The Further Adventures of the Heir and the Spare

Prince Harry’s memoir is supposed to be out by the end of the year—maybe; it’s a pity there’s no specific pub date yet or we could start counting the days—but from the sound of things there will be no advance copies for his father or brother. “Sources close to the Prince of Wales indicated that he would have hoped his team would have been sent a copy before it was published,” said The Times of London. “But one said that the book was ‘unlikely to be on his reading list.’” Penguin Random House, the Duke of Sussex’s publisher, described the work as “an intimate and heartfelt memoir from one of the most fascinating and influential global figures of our time” and promised that “Prince Harry will share, for the very first time, the definitive account of the experiences, adventures, losses, and life lessons that have helped shape him.” (Helping to shape Harry’s $20 million book as ghostwriter is J. R. Moehringer, author of The Tender Bar.)

Meanwhile, the Royal Foundation, a charity set up by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, “keeps its investments in a bank that is one of the world’s biggest backers of fossil fuels,” reported The Guardian. “In 2021 the charity kept more than £1.1m [$1.3 million] with JP Morgan Chase, according to the most recent filings, and still invests with the corporation, AP reported. The foundation also held £1.7m [$2 million] in a fund run by the British firm Cazenove Capital, according to the 2021 filing, the agency said. As with JP Morgan, it still keeps funds with Cazenove, which in May had securities allegedly linked to deforestation through the use of palm oil.”

Prince William is an environmentalist and founder of the Earthshot Prize (“designed to find and grow the solutions that will repair our planet this decade”). On his Web site he describes the Earth as being “at a tipping point” and talks of the “stark choice” humans face. Stark choices are also faced by royal humans, it now appears: a spokesperson for Kensington Palace told the newspaper that while the foundation “has followed the Church of England guidelines on ethical investment since 2015,” it takes “investment policies extremely seriously and review[s] them regularly.”

Dressing (down) for success: In China, what might look like a kind of drab anti-fashion in fact represents a happy dovetailing of trendiness and careerism. “Black slacks, paired with light-colored shirts or dark polo shirts, have become the hottest outfits to wear in the country’s dating market, beating out trendy labels such as Supreme or luxury brands like Armani,” reported The Times of London. “Better yet, a man wearing a Communist Party badge can score extra points with future in-laws, as he may have a better chance at landing a stable job in the government. The newfound admiration for a drab look typically associated with middle-aged or retired government workers may appear comically out of place, but it comes with youth unemployment at an all-time high and reasonably well paid jobs hard to come by.”

The skies above France are friendly to luxury aviation—The Times of London noted that “a tenth of all departure flights in 2019 were by private jets, with half traveling less than 300 miles”—but that might soon change. With the left calling for a ban on private jets—some people have started tracking their flights on social media—President Emmanuel Macron’s government is “considering heavy taxation and restrictions,” while his new transport minister, Clément Beaune, has declared that “certain types of behavior are no longer acceptable.”

Pro-ban groups say private-jetting “pollutes the atmosphere at up to 14 times more per passenger mile than flying on an airline,” according to the newspaper. “Indignation has been fanned by social media sites tracking the movement of celebrities such as Kylie Jenner, who sometimes fly as little as 40 miles…. Beaune said one possibility was to outlaw flights to destinations well served by trains or airlines. In a pioneering measure this year, domestic flights were banned to French cities that could be reached by train in less than two and a half hours.”

The venti and short of it: Starbucks (or, anyway, Starbucks-ish) coffee will still be available in Russia, now that the off-loaded chain, rebranded as Stars Coffee, has officially opened its first café—one of the country’s 130 former Starbucks stores. “The rapper Timati and restaurateur Anton Pinskiy, the duo that acquired the rights to the chain in Russia,” did the honors, The Guardian reported. “During the opening in central Moscow, the pair also revealed the chain’s new logo, which replaces Starbucks’s iconic siren with a woman wearing the traditional Russian kokoshnik headdress, but is otherwise fairly similar.”

You probably remember Timati for his 2015 hit, “My Best Friend Is Vladimir Putin.” That’s the one that goes:

My white master!
Those left-minded may beat it
These girls asked for it
Pick up any of them
We count the budget sitting on the table
The pyramid of the soul, splash, beautiful,
Russia, meet your son …
Everything’s for him and freedom’s flowing
We can make it …
We stand by him all as one country
We know he’s a diehard superhero
I’m game today, my friend’s by my side
He’s the boss, so everything will be as agreed …

Et cetera. Better make ours a trentaski!

One of the best-known images of Winston Churchill, a photograph known as The Roaring Lion, taken by Yousuf Karsh in 1941, has been stolen from the Château Laurier hotel, where it had been part of a permanent exhibition for 24 years. The portrait was replaced by a forgery, and apparently the switch could have taken place anytime between July 2019 and last week, when one of the staff “noticed that the picture was not hung properly and the frame did not match those of other [Karsh] portraits in the lounge,” according to The Times of London. The director of Karsh’s estate was summoned, took a look at the signature, and knew it was a fake. Ottawa police are investigating.

Karsh, a master portrait photographer who died in 2002, had lived in the hotel and kept a studio there. The thief or thieves who engineered the brazen swap had Churchill himself to deal with, specifically the prime minister’s intimidating stare—which is attributed to Karsh’s having shot the image just seconds after swiping his subject’s cigar. —George Kalogerakis

George Kalogerakis, one of the original editor-writers at Spy, later worked for Vanity Fair, New York, and The New York Times, where he was deputy op-ed editor. A co-author of Spy: The Funny Years and co-editor of Disunion: A History of the Civil War, he is a Writer at Large for AIR MAIL