Meghan Markle has rescued her prince

Of all the interesting combinations which sexual geopolitics has come up with, that of the American girl and the English man is one of the most enduring, giving a saucy spin to the phrase ‘Special Relationship.’

It started with cold hard economics when the second half of the 19th century saw the creation of the American billionaire – Vanderbilt and his railways, Carnegie and his steel, Singer and his sewing machines. The daughters of such men became known as The Dollar Princesses; girls who came to cold old England bringing million-dollar dowries to reboot ruined stately homes in exchange for the one thing money couldn’t buy them in the brave New World – a title.

By the end of the century, a quarter of the House of Lords had American conjugal connections and such unions had injected around twenty-five billion dollars into the British economy as well as contributing to the bloodlines of such eminent Britons as Winston Churchill and Diana, Princess of Wales.