No one, in seven decades of exemplary leadership, has ever accused the Queen of exaggeration. She trades in understatement. When she says of the departure of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex that ‘these are complex matters’, she is talking of profound challenges which she understands better than anyone else. …
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Grace Kelly was a huge Hollywood star when she decided to marry Prince Rainier in 1956 The difference in the world-views of the Markles and the Windsors was always evident in the language they employed. After her engagement to Prince Harry, Meghan told Vanity Fair magazine: ‘I was born in …
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Talk about history repeating itself. It’s 28 years since Lady Di broke up with Prince Charles and announced she intended to carry on being an independent member of the Royal Family. I can remember writing at the time that it was a bit like Bianca Jagger, after getting divorced from …
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While most people might have spent Boxing Day walking off their Christmas lunch or snoozing through a film, Tim O’Donovan was settling down to do some serious arithmetic, as he always does at this time of year. And there can be no margin of error when your annual sums make …
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Recalling the two younger Princes, the Prince of Wales’s housekeeper Wendy Berry found Edward ‘utterly charming and polite’, but Andrew (pictured) boorish and rude, writes CRAIG BROWN On November 28, 2001, Gyles Brandreth attended a reception at Buckingham Palace for bigwigs in the media. The Queen was telling a small …
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Kelsey Wells has laid bare the disdain which has greeted her since she wed William Seymour, Earl of Yarmouth — and which now threatens to lead to the courts The Duchess of Sussex has spoken of her struggle to adapt to life as a Royal. But it can be just as …
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Which of us would have imagined gathering round our television sets on a Saturday evening to watch the Queen’s second son squirming and dissembling as he’s grilled about his friendship with a convicted paedophile? We thought Princess Diana’s tearful interview about the state of her marriage to Prince Charles was …
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John McDonnell (pictured) took to the radio yesterday sounding for all the world like a friendly uncle Anyone who imagines nationalising a chunk of BT will lead to a golden age of telecommunications clearly can’t remember the Sixties or Seventies. When I was a little girl, my grandparents were one …
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She was a princess when she laid her first wreath at the Cenotaph. As a veteran herself – and, indeed, the only head of state in the world today who served in the Second World War – the Queen knows this ceremony better than anyone. Yet, for her, it remains …
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The last time John McDonnell was put in charge of a significant budget was back in the 1980s. It’s fair to say it didn’t end well. McDonnell was, at the time, deputy leader and finance chairman of the Greater London Council (GLC). Its self-appointed mission was, as McDonnell put it in …
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