The royal family has a gift for laying on a wedding just when the nation’s spirits most need lifting. The Queen’s marriage to the Duke of Edinburgh in 1947 helped to rejuvenate a nation exhausted by war and demoralised by rationing. The wedding of Princess Anne to Mark Phillips in 1973 aroused extraordinary excitement in
Home The engagement of Prince William and Kate Middleton was announced. The Prince proposed last month in Kenya and gave his fiancée the engagement ring belonging to his late mother, Diana, Princess of Wales. The wedding is to take place next year. Britain must ‘sort out’ its economy if it wants to ‘carry weight in
Trouble with stags In addition to next year’s royal wedding, Prince William will have to organise the royal stag party. William got into trouble in 2008 for flying a Chinook helicopter from Lincolnshire to his cousin Peter Phillips’s stag party on the Isle of Wight — at a cost of £8,716 to the public purse.
War, debt and recession. Last month’s Strategic Defence and Security Review had to confront a unique combination of difficulties. Secretary of State Liam Fox, opening the Spectator conference on the future of defence procurement, explained the review’s aims. Proudly identifying himself as ‘a hawk on defence and on deficit reduction’ he re-stated his commitment to
Reasons to stay Sir: While I agree with much of Fraser Nelson’s analysis on the impact of higher taxes on total tax revenue (‘Osborne’s tax exiles’, 13 November), he misses one key aspect of the Chancellor’s tax reforms: the extension of entrepreneurs’ relief on capital gains tax from £1 million to £5 million. In September
