Queen Elizabeth always preferred the boorish Andrew to the sensitive Charles. Is the King finally getting revenge on his disgraced sibling by cutting him off financially?

By Will Lloyd

Sixty-four years ago, Charles Philip Arthur George Windsor was pretending to be the most doomed monarch in British history when he learnt that Andrew, his brother, had been born. On February 19, 1960, the 11-year-old Charles was playing the role of a young Richard III in a Cheam School production of The Last Baron, a play written by one of the staff.

According to the school paper, the young prince’s Richard “conveyed the ambition and bitterness of the twisted hunchback” although the audience sniggered when Charles recited a prayer that included the ominous line “soon I may ascend the throne.” READ ON

The 21-year-old niece of King Charles—Lady Louise Mountbatten-Windsor—has got the rumor mill churning at the same university where Prince William first met Kate Middleton

By Marianka Swain

Is royal romance blossoming once again at venerable Scottish university St Andrews?

Famously the place where Prince William met Kate back in the early 2000s, two decades on, this historic establishment – long a favorite of the royal family – is now the picturesque backdrop to another eye-catching love story: that of Lady Louise Mountbatten-Windsor, (daughter of Prince Edward, Duke of Edinburgh) and fellow student Felix da Silva-Clamp.

Windsor, the youngest niece of King Charles III and 16th in line to the throne, and who celebrated her 21st birthday on November 8, began reading English literature at St Andrews in READ ON

From attending the Queen’s coronation and suffering familial tragedy to becoming friends with Mick Jagger and learning to cook at 86, Lady Glenconner is the quintessential survivor

By Hilary Rose

Anne Glenconner, 92, was brought up at Holkham Hall in Norfolk, the eldest of three daughters of the Earl and Countess of Leicester. She was a maid of honor at the late Queen’s coronation and a lady-in-waiting to Princess Margaret. Her first memoir, Lady in Waiting, detailed the abuse she suffered at the hands of her late husband, Colin Tennant, and the deaths of two of her sons. Her new book about the joy of picnics includes contributions from Graham Norton and Rupert Everett, among others. She lives in Norfolk.

Punctuality is very important. If people are late, you think maybe they’ve forgotten and it worries the hostess. You don’t want to worry the hostess. READ ON

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s chief of staff has bolted after just three months. He’s not alone

By Kate Mansey

For the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, the timing could not be much worse. Josh Kettler, their chief of staff, has left the job after just three months in the role and only days before the couple embark on a high-profile quasi-royal tour of Colombia. According to People magazine, known to be sympathetic to the Sussexes, Kettler had been “hired on a trial basis” and “the decision to part ways was mutual, with both sides agreeing it wasn’t the right fit”.

This week Prince Harry, 39, and Meghan, 43, will be the official guests of Colombia. Its vice-president, Francia Marquez, said she hoped the Sussexes’ visit would “further illuminate Colombia’s role as a beacon of culture and innovation”. READ ON

The Duchess of York—hardly a shrinking violet—has announced that she is not going to hide her true self anymore. God help us all

By Hilary Rose

Oh bless you, Fergie, you should have said. All this time the woman lucky enough to look at the Duke of York over the breakfast table has been hiding her light under a bushel.

“I haven’t shown my huge personality properly because I’ve tried to keep it under the cushion,” she tells Hello! magazine over nine richly rewarding pages. “I’m just not excusing myself any more. You don’t have to be what everyone wants you to be, just be yourself. One of the only people who saw me properly was the Queen, and before she died she said, ‘Sarah, being yourself is enough.’ ” READ ON

Harry and Meghan’s new director of communications has a Sisyphean task: making the pair, well, likable. Four public-relations experts weigh in on how they would achieve the impossible

By Kate Wills

S

he recently launched her lifestyle brand with 50 jars of strawberry jam. Now Meghan is hoping that a British PR who once worked for Haribo can make her personal brand taste just as sweet.

Earlier this week, Meghan and Harry’s company, Archewell Foundation, hired Charlie Gipson as its new director of communications. Gipson, who has previously worked for brands such as Mars, Cadbury and Domino’s, will serve as the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s main point of contact for all UK and European media.

It’s the first time Meghan, 42, and Harry, 39, have hired a permanent member of staff who is based in the UK since 2020’s ’ READ ON

When King Charles had bad news, his communications chief put on a master class in damage control. If only Kate had done the same

By John Arlidge

Two members of the same high-profile family go into the hospital for planned medical treatments. Both are shocked when tests show they have cancer. The older member breaks with convention, makes public details of his condition, and is praised for his openness. The other, a woman more than 30 years his junior, sticks with tradition and says little, creating a hysterical guessing game.

Has she died and been replaced with a body double? Has her marriage fallen apart? Has she had cosmetic surgery that has gone wrong? To try to lance the speculation, she releases a family photograph, but it turns out to have been so badly Photoshopped that newspapers unpublish it. Cue even more lurid speculation—before she reveals all in a moving video. READ ON

Calling her lifestyle brand “American Riviera”—a term nobody in her area uses—the Princess of Wails pivots to Gwyneth Paltrow and Martha Stewart’s turf

By Hilary Rose

Let’s start with the jam. Have we really had four years of mud-throwing and rage because Meghan Markle wants to make jam? And also marmalade and edible oils and vegetable-based spreads? Let’s move on to the name of her embryonic lifestyle brand, American Riviera Orchard, three random words in search of a meaning. I live in fear that after telling us about the Greek origins of Archewell, someone will pop up now to tell us that ARO is the Greek word for crystal healing or kindness.

Four years since Megxit, Megs wants to become the new Gwyneth Paltrow, READ ON

Come on, Harry and Meghan—isn’t there anything better you can think to do than hold hands?

By Judith Woods

Right. That’s it. Does anyone have a pair of bolt cutters? Or maybe a water cannon? Because frankly, I think that’s the only way we can stop Harry and Meghan from holding hands.

Like so many other things about them, it is fingernails-down-the-blackboard grating. Annoying. And so goddamn performative.

The whole “young and so very much in love, not like frosty and uptight William and Kate” routine has worn thinner than a cigarette paper. Harry is 39; Meghan is 42. They have two offspring, aged four and two. Nobody has free hands at that age and stage; they are either full of squirming children or their ridiculously bulky paraphernalia. Any free hand is for patting down your partner’s body to find the car keys. Fact. READ ON

Harry and Meghan’s production company, Archewell, is leaking employees. Their development deal with Netflix is a bust. Can they redeem their Hollywood dream?

By Stuart Heritage

It all started so well, didn’t it? Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, hemmed in by the restrictive constraints of the British monarchy, abandoned their gilded, pampered, Palace lives in order to move to Los Angeles to prove that they were capable of achieving success on their own terms. In an enormously skewed way, if you squinted, Megxit could be seen as nothing less than the perfect demonstration of the American Dream.

Better yet, they found success almost immediately. A five-year $100 million development deal with Netflix. A $20 million exclusive agreement to make podcasts with Spotify. Then a reported $20 million advance from Penguin Random House for Harry to write READ ON