As the drama surrounding Labour's attempted welfare cuts continues to shake the Palace of Westminster, another palace down the road is faring far better. The royal family received £86.3 million in government funding in the 2024-25 financial year, according to an annual accounts statement just released by the Royal Household. And that will rise to £132 million next year, following a big jump in the profits made by the Crown Estate.

How is the royal family funded?
The three main sources of income are the estates of the Duchy of Lancaster and Duchy of Cornwall, personal property holdings and investments and the Sovereign Grant.

The Sovereign Grant is a percentage of the profits made by the Crown Estate, a vast portfolio of land (separate from the monarch's personal property) valued at £15 billion. Since 1760, the monarch has given the Treasury the profits from the Crown Estate in exchange for an annual grant – the Sovereign Grant – equivalent to 12% of the profits.

The grant pays for the maintenance of palaces and the official duties of the royals. It does not, however, pay for security, which "also incurs a high cost given the royals' numerous public engagements", said CNN.

What does it cost the UK taxpayer?
The Sovereign Grant costs about £1.29 per UK citizen, according to the Royal Household, but the taxpayer foots many other bills, including undisclosed security costs – estimated to be as high as £100 million per year – and the cost of policing royal events. The coronation of King Charles, for example, cost taxpayers £72 million, the government revealed last November.

Is it good value for money?
The economic benefits of the royal family are "harder to measure" than their costs, said the BBC, but include "boosting tourism and supporting overseas trade". Royal family members undertook more than "1,900 public engagements in the UK and overseas" in the past year, the latest Sovereign Grant Report said.

"The grant system is mad," said Graham Smith, a campaigner for the anti-monarchy group Republic, in a statement earlier this year calling for the public contribution to be "slashed to just a few million pounds".

Seven years after Lynette Linton made her name at London's Donmar Warehouse with a "blistering" production of "Sweat", she has "returned to the scene of her triumph" with a revival of Lynn Nottage's "exquisite" play about a Black corset-maker in 1905 New York, said Fiona Mountford in The Telegraph.

Esther (Samira Wiley) has recently turned 35 and lives in a rooming house. When she begins receiving "increasingly affectionate" letters from Barbadian engineer George Armstrong (Kadiff Kirwan), she is enthralled. But Esther can't read or write, so she enlists her unhappily married client Mrs Van Buren (Claudia Jolly) and "no-nonsense" sex worker friend Mayme (Faith Omole) to help pen her replies.

It's a "compelling and utterly beautiful" show, said Sarah Crompton on WhatsOnStage. Wiley is "astonishing" as Esther, binding the play together with "remarkable subtlety". Both "innocent and resourceful", she's a "mass of contradictions", flustered when her friends discuss relationships, "yet so full of longing it seems to consume her".

There are some "predictable revelations" in the second act and George's character doesn't have the same depth as the others, said Sarah Hemming in the Financial Times. But it's a "gorgeous, vibrant" play. Inspired by a photograph of her great-grandmother, who worked as a seamstress in New York at the turn of the century, Nottage takes the "scraps" of information she could find about her and "stitches them into a vivid quilt". Like the corsets that Esther crafts, it's a "lovely, caring piece of work".

The Middle Ages Are Making a Political Comeback
Adrian Wooldridge on Bloomberg
There's been an "awful lot of 'getting medieval' in the world" of late, says Adrian Wooldridge. The “twelve-day war” between Israel and Iran was discussed in language "more resonant of the Middle Ages than the scientific laboratory". Back then, people believed "forces of Good and Evil" would have a "final showdown", but "whether re-medievalization is compatible with the long-term survival of the species in a world of nuclear weapons and ultra-sonic ballistic missiles is open to doubt".

The meaning of the Chancellor's tears
Andrew Marr in The New Statesman
The "morning after" is "a time for headaches, reflection" and "throbbing mirrored promises to do things differently", says Andrew Marr. In the aftermath of the welfare bill rebellion, Rachel Reeves is facing "deep and angry personal attacks" within her party, "where she has not been forgiven for the winter fuel allowance cut". With "few options left", she should "pick up the anti-patronising pro-working class instincts of Blue Labour" and mingle them with an "unapologetic social democratic agenda", for a "new note of conviction".

Claudia Winkleman and keema naan: my picks for the new bank notes
Sarah Carson in The i Paper
As the Bank of England asks for ideas for new bank note designs, "I can already predict the big names" likely to be suggested, says Sarah Carson. "Capturing a national identity isn't easy", and "one person's British pride is another's jingoistic nightmare". But my picks would include the England football teams, Wallace and Gromit, and Smithy's "curry order" from "Gavin & Stacey", which "encapsulated the British sensibility better than any great work of literature". And don't forget the BBC's "sharpest talent": Claudia Winkleman.