Harry has deserted the Royal Marines in their hour of need

I have been trying with considerable success not to give two hoots about this Harry and Meghan thing. But a detail of their departure from the royal orbit bothers me. It arises from Harry’s surrender of his royal patronages, part of his move to cease being an HRH and become a plain old duke.

That detail is this: the Captain General of the Royal Marines is resigning his post in order to spend more time on Instagram.

And that, bluntly, is a pretty shabby thing. You do not have to be the sort of red-faced harrumphing traditionalist who approvingly reads Daily Telegraph editorials over marmalade in your old rectory in Wiltshire to think that this says something unedifying about duty and service and the way empty celebrity culture has seeped into British national life like damp and started to weaken the brickwork. (I used to write those Telegraph editorials, incidentally.)