kate despite their “lives of unimaginable wealth and privilege” for what William’s brother and his Hollywood wife are putting them through.

‘Winning the battle but losing the war’

“What were you both thinking?!” asked Paul Baldwin of the Sussexes in the Daily Express. Baldwin said that before the trailer’s release and in light of the Lady Hussey racism scandal, he had started to think that maybe Harry and Meghan “really were victims”. However, his sympathies have since waned with the release of what he described as a “toe-curling, truly bizarre promo-video”.

In the Daily Mail, Maureen Callahan concluded that while “Harry and Meghan are winning the battle” they are certainly “going to lose this war”. Callahan added that “it’s as if Harry and Meghan have nothing better to do than go through the royal schedule and figure out ways to screw the family over”.

In her conclusion, Callahan asserted that ultimately “these two have nothing new to say”. The couple will not win the attrition war they’re fighting with the royal family because “they exist only in opposition to the royals. They have nothing to offer.”

While criticism of the Sussexes was plentiful across the mainstream media, the New York Post did highlight some support for Harry and Meghan, citing a tweet that argued “imagine being right that staff in the royal household are racist but no-one believed you”, in reference to the widely criticised comments from Lady Hussey.

A black British charity founder has said being “interrogated” about where she was “really” from during a royal reception was a form of “abuse”.

The late Queen’s lady-in-waiting, Lady Susan Hussey, has resigned amid uproar over her questions to Ngozi Fulani during a domestic abuse charity event at Buckingham Palace on Tuesday.

Fulani told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that “it was like an interrogation”, and asked “how this can happen in a space that's supposed to protect women against all kinds of violence”.

“Although it’s not physical violence, it is an abuse,” added Fulani, boss of the Sistah Space charity.

Hussey’s “racist remarks” will “take an already bruised palace two steps back”, said Caroline Davies in The Guardian. “This is already an acutely sensitive time for the House of Windsor,” wrote Davies, amid reports that the “long-awaited” Netflix documentary on the Duke and Duchess of Sussex will air next week.

As a palace aide, 83-year-old Hussey – who is a godmother to Prince William – was said to have been tasked with helping Meghan Markle “settle into royal life prior to and after her wedding to Prince Harry”, said The Independent. In his book Revenge: Meghan, Harry And The War Between The Windsors, released in July, author Tom Bower claimed that Hussey had predicted that the marriage would “all end in tears”.

Following Hussey’s resignation, a former close aide to Queen Elizabeth reportedly accused the Palace of having acted with “indecent haste” in announcing her departure. Hussey “has been thrown under a bus” as part of a “massive overreaction”, the unnamed source told the Daily Mail’s Richard Kay.

Critics who view the royal household as an “irredeemable hotbed of bigotry” will cite Hussey’s comments as evidence, said a leader in The Sun. But the Palace’s “rapid and robust response” is “more revealing about whether such archaic attitudes are tolerated there”, added the paper. And “they plainly are not”.

Prince Harry has accused his brother of knocking him to the floor, according to a leaked extract of his memoir published by The Guardian.

Days before the Duke of Sussex’s highly anticipated autobiography, Spare, was due to hit the shelves, the newspaper obtained a copy and broke one of its “most shocking stories”, said Vanity Fair.

Harry allegedly writes about a confrontation in 2019 at Nottingham Cottage in the grounds of Kensington Palace, sparked by Prince William calling Meghan Markle “difficult”, “rude” and “abrasive”.

In the copy seen by the newspaper, Harry claims he told William he was “parroting the press narrative” about his wife. William “grabbed me by the collar, ripping my necklace, and… knocked me to the floor”, he writes in what the paper calls an “extraordinary scene” that is “likely to spark a serious furore for the British royal family”.

What else do we know about the book?

Publisher Penguin Random House has reportedly spared no expense to prevent leaks of the memoir, with security measures compared “to the release of the Harry Potter series” when “millions” of pounds were spent to ensure no details were revealed before publication day, said The Times.

But that has done little to prevent national newspapers gathering details from insiders. One told The Sun the book would reveal “Harry’s bitterness and feelings of unfairness that by the nature of hierarchy and birthright that he always played second fiddle to older William”.

Another told The Sunday Times that the book will likely be “worse” for the royal family than they are expecting, adding that even Kate Middleton “gets a bit of a broadside”.

“There are these minute details, and a description of the fight between the brothers. I personally can’t see how Harry and William will be able to reconcile after this,” added the source.

And today Spanish copies of the book mistakenly went on sale, said Sky News. The broadcaster, which has also obtained a copy of the book, said Prince Harry calls William his “beloved brother and arch-nemesis”. He admits he took cocaine as a teenager, and that he had visited a woman with “powers” in a bid to contact his late mother, Diana.

The broadcaster says Harry and William asked King Charles not to marry Camilla after their mother died. “Willy and I promised our father that we would welcome Camilla to the family,” writes the prince. “The only thing we asked for in return was that he didn’t marry her.”

It is not just the British media. Page Six reported that Harry will put “some of the blame for his Nazi uniform scandal” on his brother and sister-in-law, claiming they “‘howled with laughter’ when they saw him dressed up for the 2005 party”.

What about the TV interviews?

Prince Harry has taken part in two television interviews ahead of the book’s release, with US TV heavyweight Anderson Cooper and ITV’s Tom Bradby.

The pre-recorded interviews, thought to have been filmed at his home in California, are set to be broadcast on Sunday 8 January, two days before the slated release of his memoir on 10 January.

In his interview with Bradby, the prince speaks of his desire to reconnect with his father and brother. “I would like to get my father back, I would like to have my brother back… they’ve shown absolutely no willingness to reconcile. It never needed to be this way,” he says.

Harry’s interview with Cooper, set to air on CBS, will also reveal how Harry felt he and Meghan were “betrayed” by the royal family, claiming that there were “briefings and leakings and planting of stories against me and my wife”. He adds that the royal family’s motto of “never complain, never explain” is just that – a motto – as he suggests Buckingham Palace was responsible for leaking damaging stories to the press.

Why does Harry want to publish his story?

In a statement in July 2021 announcing the planned memoir, Harry said he would be writing “not as the prince I was born, but as the man I have become”.

Random House said the book offers “full insights, revelation, self-examination, and hard-won wisdom about the eternal power of love over grief” with “raw, unflinching honesty”.

Readers will be taken back “to one of the most searing images of the twentieth century: two young boys, two princes, walking behind their mother’s coffin as the world watched in sorrow – and horror”, the publishers said.

It’s thought that the book will go on to detail the prince’s childhood, his military service in Afghanistan, and his family life, according to Hello!.

The choice of title is “presumably a nod to the phrase that monarchies need an ‘heir and a spare’”, said the BBC’s Sean Coughlan. Harry “will tell his version of his life in that ambiguous territory of the ‘spare’”, he continued – being put under “the spotlight from birth” but “with no defined role”, said Vogue.

What will it mean for the royal family?

“The project has been shrouded in rumors, delays and secrecy,” said The New York Times. But friends of the ghostwriter told the Mail on Sunday “they have no doubt that Harry’s memoir will dig deep and contain bombshells”.

It’s “expected to take aim at members of the royal family, as well as the institution [of the monarchy] as a whole”, said The Telegraph. Harry’s family have not seen the manuscript, or been given an opportunity to address claims made by the book through their lawyers, the newspaper continued.

Publishing sources told The New York Times that the prince “has gotten cold feet about the memoir’s contents at various points”.

The Mail on Sunday reported that the duke pushed for “significant” last-minute alterations to avoid a public backlash following the death of Queen Elizabeth II in September.

A source told The Telegraph that these reports were “overblown”, but “any attacks” that the book makes on members of the royal family “could strike many readers as unseemly”, said The New York Times.

As preparations for King Charles’s coronation get underway, Harry’s relationship with his father and step-mother Camilla “is likely to come under the microscope”, said the Mail on Sunday.

The Duchess of Sussex has released the first episode of her long-awaited podcast series promising to “dissect, explore and subvert the labels that try to hold women back”.

Released exclusively through Spotify, the debut episode of Archetypes with Meghan is titled The Misconception of Ambition and features her chatting with close friend Serena Williams, who recently announced her retirement from tennis. Dr Laura Kray, a leading expert on gender in the workplace, is also a guest, and Prince Harry makes a surprise cameo too.

“You wanna come say hi?” the duchess asks her husband, before adding: “Look who just popped in.” She and Williams then jokingly greet the duke in faux British accents. But while Harry received a warm welcome, critics have been less receptive to the new podcast.

‘Pure, narcissistic gibberish’

The nearly hour-long opening episode focuses on the double standards faced by women, including attitudes towards female ambition.

“I don’t remember ever personally feeling the negative connotation behind the word ambitious until I started dating my now husband,” the duchess says. “Apparently ambition is, uh… a terrible, terrible thing, for a woman that is.”

While that complaint may win her sympathy from some listeners, the British press remain largely unconvinced. The Times’ James Marriott dismissed the “almost entirely preposterous” podcast as a “tastefully soundtracked parade of banalities, absurdities and self-aggrandising Californian platitudes”. The listener’s “overwhelming sense” is one of “futility and irritation”, he added.

Fellow Times columnist Hilary Rose also gave Archetypes the thumbs down. “I’ve listened to 57 minutes and 28 seconds of Meghan Markle’s syrupy California drawl while rocking back and forth and moaning softly under my breath,” she wrote. This podcast is “pure, narcissistic gibberish”, Rose concluded.

Celia Walden was equally as dismissive in The Telegraph. “If the rest of the season is anything like the premiere, what we’re really going to be listening into week after week is Meghan interviewing herself,” she said. Walden added that “every woman has had a girlfriend like Meghan: the one who turns every confidence back to them and hijacks every distressing anecdote with one of their own – only theirs is longer drawn-out, more distressing”.

The Spectator’s Steerpike agreed that Archetypes is nothing more than a vehicle for the duchess to “concentrate on talking about herself”.

“It’s hard to believe that it took 28 people, including eight executive producers, to make the episode,” added the anonymous gossip columnist.

‘Spotify execs will sigh with relief’

Although positive reviews of Archetypes have been few and far between, a personal anecdote by the duchess did “bring me some clarity” about why the Sussexes quit their royal duties and the UK, said The Independent’s Clémence Michallon.

In a brief story that “exemplifies the complete dysfunctionality of life as a royal”, according to Michallon, the Los Angeles-born duchess told how back in 2019, the nursery that son Archie was supposed to be sleeping in caught fire – and revealed that she and Harry were not told until they later returned from an official engagement.

“And of course, as a mother, you go, ‘Oh, my God, what?’ Everyone’s in tears, everyone’s shaken,” she said. “And what do we have to do? Go out and do another official engagement? I said, ‘This doesn’t make any sense.’ … I was like, ‘Can you just tell people what happened?’”

Many listeners may have related to her frustration at being told that a problem which “could easily be solved with a little bit of pragmatism” actually “can’t be for completely amorphous reasons (optics, stiff upper lip, ‘it’s not the way things are done around here’)”, wrote Michallon.

But regardless of whether listeners sympathised, odds are they will return to hear the duchess “air her old grievances”, said Bel Mooney in the Daily Mail. After all, episode one of Archetype provided “the kind of gossipy, headline-making stuff that will make the Spotify execs sigh with relief that their investment” in the Sussexes and their Archewell Audio production company “has delivered”.

Meghan Markle has shared a shocking story about being required to continue with official royal engagements after being "shaken" by a fire in her son's nursery.

The Duchess of Sussex on Tuesday debuted the first episode of her Spotify podcast Archetypes, in which she chats with tennis star Serena Williams. During the conversation, she reveals that her son Archie's nursery caught on fire in 2019 while she and Prince Harry were on their tour of South Africa.

After finishing an engagement, Meghan describes being told "there's been a fire in the baby's room" at the housing unit where they were staying. According to Meghan, their nanny, Lauren, was "supposed to put Archie down for his nap" but decided to get a snack downstairs, bringing the baby with her.

"In that amount of time that she went downstairs, the heater in the nursery caught on fire." Meghan said. "There was no smoke detector. Someone happened to just smell smoke down the hallway, went in, fire extinguished. He was supposed to be sleeping in there."

Meghan recalled that everyone was "in tears" and "shaken" by the incident. But she says that she and Prince Harry had another official engagement scheduled for that day, and they weren't able to cancel it. "Optically, the focus ends up being on how it looks instead of how it feels," she said, adding, "We had to leave our baby."

Archetypes is Meghan's first podcast under a deal with Spotify signed in 2020. She shared the South Africa story during a conversation with Williams about people not "having any sense" of what someone is going through "behind the scenes."

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle were ordered to leave their California home amid devastating floods in the state that killed at least 17 people this week.

Authorities issued an evacuation order on Monday for Montecito, Santa Barbara, with warnings of mudslides. It was lifted on Tuesday, the same day that the Duke of Sussex’s revelatory memoir Spare was released.

Harry was “not believed to be at home at the time” of the order, said LBC, as he travelled to New York for publicity interviews. It is not known whether the “Duchess was with him in New York, or at home with the couple’s two children”.

According to Hello!, Meghan’s mother Doria Ragland lives a “short distance away” and “could be an option for the Sussexes to spend some time” to escape any floods.

Where do Prince Harry and Meghan Markle live?

The royal couple opened up about their Californian living arrangements in their much-talked-about Netflix documentary, Harry & Meghan, released late last year.

From 2017 to 2019, the couple lived in Nottingham Cottage within the grounds of Kensington Palace in London. The 1,324 square feet (123 square metre) property was described by the prince as “really small, on a slight lean with low ceilings”.

The documentary hurled the pair back into the spotlight with revelations about the inner workings of the royal family and further accusations of bullying.

However, the six-part Netflix series was not actually filmed in their own home in California, where they moved to in July 2020, but rather “a nine-minute drive away from where the Duke and Duchess of Sussex live with their children”, reported Marie Claire.

The Mail on Sunday reported that the series’ location, with its “sweeping vistas over the Pacific Ocean, majestic oak ceiling and impeccably designed interior”, is in fact a £27.3m mansion, addressed 888 Lilac Lane, which is currently up for sale down the road from the couple’s own estate in Montecito.

Prince Harry and Meghan officially stepped down from royal duties in 2020 amid what The New York Times described as an “extraordinary retreat”. They took up temporary residence in several cities before finally settling on California.

The Sussexes’ Montecito neighbourhood is “renowned for its secluded hillside estates that promise the utmost privacy”, said Hello! It’s “a full two hours northwest of downtown LA by car, but celebrities have flocked to the area in recent years”, said Dirt.com.

The area’s “laid-back and mostly paparazzi-free atmosphere provides a welcome retreat from the hectic hustle of Hollywood and its surrounding environs”. The celebrity real estate site reported that Ellen DeGeneres, Ariana Grande and Gwyneth Paltrow are also residents of the area.

The home of the Duke and Duchess is situated on a private road and features “a lengthy driveway and large security gates”, said Hello! It’s officially known as the Chateau of Riven Rock.

What’s the property like?

Multimillionaire software boss Terry Cunningham told The Mail on Sunday that he and his wife Randi had originally bought the 5.4 acres of land to build “the house of their dreams” in 1999, with the property completed four years later.

He described it as “a beautiful French country house”, inspired by a holiday the couple had enjoyed in the south of France. As well as being “very private”, he described it as “a wonderful place to have lots of family around”.

According to Hello!, the house has “a grand total of nine bedrooms and 16 bathrooms”, as well as a library, office, spa, gym, games room, cinema, wine cellar and five-car garage. A separate guest house also has two bedrooms and bathrooms.

Cunningham said: “The kitchen is probably one of the coolest rooms in the house. It opens on to the side patio where the pizza oven and outdoor tables are. Living in Montecito, there’s a lot of indoor-outdoor lifestyle, so you easily move from decks to indoors.”

The “Mediterranean-style main house includes a trove of beige and off-white decor”, said Dirt. “Oozing sophistication”, Markle’s office “is an oasis of calm with its natural tones and rustic furniture”, said Hello!, while the living room is “decked out with modern artwork, fresh flowers, candles and organic pottery”.

The garden is “beautifully landscaped” with “tiered rose gardens, olive trees and cypress trees”, said Architectural Digest. There is a “tennis court, a swimming pool, and a chicken coop”, which featured in the couple’s “bombshell” TV interview with Winfrey, broadcast in 2021.

Archie and Lilibet can also enjoy “an adventure playground, a climbing frame, a helter-skelter, and two different climbing walls”, said Hello!. Metro reported that there is a “tea house” and a “children’s cottage” as well.

Who paid for the house?

In 2020, a source told US Weekly that Harry “could’ve asked [Prince] Charles to contribute toward the cost of the house”, but he “chose not to” go to his father, as it would “result in the royals having control over him” and would “mean going backwards”.

The couple “paid out of their own pockets” instead and “have taken out a huge mortgage”, said the source. The estate cost an “unquestionably hefty” $14.65m (£12.12m), said Dirt, and a $9.5m (£7.9m) mortgage was secured to make the purchase.

Omid Scobie, royal correspondent and co-author of Finding Freedom: Harry and Meghan and the Making of a Modern Royal Family, told Entertainment Today that the Sussexes “are extremely liquid when it comes to their assets”.

He added: “Harry brings a lot to the table himself and Meghan lives off residuals from Suits and the many appearances that she’s done in other projects too.” In the tell-all interview with Winfrey in 2021, Harry said money left to him by his late mother, Princess Diana, meant he was able to support himself financially.

US Weekly said the couple were “proud of their purchase” and saw it as “the next step toward their long future together”.

Will they stay there?

Reports first emerged in January last year that the Sussexes were thinking of selling their Californian home. A source told The Mirror: “They want to stay in the neighbourhood or nearby but they aren’t over the moon about the house and the location.”

At the end of October, similar reports appeared in the Daily Express that the couple were “looking for a new place” in Hope Ranch, a community just ten miles from their current Montecito property.

According to the Express’s Dorothy Reddin: “The family of four’s potential new neighbourhood includes not only a members-only country club and a golf club, but also tennis courts, picnic grounds, and a network of equestrian trails.”

House & Garden reported that the rumoured move was due to a “series of break-ins” at the couple’s current residence. While the two locations “offer similar advantages”, the magazine continued, “Hope Ranch, however, offers somewhat more privacy and security than Montecito”.

The Prince Andrew scandal is threatening to bring down the monarchy, unless drastic action is taken to quarantine him from the rest of the royal family.

That is the view of commentators and royal watchers from across the political spectrum after new revelations concerning his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. A newly released email – dated 28 February 2011 and containing the message “we are in this together” – appears to directly contradict claims made by the prince in his now infamous “Newsnight” interview with Emily Maitlis that he severed all ties with the disgraced financier in 2010.

The BBC said the allegations were “intensely damaging” for the Duke of York, “but perhaps still more significant are the consequences of this never-ending saga on the image of the monarchy”, said Richard Kay in the Daily Mail.

“Every good deed” carried out by the royals in recent years “risks being drowned out by the relentless wave of the Andrew scandal”. It “corrodes public support for the royals and emboldens republican voices, which gleefully seize on every indiscretion to scorn the House of Windsor’s credibility”.

Many question whether the institution is fit for the 21st century and what value it brings. Here are the arguments for and against keeping the centuries-old institution.

Pro: popular with public

The monarchy as a whole “has long enjoyed broad, albeit declining, support among Britons, even if several of its individual members have not”, said Time magazine.

Just over half (51%) of people in Britain believe that it is “very” or "quite important" for Britain to have a monarchy, according to the most recent British Social Attitudes survey, conducted by the National Centre for Social Research in 2024. This is a dramatic decline from 86% in 1983, but it’s worth noting that only 15% of those surveyed actually think the monarchy should be abolished entirely.

While there is overall positivity towards the monarchy across most age groups, “there is a sharp generational divide”, said the BBC. According to a new poll on Statista, 81% of 65-year-olds want the monarchy to continue but the younger the person polled, the more likely they are to want to replace the King with an elected head of state, a majority view among 18- to 24-year-olds.

“Modern monarchy no longer depends on divine grace, but the consent of the people,” said Robert Hazell, professor of government and the constitution at University College London, in a 2022 paper for the Institute for Government. He warned that if public support continues to decline, the government might come under pressure to reduce funding for the royals, as has happened in Spain.

Con: cost to taxpayers

The monarchy is supported financially by UK taxpayers via the Sovereign Grant, which covers central staffing costs and expenses for the monarch’s official households, maintenance of the royal palaces in England, and travel and royal engagements and visits.

Accounts for 2024/25 show that the Sovereign Grant that financial year remained at £86.3 million. Yet the “real cost” to taxpayers is nearly six times more, said anti-monarchy campaigners.

Republic, which calls for the abolition of the monarchy, claims the official figure does not account for security, and other "lost income" for taxpayers, including from property businesses controlled by the duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall, which go directly to the King and the Prince of Wales respectively. Republic says the royals' total annual bill is in fact £510 million. "How can we talk about cutting the winter fuel allowance while wasting half a billion pounds on the royals?" Republic's chief executive, Graham Smith, told the BBC last September.

The question of whether the monarchy continues to offer value for money is one that – like positivity towards it in general – divides along generational lines. According to YouGov polling in 2024, 75% of the over-65s believe they do, but only 34% of 18 to 24-year-olds feel the same.

Pro: 'soft' power benefits UK

Like his mother before him, the King is a source of British "soft power" and diplomatic influence, holding state visits and foreign tours that bring benefits for national security, influence and trade.

A 2017 report by consultancy agency Brand Finance said that the monarchy generated an estimated £150 million worth of trade for the UK each year. And combined with contributions including surplus revenues from the Crown Estate, which go to the Treasury, and money from tourism, the total estimated gain for the UK economy was almost £1.8 billion.

"Measuring the wealth-generation of a brand is no easy task, especially when it comes to the royal family," said Sebastian Shehadi at Investment Monitor, but their influence on the UK economy "spans the likes of trade, tourism, media, real estate and heritage sites, foreign investment and much more".

Con: no place in equal society

Critics of the monarchy argue that having a system of hereditary power at the top of the country's political, military and religious institutions perpetuates class divisions and inequality.

The royal family "exist as a glaring symbol of the unearned privilege and inequality that pervades the roots of British society", said political journalist and author Eve Livingston in The Independent.

And it is not just in Britain that the monarch’s role as head of state is increasingly under scrutiny. The late Queen's reign was "bookended by periods of great uncertainty about Britain’s role on the world stage", said Foreign Policy. She "was crowned in 1953 as the sun was beginning to set on the British Empire" and her death came "as the country reexamines its place in the world". There are increasing calls for the UK to "reckon with its colonial history", while republican sentiment is gaining traction in the Caribbean.

Pro: boosts national unity

Supporters of a constitutional monarchy say it "represents a constant and lasting connection to the country's past" and they stress the importance of having a head of state who is "above party politics or factional interests", said Politics.co.uk. This neutrality means "the Crown can help secure smooth and peaceful handovers of political power and restrain abuses of authority", said The Telegraph.

The royal family's official website said that the monarch provides "a focus for national identity, unity and pride; gives a sense of stability and continuity; officially recognises success and excellence; and supports the ideal of voluntary service".

The Queen’s seven decades on the throne was "a low-key but extremely effective unifying force", said Martin Kettle in The Guardian, but it was one "her heirs cannot assume they will be able to replicate".

Con: undemocratic

Republic and other anti-monarchists argue that "hereditary public office goes against every democratic principle". The public cannot hold the royal family to account at the ballot box, so "there's nothing to stop them abusing their privilege, misusing their influence or simply wasting our money". The monarch should be replaced with an elected head of state.

In reality, the king or queen "can only ever act in the interests of the government of the day and does not represent ordinary voters", say campaigners. Therefore, "the monarchy is a broken institution" that should be scrapped in favour of an elected head of state who "could really represent our hopes and aspirations – and help us keep politicians in check".

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are reportedly set to snub the Cambridges during a planned visit to the UK next month.

A spokesperson for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle said the couple would attend charity events in Manchester and London, as well as popping over to Germany, during their first trip back since the Platinum Jubilee celebrations in early June.

Following the announcement, The Daily Mirror’s royal editor Russell Myers said that the California-based couple were “in line for a dramatic reunion” with Prince William and Kate Middleton. But according to The Telegraph’s royal correspondent Victoria Ward, despite speculation that Harry “might take the opportunity to reconcile with his brother, with whom tensions remain”, the Sussexes “have no plans” for a catch-up.

Although the two couples are expected to be staying “just a stone’s throw” from each other on the Windsor estate, “there is no current expectation that they will meet”, Ward reported.

The two brothers are not believed to have spoken face-to-face since last summer, when they unveiled a statue of their mother, Diana, at Kensington Palace. Harry and Meghan have returned to the UK only twice since quitting their royal roles and moving to the US more than two years ago.

The Sun reported last month that the Queen had invited them to join her at the Balmoral estate in Scotland. An insider told the paper that “staff have been told to expect the full list of royals including Harry, Meghan and their children Archie and Lilibet”.

But celebrity news site Page Six said the claims had been denied by “multiple sources close to the couple”.

The September visit is being planned at a particularly tense time for the Royal Family, as Harry prepares to publish a “tell-all memoir” later this year.

Buckingham Palace says an investigation into the handling of bullying claims against Meghan Markle has concluded — but the results aren't being made public.

An official from the palace, Michael Stevens, revealed in a news conference Thursday that an investigation prompted by claims that Markle bullied staffers, which was conducted by a private company, has been completed, CNN reports. But Stevens declined to say anything about what it found.

"I can confirm though that it was a review of the handling of the allegations aimed at enabling the royal households to consider potential improvements to HR policies and procedures," Stevens said. "The review has been completed and recommendations on our policies and procedures have been taken forward, but we will not be commenting further."

The investigation followed a report in The Times last year claiming that Meghan allegedly bullied staffers, driving two personal assistants to leave. But now that the investigation has concluded, Buckingham Palace has only vaguely alluded to its recommendations, and an anonymous official said that "lessons have been learned," per The Washington Post.

The allegations emerged days before Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey, in which they revealed allegations of racism within the royal family. Markle's spokesperson previously dismissed the bullying claims as part of a "calculated smear campaign."

A report into the handling of bullying allegations made against Meghan Markle will not see the “light of day” after Buckingham Palace refused to publish it.

Even those who participated in the official investigation, carried out by an independent legal firm, will be “kept in the dark about its findings”, said The Telegraph.

The decision leaves the palace embroiled in a “secrecy row” and raises “serious questions about transparency at the publicly funded institution and its responsibility towards members of staff”, said the paper.

No comment

An independent review was launched in March 2021 after some members of staff claimed they had been bullied by the Duchess of Sussex before she quit her royal duties in January 2020.

Current and former staff were quizzed about their experiences of working with her, said ITV News. It added that Markle, who has denied the accusations, is understood to have also submitted a response to the inquiry. A spokesperson for the duchess has previously called the claims a “calculated smear campaign”.

Reporters were told that the inquiry had been completed this week during a press conference on the Royal Family’s annual financial statement, known as the Sovereign Grant.

Michael Stevens, keeper of the Privy Purse, said recommendations made by the inquiry for the palace’s “policies and procedures have been taken forward”, but he added: “We will not be commenting further.”

Avoiding confrontation

“There was a belief that at least some of it would see the light of day,” said the BBC’s royal correspondent Jonny Dymond. But, in fact, “the whole thing is now going to be kept within the palace walls”.

Dymond told Radio 4’s Today programme that royal sources were “busily” telling reporters that the inquiry was paid for with private rather than taxpayer money and that it involves what he described as “highly confidential material that would embarrass individuals if they were named”.

One “senior royal source said the palace is staying tight-lipped about the investigation to protect the anonymity of those who cooperated”, added CNN.

The palace claimed “lessons have been learnt”, said The Times, but “refused to say what those lessons were”. The newspaper said there had been speculation that “the palace’s main concern was to avoid risking further confrontation with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex”.

Limiting drama

The bullying allegations were first made in October 2018 when the couple’s former communications secretary Jason Knauf submitted an official complaint via email accusing Markle of driving out two personal assistants.

The email “remained secret for more than two years”, said Newsweek. It wasn’t until days before the duke and duchess’s “bombshell tell-all interview” with Oprah Winfrey was broadcast in March 2021 that it was leaked to The Times.

Katie Nicholl, Entertainment Tonight’s royal expert, suggested that not making the inquiry’s findings public was “a case of keeping a really very inflammatory story under the radar”, as well as trying to “preserve the integrity of those staff, of the Duchess of Sussex and indeed of the reputation of the monarchy”.

The Queen “doesn’t want any more drama”, she said, or “any more dirty linens aired in public”.

As part of the queen's ongoing jubilee festivities, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have made their first appearance with the royal family in more than two years.

Harry and Meghan attended the National Service of Thanksgiving at St. Paul's Cathedral in London on Friday, their first public event with the royal family since their dramatic exit in 2020. They were met with cheers, as well as some boos, from the crowd as they arrived. Harry and Meghan previously returned to the U.K. to visit the queen earlier this year.

Queen Elizabeth II herself, however, wasn't in attendance for the service, as Buckingham Palace said she would skip the event due to experiencing "discomfort." The jubilee celebrations marking 70 years on the throne for the queen kicked off Thursday, and she appeared with members of the royal family on the balcony of Buckingham Palace.

Harry and Meghan's return to the U.K. came after they made the shock announcement in early 2020 that they would step back from the royal family and move to California, and they later conducted an interview with Oprah Winfrey where they leveled bombshell allegations of racism in the family.

Notably, Harry and Meghan weren't invited to appear with the queen on the Buckingham Palace balcony, which the palace previously said was because she decided only those who are "currently undertaking official public duties" would join her. That also ruled out Prince Andrew, who bowed out of jubilee events anyway after testing positive for COVID-19.

Speculation is mounting over Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s plans during their visit to the UK for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations this week.

The visit comes little more than a year since Meghan told Oprah Winfrey her life in England made her suicidal, and the couple accused an unidentified individual within the Royal Family of making a remark about the skin colour of their then unborn son.

The ‘Harry and Meghan show’

The “Harry and Meghan show is packing up and coming to town”, wrote Hilary Rose in The Times, “on parade in the UK for the first time in two years”.

Rose said the “order from the very top” is that “the week must be all about the Queen and nothing, not even the rebel royals, must overshadow her”. However, added Rose, whether Netflix, for whom the couple are making a docu-series, “got the memo remains to be seen”.

The couple are expected at the service of thanksgiving at St Paul’s Cathedral on Friday and the pop concert at Buckingham Palace on Saturday evening.

The Palace had already announced that Harry and Meghan would not be joining the Queen on the main balcony after the Trooping the Colour parade on Thursday.

However, Her Majesty is expected to meet Harry and Meghan’s daughter Lilibet for the first time on Saturday. The 96-year-old monarch, who Lilibet is named after, is likely to miss her favourite sporting event, the Derby at Epsom, for the “little one’s birthday”, said the Daily Mail.

She will meet her great-granddaughter at her first birthday, set to take place at Frogmore Cottage in Windsor, where Harry and Meghan will be staying.

There has been speculation that the couple may also try to have Lilibet christened in the private chapel at Windsor Castle, where their son Archie was christened in 2019.

‘Stick to the script’

Royal aides are hoping the Sussexes will “stick to the script during their visit here and not go off piste”, said ITV News. However, an unnamed source told The Times that the couple will attend “at least” one other public engagement during their visit.

Netflix will “not be given any privileged access to royal events”, wrote Rose, “but there is nothing to stop their cameras lining up with other broadcasters, or Harry and Meghan being wired for sound”.

ITV added that the couple will arrive with their two children but a scaled-down team. They are leaving their most trusted members of staff in the US and will travel with just a limited number of security personnel.

‘Back on good terms’

The Sun photographer Arthur Edwards, who has covered the Royal Family for more than 40 years, wrote an open letter to the couple, asking them not to “steal the limelight” during the celebrations. “Please, Harry and Meghan, don’t let Her Majesty down and, for once, take a back seat,” he wrote. “Let the real star of the Jubilee shine.”

Princes William and Harry have been “healing their feud” with weekly online messages and face-to-face chats ahead of jubilee week, said the Daily Mirror. It looks like the brothers “are trying to repair their strained relationship ahead of their grandmother the Queen’s upcoming Platinum Jubilee”, said Cosmopolitan.

But Piers Morgan, who has taken a long-standing interest in Meghan and Harry, said that the “privacy demanding, poverty preaching carbon-conscious couple will fly 5,000 miles, spilling 1.5 metric tonnes of CO2 emissions” to join the jubilee celebrations.

Speaking on TalkTV, Morgan said he is “already shuddering at how this fame-hungry duo will hijack the headlines from the woman [The Queen] who should be given them purely to cement their rival royal brand”.

Meghan Markle made a surprise visit to Uvalde, Texas, on Thursday to honor victims of this week's deadly school shooting.

The Duchess of Sussex visited a memorial site for victims of the shooting at Robb Elementary School, where she laid flowers, and she also donated food to volunteers at a community center, BuzzFeed News reports. Nineteen students and two teachers were killed in a shooting at the school on Tuesday. It was not announced ahead of time that Meghan, who has lived in California with her husband Prince Harry since stepping back from the royal family, would be taking the trip.

A spokesperson for Meghan said she visited the memorial in a "personal capacity as a mother" to offer her "condolences and support in person to a community experiencing unimaginable grief." Photos showed the Duchess laying flowers at the memorial, wearing jeans and a baseball cap.

Multiple volunteers at the community center where Meghan donated food told BuzzFeed News they didn't recognize her. "It's funny, we didn't even know it was her until after she left and now we're so sad," Georjean Burnell told the outlet. "I mean, to be honest, we thought she was our neighbor."

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle will officially return to the U.K. to attend Queen Elizabeth's Jubilee, but they won't be joining her on the Buckingham Palace balcony.

Buckingham Palace said Friday the queen has decided that when she and other members of the royal family make an appearance on the palace balcony during the celebration of her 70th year on the throne, only those "who are currently undertaking official public duties" on her behalf will join her.

That means Harry and Meghan, who stepped back as working members of the royal family in 2020 and moved to the United States, aren't invited, nor is Prince Andrew, who stepped back from public duties over his ties to Jeffrey Epstein and has been accused of sexual assault.

Harry and Meghan recently visited the queen in the U.K., their first time doing so together since they dramatically stepped back from the royal family and leveled bombshell allegations against the palace. The visit was widely seen as an "olive branch."

Harry later told the Today show he was "making sure that she's protected." But he has said he doesn't feel safe bringing his kids to the U.K. due to his current security arrangements, and he previously said he wasn't sure if the family would attend the Jubilee celebrations for that reason.

A spokesperson for Harry and Meghan, though, told CNN on Friday they're "excited and honoured to attend" with their children.

Undoubtedly the most famous family in the world, the Windsors have become accustomed to having their private affairs pored over by the press and public.

Now a “bombshell” book containing “countless shocking claims about the royals” has promised to tell all about palace life, the Daily Mirror said, following the key players who have shaped the British monarchy in the last 25 years.

Written by former Vanity Fair and New Yorker editor Tina Brown, The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor – the Truth and the Turmoil is based on hours of interviews with more than 120 royal “insiders”. Here are five of the most scandalous revelations.

The Queen worried William was a ‘brat’

As a toddler, Prince William was reportedly an ill-behaved child and was even dubbed a “holy terror” by his mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, according to Brown.

The future king became a “cause of concern” to the Queen when he “showed signs of being a brat” as a toddler, Brown said. The monarch reportedly “complained to her husband that their grandson was ‘out of control’ and needed a stricter nanny.”

The Queen “was not amused that he loved to say: ‘When I am king, I am going to make a new rule that…’”.

At the age of four he allegedly had a habit of “yapping” at his nanny, Barbara Barnes, telling her: “No one tells me what to do! When I am king I will have you punished,” Brown wrote.

William and Harry had ‘Olympic rows’

The souring relationship between the two princes has been well documented in recent years following Prince Harry’s marriage to Meghan Markle. But the pair resented each other before then, Brown claimed, adding that their “jokey persona” when together often “concealed resentments greater than is widely known”, according to Town & Country.

One sore spot for Prince Harry was reportedly over royal patronages, as the younger brother struggled to find his place in the family after leaving the army.

“From Harry’s point of view, William was simply ‘hogging the best briefs’, a friend of both of them told me. The younger prince seemed not to have gotten the memo that the future king would always get the juiciest patronages,” wrote Brown.

At the time, Prince Harry was reportedly a “very, very angry man” and the two brothers would have “absolutely Olympic rows” over the matter.

Queen was blindsided by Andrew’s infamous interview

In November 2019, Prince Andrew recorded what was widely dubbed a “car crash” interview with the BBC in which he addressed his long-standing friendship with the late paedophile billionaire Jeffrey Epstein.

Following the widespread criticism that followed, Andrew stepped back from royal duties.

While the interview is reportedly a “source of regret” for Andrew, according to Town & Country, it seems he had the interview approved by the Queen “under false pretences”. Brown claimed that the interview was only cleared as his mother believed it was a discussion about his royal duties and his Pitch@Palace business initiative.

“Expecting just that, Her Majesty, I am told by a source close to her, watched the broadcast alone in her private sitting room at Windsor after enjoying a light dinner on a tray,” Brown said. “One only hopes she did not upend her favourite champagne nightcap.”

Philip: lowering flag at Diana’s death was a ‘humiliation’

After a public outcry following the death of Princess Diana in 1997, the Queen “capitulated at last to the crowd’s and the tabloids’ demand to lower the Union Jack over Buckingham Palace”, wrote Brown. But Prince Philip saw the move as “a great humiliation”.

The relationship between Prince Philip and Diana seemed to sour after the princess gave her own tell-all interview to Panorama in 1995. During the interview, she publicly disclosed Prince Charles’s affair with Camilla Parker Bowles.

According to royal biographer Ingrid Seward, Philip “would make himself scarce” when Diana brought Princes William and Harry to Windsor Castle, said Town & Country.

Harry and Meghan felt snubbed by Christmas broadcast

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s decision to step down as senior royals was made after their photograph was not displayed during the Queen’s Christmas broadcast, Brown said. The pair reportedly felt that that snub symbolised that they had been “kicked to the margins of the monarchy”.

“Her Majesty eloquently made the point in her speech by saying nothing,” wrote Brown. “The subtext was all in the flotilla of carefully arranged family photographs positioned on her writing desk, a grouping that, in case anyone thinks is accidental, has been artfully changed every year since the monarch’s first televised seasonal message in 1957.”

1. How sad Prince Harry is now the Duke of Delusion

Daily Mail Comment

on a family fallout

“Is Prince Harry so vitriol-consumed, self-important and attention-seeking that he simply can’t resist plunging the knife into the Royal Family?” asks the Daily Mail. Despite the “sanctimonious talk of wanting to ‘make the world a better place’, no chance is missed to trash the House of Windsor”. After he and Meghan Markle did “the decent thing by flying in for clear-the-air talks with the Queen”, he went on a prime-time US TV show and “boasted” that he was checking his grandmother is protected by the “right” people. “It was a grotesque – and idiotic – insult to Prince Charles and Prince William,” says the newspaper, and “patronising” to the Queen. “But is anyone surprised by his toxicity?” It would be “loathsome hypocrisy” if this “narcissistic duo” attend the Queen’s Jubilee celebrations. “The Duke of Sussex has become the Duke of Grievance and Delusion.”

Read more

2. If French people abstain, we hand over our vote to fascism. Macron is the lesser evil

Kamelia Ouaissa in The Guardian

on damage limitation

Writing in The Guardian, Kamelia Ouaissa says the choice in the French presidential election between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen is “really hard to swallow”. “Should I vote for Macron to block the far right, or abstain, and potentially hand over my ballot paper to fascism?” the university student asks. This writer has concluded “there is no way, either through abstention or a blank vote, that I can allow the far right to gain power”, so instead, Ouaissa will “vote for a man who trampled on our rights during his first term”. The election “boils down to choosing the lesser of two evils, and damage limitation”, but a Le Pen victory would “lead to more discrimination, adding to the rising Islamophobia of the past five years”. As a Muslim woman of north African descent, living in a poor neighbourhood, Ouaissa says the next five years will “certainly be painful”. But a vote for Macron “will enable me to suffer less”.

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3. Riding a bike in America should not be this dangerous

Farhad Manjoo in The New York Times

on infrastructure investment

In the US, many road accidents are “far from accidental”, says Farhad Manjoo in The New York Times. “They are instead the inevitable result of political and economic choices that society has made, and they might have been prevented had we made other, safer choices.” More than a trillion dollars of infrastructure funding “will soon be showered” over states and cities, and there’s a “huge opportunity to save our roads”. But road safety advocates say this means thinking about the issue “in a transformative way”. America “is in the midst of a traffic fatality crisis”, and while many authorities “have unveiled plans to mitigate the horror, progress has been elusive”. Manjoo thinks that “even when the dangers of our bad roads become glaring, officials have limited options for fixing them”. US roads “are deadly because officials will still call the inevitable consequences of this ill-design a tragedy rather than a choice”. States now have an opportunity. “This is no time for half-decade-long action plans.”

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4. Tony Blair is wrong – again – on education, education, education

Ed Dorrell in The Independent

on a flawed target

A report published by the Tony Blair Institute today suggested that the number of young people going to university should rise to 70% by 2040. It “felt like an intervention from a bygone era”, says Ed Dorrell in The Independent. After all, Blair’s government was behind “the still controversial” target of 50% achieving degree-level education. “As ever”, says Dorrell, Blair is “sort of right and sort of wrong”. Yes, the country “should aspire to having a better educated workforce”, but “that is all rather motherhood and apple pie”. Where the institute has gone wrong “is focusing on a rather arbitrary target, not the substance of education for undergraduates” – and “those who do not choose to do a degree too”. More degrees “don’t inevitably mean a better-trained workforce and a growing GDP”. It’s “a shame” the institute didn’t focus on how and what students study, or use “its intellectual fire power” on vocational qualifications instead.

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5. The nine-to-five NHS is failing weekend patients

Kate Andrews in The Telegraph

on access to treatment

“The definition of ‘universal access to healthcare’ appears to be becoming narrower by the day,” writes Kate Andrews in The Telegraph. An NHS trust asked locals to avoid injuries that could lead to “unnecessary trips to A&E” over the Easter weekend. Protecting the NHS has become “an easy excuse for a problem that existed long before Covid” – that the health service is “designed to deliver on a public sector timeframe”. Patients, as a result, are “denied access to treatment for hours, and sometimes days on end”. Andrews says “too many people will have a story about how applying a nine-to-five culture to healthcare has led to them or their loved ones suffering unnecessarily”, and some of those stories are “truly harrowing”. Waiting lists and staffing shortages won’t be fixed “by doubling down on the wishful thinking of NHS bureaucrats: that the public should only get sick during sociable hours”.

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Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have been invited to appear on the Buckingham Palace balcony during the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations, according to reports.

The offer to join other Royals for the appearance – expected to take place at the Trooping the Colour birthday parade – was issued after a “low-key visit” to the Queen by the Sussexes last week, while en-route to the Netherlands to attend the Invictus Games for wounded service personnel, said The Guardian.

The Independent said their presence during the four days of jubilee celebrations would be a “significant addition” following tensions over the couple’s “explosive” interview with Oprah Winfrey in March 2021, “in which they spoke of racism they had experienced from within the Royal Family”.

But royal author Phil Dampier warned that the inclusion of the Sussexes would be a “delicate balancing act”.

‘Politely decline’ invite

Writing for the Daily Mail, Dampier said that “it will have to be made clear which events they are going to be seen at beforehand and agreed so that everyone is singing from the same song sheet”.

“Otherwise, it could turn into a PR disaster with the circus surrounding Harry and Meghan overshadowing celebrations for the Queen,” he added.

The Telegraph’s Allison Pearson agreed that the “Meghan and Harry psychodrama” must not be allowed to “overshadow” the upcoming “special national event”.

“Many monarchists are understandably dismayed” by the prospect of the “self-exiled, semi-detached royal couple who have caused Her Majesty so much embarrassment” will “play any role whatsoever in the Jubilee”, Pearson wrote.

She argued that if Harry and Meghan “have any class”, they would “politely decline the Queen’s kind invitation to join her on the balcony on the 70th anniversary of her accession”.

But according to the Daily Mail, “aides believe that Harry and Meghan's presence at her traditional Jubilee flypast would mean a lot to Her Majesty”.

And Joe Little, managing editor of Majesty magazine, told The Guardian that “it also seems likely it could be the last big family balcony appearance of her reign”.

“The Queen has the extended family on the balcony normally, working and non-working,” said Little, who added: “I see no reason for Harry and Meghan not to be there.”

In an interview with US network NBC’s Today Show, Prince Harry said he wasn’t sure if he would return to celebrate his grandmother’s Jubilee in the UK because of “security issues and everything else”.

On their way to the Netherlands, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle decided to swing by Windsor Castle for a surprise visit to the queen.

Harry and Meghan visited Queen Elizabeth II on Thursday in what was their first joint visit to the U.K. since they dramatically stepped back from the royal family in 2020, according to The Associated Press.

Plans for Harry and Meghan to visit the queen hadn't previously been announced. They're traveling to the Netherlands for the Invictus Games, the competition for wounded servicemen.

After stepping back as senior members of the royal family and moving to the United States, Harry and Meghan dropped a number of bombshell claims in an infamous interview with Oprah Winfrey last year, including that there were concerns in the royal family about "how dark" Meghan's baby's skin color would be.

"It is a wonderful opportunity to clear the air and offer an olive branch," Majesty Magazine editor-in-chief Ingrid Seward told The Sun of the visit. "After everything that has gone on it must have taken a lot for Harry and Meghan to go to Windsor."

The meeting was described by TMZ as "clearly an attempt to smooth things over" with the queen and Prince Charles, whom they reportedly also met with.

Harry was last in the United Kingdom in July 2021, when he attended the unveiling of a statue for his mother, Princess Diana. He also attended Prince Philip's funeral last year, though he didn't return for a memorial for him in March.

Recently, Harry has been fighting to pay for his own police protection while in the U.K., and his lawyers have said he "does not feel safe" there because of his current security arrangements.

The long-standing battle between the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and the British media ratcheted up this week, with Prince Harry now taking on the publisher of the Daily Mail, the Mail on Sunday and Mail Online.

Court documents show the Duke of Sussex launched a libel complaint against Associated Newspapers Limited on Wednesday afternoon.

Reports suggest his claim related to a Mail on Sunday article published on 20 February with the headline: “Revealed: How Harry tried to keep his legal fight over bodyguards secret.” The story referenced a separate legal battle the prince is having with the Home Office over his family’s private police protection.

The news of Prince Harry’s claim against Associated Newspapers comes weeks after the closure of Meghan Markle’s three-year battle against the same publisher for printing a “personal and private” letter she sent to her father three months after her wedding.

The number of lawsuits the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have launched against the UK press now total five in the past three years. Here’s what you need to know about each of them.

Meghan Markle vs. Associated Newspapers Limited

Back in 2019, Markle sued Associated Newspapers over five articles published in 2019 that reproduced parts of a handwritten letter she had sent to her father, Thomas Markle, in August 2018.

In 2021, a High Court judge issued a ruling in favour of Markle, saying the Mail on Sunday and Mail Online had violated the Duchess of Sussex’s privacy by publishing excerpts of the private letter. The judge said Markle had a “reasonable expectation that the contents of the letter would remain private”.

Associated Newspapers appealed the High Court’s decision, arguing that Markle had written the letter with the knowledge that it could be leaked and pushed for the case to go to trial. However, the appeal was dismissed, with judges ruling that the Duchess of Sussex had a “reasonable expectation of privacy” in regards to the contents of the letter.

In a statement made to the press after the ruling, Markle described the court’s decision as “precedent setting”. But, she added, “what matters most is that we are now collectively brave enough to reshape a tabloid industry that conditions people to be cruel, and profits from the lies and pain that they create”.

The Duchess of Sussex was awarded a nominal sum of £1, but the publisher also agreed to pay a “confidential sum in damages for copyright infringement” and a “substantial part of Meghan’s legal costs”, said The Guardian.

Prince Harry vs. News Group Newspapers and Reach

The same week in 2019 that Markle began legal action against Associated Newspapers, the Duke of Sussex launched a legal action against the owners of The Sun, the defunct News of the World and the Daily Mirror.

The Duke of Sussex’s claim related to alleged phone-hacking dating back to between January 1996 and December 2010, with Prince Harry claiming damages of more than £200,000, according to The Guardian.

Court papers said the illegal interception of Prince Harry’s voicemail messages by journalists “affected his relationships with friends and family” and impacted his relationship with Chelsy Davy, which ended in 2010.

In 2021, journalists at Newsweek obtained a court filing by lawyers for News Group Newspapers, the Rupert Murdoch-owned publisher of The Sun and formerly News of the World, which claimed that Prince Harry was “too late to sue” over alleged phone-hacking.

“These [stories] were first published over 6 years prior to the issue of these proceedings and this claim is therefore statute-barred and it is denied that [Prince Harry] is entitled to any relief in relation to it,” the document read.

A spokesperson for News Group Newspapers refused to comment on what it described as “historical allegations… many of which have been firmly rejected in proceedings over a number of years”. Reach, the owner of the Daily Mirror, has not commented on the allegations.

The Guardian expects this legal dispute to come to court this year, describing it as “another case that would pit one half of the Sussexes against powerful players in the tabloid press”.

Prince Harry vs. the BBC

Prince Harry complained to the BBC over the corporation’s decision to broadcast and publish online an image from a neo-Nazi social media site that called him a “race traitor” and depicted the royal with a gun pointed at his head.

A spokesperson for Prince Harry told The Guardian in September 2019 that the image, first shared in August 2018, had “caused his family great distress specifically while his wife was nearly five months pregnant”.

The BBC internally and the broadcasting watchdog Ofcom rejected the complaint, ruling that the image’s use was clearly in the public interest. But the BBC did apologise for failing to warn the Duke of Sussex ahead of broadcasting and publishing the image.

Prince Harry vs. Associated Newspapers

In 2020, Prince Harry sued Associated Newspapers for libel over two “almost identical” articles published in the Mail on Sunday and on Mail Online which claimed he had “turned his back” on the Royal Marines after stepping away from frontline royal duties earlier that year.

The articles, published in October 2020, claimed he had “not been in touch by phone, letter nor email since his last appearance as an honorary Marine” in March, said the BBC.

A remote hearing at the High Court in London on 1 February 2021 accepted the claims were “false”. The Duke of Sussex accepted an apology and “substantial damages” from the publisher. Jenny Afia, his lawyer, said he would donate the money to his Invictus Games Foundation for wounded warriors.

“The baseless, false and defamatory stories published in the Mail on Sunday and on the website Mail Online constituted not only a personal attack upon the Duke’s character but also wrongly brought into question his service to this country,” said Afia.

Duke and Duchess of Sussex vs. the BBC

In June 2021, the law firm Schillings issued a legal letter to some news broadcasters and publishers on behalf of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, accusing the BBC of “false and defamatory” reporting.

The accusation related to a June 2021 article by the BBC’s royal correspondent Jonny Dymond, which claimed that the couple had not asked the Queen about naming their daughter Lilibet.

Dymond quoted an unnamed Buckingham Palace source who “disputed reports in the wake of the announcement of the name that Prince Harry and Meghan had spoken to the Queen before the birth”.

The letter said the BBC report was “false and defamatory and should not be repeated”.

A British tabloid will pay damages to Meghan Markle for invasion of privacy, though the sum won't exactly be breaking the bank.

The Mail on Sunday is set to pay the Duchess of Sussex a mere £1 in damages for invading her privacy by publishing portions of a letter she wrote to her father, The Guardian reports. The amount is equivalent to about $1.35.

The Duchess of Sussex sued the tabloid for publishing the private letter, and a court found last month that doing so "interfered with the duchess's reasonable expectation of privacy." The court tossed the publisher's appeal of a judge's previous ruling that she had a "reasonable expectation" of privacy. The tabloid, meanwhile, argued that Meghan wrote the letter "with readership by the public in mind," knowing it would be leaked.

The £1 in damages specifically relate to the invasion of privacy claim, and according to The Guardian, a separate, unspecified amount will be paid in relation to the copyright infringement portion of the case. Plus, Associated Newspapers will be covering a substantial amount of Meghan's legal costs, The Daily Beast notes. Still, media lawyer Mark Stephens told The Guardian that "normally for that kind of invasion of privacy you would expect £75,000 to £125,000."

This comes after the Mail on Sunday quietly published an apology to Meghan over the holidays, noting to readers a "court found that Associated Newspapers infringed her copyright by publishing extracts of her handwritten letter to her father in the Mail on Sunday and in Mail Online," and "financial remedies have been agreed." Meghan celebrated her court win as a victory "for anyone who has ever felt scared to stand up for what's right," and she called for reshaping "a tabloid industry that conditions people to be cruel, and profits from the lies and pain that they create."

What will you remember when you look back on 2021?

From military coups to vaccine rollouts, Olympic Games to the Capitol Hill riot, the year was marked by a string of firsts – some of which many would rather never repeat.

As the globe rang in the New Year 12 months ago, all eyes were on whether a group of vaccines developed in record time would help put the lid on spiralling Covid-19 infections. Then, as cases gradually began to fall around the world, attention turned to the process of unlocking after 18 months of staying indoors.

It was not all plain sailing, with spikes in the number of infections coming as other global events threatened to rock the international community. As the year came to an end, residual fears of energy shortages coupled with concerns over a number of potential conflicts kept international diplomats working late into the night.

But the year was also marked by high points, including huge strides forward in tackling the world’s deadliest diseases, the return of large-scale events and, for sports fans, the England football team almost clinching victory in the Euro 2020 final.

To find out how closely you’ve been paying attention to all the big news – good and bad – over the past year, take our quiz of the year:

In addition to the waxing and waning of the coronavirus crisis, the world also faced a string of unprecedented climate events, culminating in the meeting of Cop26 in Glasgow. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle continued to make waves, triggering crisis talks in the Royal Family with racism allegations in March.

Joe Biden hit the ground running in his first 100 days in the White House, but soon found his approval ratings plummeting amid rumours of a fallout with Kamala Harris. Angela Merkel also departed the political scene, making way for a successor after 16 years as chancellor of Germany.

China’s designs on Taiwan continued to make headlines, while fears of a resurgent Russia invading Ukraine sent the UK and US into frantic diplomatic and military manoeuvres.

And the debate over public health versus personal liberty rumbled on from 2020 into 2021, with vaccine mandates becoming the new battleground.