Meghan markle

It’s Harry, not Meghan, who’s the real problem

Who or what drove Harry and Meghan to leave the royal bosom for the land of slebs on the other side of the Atlantic? That’s one of the central questions of a new two-part documentary, The Princes and the Press, that aired on the BBC last night. The obvious suspect is the dreaded British media — barging, intrusive, xenophobic — riddled with prejudice, we’re told, against a mixed-race American in the monarchy. But the jostling between royal households seems equally responsible. After the early days of Hazza and Megz, a clear jealousy from some of William and Kate’s people began to seep into the media. The younger brother and his

Meghan and Harry pledge to save the world

In Glasgow the green games are well underway, with a roll call of world leaders reading from the COPacabana hymn sheet to a genuflecting press corps. British premier Boris Johnson claims it’s ‘one minute to midnight,’ Prince Charles believes ‘time has literally run out’ while UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres argues ‘we are digging our own graves.’ Cheery stuff.  And where there’s media, there’s celebrity too, with every camera-loving eco-warrior quick to jet in. Jeff Bezos eulogised about his, er, rocket trip to space with star turns also provided by yacht-loving Leonardo Di Caprio and the New York-residing SNP supporter Brian Cox. Angry adolescent Greta Thunberg meanwhile had to make do with an unwashed mob outside. But of course,

What Meghan Markle can learn from Enid Blyton

The year is 2070 and English Heritage are unveiling their latest Blue Plaque: ‘The Duchess of Sussex, children’s author, lived here 2017 – 2018’. The accompanying online guide praises Meghan for her work promoting inclusion and diversity. I have no idea whether Meghan will one day be rewarded with an iconic plaque for her services to literature. But she’s certainly heading in the right direction. Following this week’s announcement that her debut book The Bench has topped the New York Times’ bestseller’s list for children’s fiction, the Duchess took the opportunity to declare: ‘While this poem began as a love letter to my husband and son, I’m encouraged to see

Meghan Markle has demonstrated why children won’t like ‘The Bench’

Meghan Markle isn’t one to think small. In a statement on her Archewell website to thank those who put her book, The Bench, at the top of the New York Times‘ children’s picture book list, she wrote:  ‘While this poem began as a love letter to my husband and son, I’m encouraged to see that its universal themes of love, representation and inclusivity are resonating with communities everywhere. In many ways, pursuing a more compassionate and equitable world begins with these core values’. You’d never, think, would you, that this is a picture book for children. And one of the reasons why any sensible tot will hurl it from the

The Keir Starmer revelation that we didn’t air

Following my abrupt departure from Good Morning Britain after declining to apologise for disbelieving Meghan ‘Princess Pinocchio’ Markle, I’ve been riding a rare wave of public popularity, with my anti-woke, pro-free speech book Wake Up becoming a no. 1 bestseller and people stopping me in the street to offer support. A lady named Marion from Eastbourne wrote to compare my campaign to that of John Lilburne, the 17th-century English political leveller who coined the term ‘freeborn rights’ and became a champion of liberty. She wrote: ‘Lilburne spent his life fighting for freedom of speech, and for this he was whipped, pilloried, half-starved, exiled, imprisoned and twice put on trial for

Are Meghan’s Covid claims correct?

When you are on the side of global enlightenment, the standards of proof required for your assertions tend to be somewhat lower. This perhaps explains why Meghan Markle’s comments during an event called the Global Citizen’s Vax Live concert were so widely reported yet so little challenged by the usual army of self-appointed ‘fact-checkers’ who swoop on anything to do with Covid. She claimed that women ‘have been disproportionately affected by this pandemic’, citing a ‘surge in gender-based violence, the increased responsibility of unpaid care work and new obstacles which have reversed so much progress for women in the workplace’.  She went on to say that ‘women, especially women of colour,

What is the point of Meghan Markle’s new children’s book?

Meghan Markle has written a book for children. Of course she has. There is no celeb, no matter how busy, who doesn’t have a children’s book in them, because children’s books, you might think if you didn’t know better, don’t need plot or character or much in the way of style. It was either that, or a cookbook. The Bench, for that is the name, is based apparently on a poem Meghan wrote for her husband for father’s day, a month after little Archie was born. Because that’s what you do with a small baby, isn’t it… you write a poem. It’s short, it would seem, but then William Nicholson’s

A handy guide to Marklism

Many of us have been watching in awe at the profound impact that Meghan and Harry’s Oprah interview has had on the fight against endemic injustice. There has been an outpouring of empathy for the Duchess’s suffering at the hands of the British. Not only has she had to live through the public spectacle of a royal wedding, she has had to endure the indignity of public scrutiny every time she wishes to travel by private jet. This is not how a victim should be treated. The Duchess is riding on a wave of American support and has challenged one of the oldest institutions on earth. She shows us that the world can be turned

Letters: What really irritates Meghan’s critics

Meghan’s adroitness Sir: Tanya Gold suggests that people criticise Meghan Markle because she is mixed race and a woman, and states it is because she has dared to attack the royal family (‘In defence of Meghan’, 13 March). I think that misses the point. For a great number of people, her narrative simply does not ring true. Over the past few decades, thousands of media articles have accused the royal household of being claustrophobic, pedantic and antiquated. But unlike the young and naive Diana, Meghan was a thirtysomething TV star with agents and PR people when she met Prince Harry. It’s hard to believe she didn’t know what she was

The Stoics would have had little sympathy for Meghan

Meghan Markle seems to see herself as a ‘victim’. Had she called herself a victima in Rome, it would have been a matter of some surprise, since the ancients used that image solely with reference to animals for sacrifice. But our ‘victim’ is used as if one genuinely were as helpless as a victima. Ancients would have none of that. In place of our ‘victimhood’, they used words like ‘wronged, betrayed, worsted, dishonoured, neglected, injured’. Even the classical terms for ‘suffer’ meant at root ‘undergoing/enduring an experience’ of some sort. Ancients, then, were not for relapsing into supine self-pity, but for taking action against the humans who had wronged them.

‘Sacred space’ has become a crowded marketplace

‘This is the book that horses wish every equestrian would read,’ says the blurb for Sacred Spaces: Communion with the horse through science and spirit by Dr Susan Fay. It might sound like putting the cart before the horse to have equines deciding our reading list, but everyone wants a bit of space at the moment. ‘Thank you for giving us the space,’ said the Duchess of Sussex to Oprah Winfrey at the end of their ample airtime. This is not Star Trek’s ‘space, the final frontier’, nor yet the spatium verae paenitentiae, the time for repentance, that the Christian asks before death. Yet space is the prime thing now

I was Oprah Winfrey’s hero

Gstaad Some of you may have noticed that I have not commented at all about the ongoing soap opera and latest brouhaha concerning the halfwit and Meghan Macbeth. That’s because I decided long ago that the best way to counter their publicity machine is never to mention them. But I’ve also done something that most of the hacks writing about the couple have not: I’ve been a guest on Oprah’s show twice, on one occasion by my little old self for a whole hour. Although wince-inducing, squirming, cringeworthy and gushing, The Oprah Show always has a theme and, more importantly, a hook. The hook is what will make people’s ears

Why I refused to be interviewed by Emily Maitlis

On Tuesday, I was asked to appear on BBC Newsnight to talk about the Sussexes’ interview. When told it would be presented by Emily Maitlis, I declined, on the grounds that ever since her political speech against Dominic Cummings on the programme last year, I have had no confidence in her fairness. Sure enough, she spoke on the programme that night of ‘the sense of the attempted suicide’ of the Duchess of Sussex — though Meghan had mentioned only ‘suicidal thoughts’.  At the time, my little gesture seemed rather pointless, so I was pleased to read in the next day’s papers that Ofcom has at last decided that the Maitlis diatribe

Which TV interviews have attracted bigger audiences than Harry and Meghan’s?

Good for the goose The government indicated that it will ban foie gras, out of animal welfare concerns. While it is often thought of as a French product, its origins have been traced back to Egypt in 2500 bc — thanks to a bas-relief at the Necropolis of Saqqara outside the ancient city of Memphis. The painting depicts workers holding geese around the necks and feeding them — although there is no great sign of force being used. Viewer discretion ITV reported an audience of 11 million for Harry and Meghan’s interview with Oprah Winfrey. In the US 17 million were said to have watched. What are the previously most-viewed

Freddy Gray

Battle royal: Harry and Meghan’s modern brand of revenge

Remember the Heads Together campaign? It was back in 2017. Prince William, his wife Kate and his brother Prince Harry, who’d recently begun dating a conspicuously woke actress called Meghan Markle, launched a charitable endeavour to raise awareness about mental health. The princes gave interviews in which they ‘opened up’ about their struggles. Such public emoting made fuddy-duddy monarchists nervous, yet a new generation of royal PR operatives and suck-ups saw the future. The royals were appealing to a younger audience, cleverly rebranding the monarchy for a new age in which it is OK to not be OK. Move over, stiff-lipped oldies, the Windsors were moving on. Then Harry married

Julie Burchill

Confessions of a lifelong bitch

As I watched the Duchess of Sussex give her extended acceptance speech for Best Performance As A Victim — played as a cross between Bambi and Beth from Little Women — my overwhelming feeling was of disappointment. Readers may recall that I once wrote long and loopy love letters to her in this very magazine, embarrassing in their unctuousness — ‘Meghan Markle has rescued her prince!’ — but I went off her when her bid for secular sainthood started. The allegations of tiara tantrums brought me fresh hope. Could it be that behind that innocent face, all damp eyes and trembling lips, lurked a superannuated Mean Girl? She’d have made

Rod Liddle

‘My’ truth about Meghan and Harry

Caroline Rose Giuliani, the daughter of the former mayor of New York, Rudy, has been talking to the press about one of her hobbies. Apparently she likes nothing more than playing the role of a ‘unicorn’ — the third partner in a sexual liaison. She explained: ‘Finding the strength to explore these more complicated, passionate aspects of my personality became the key to harnessing my voice and creative spark, which in turn helped me better cope with depression, anxiety, and the lingering cognitive effects of adolescent anorexia.’ This is a fascinating approach to curing eating disorders, I think. Caroline’s dad, if you remember, is unable to tuck his shirt into

Charles Moore

So did Harry and Meghan get married in their ‘backyard’?

I have been slow in the uptake. When I saw the Duchess of Sussex complain in her interview clips about how her son had not been given a title and then move on to the alleged racism of an alleged speculation by an unnamed but probably royal person about the possible skin colour of the child she was expecting, I did not immediately see the connection. The full interview makes it clear. Meghan is saying that Archie was not allowed to be a prince because of his skin colour. Oprah: ‘Do you think it’s because of his race?’ Meghan: ‘We have in tandem the conversation of “He won’t be given

Why is it racist to wonder what colour your child’s skin will be?

Maybe I missed something here. Or maybe I am just completely naive. But why is it racist to ponder what the skin colour of a new baby will be? According to most of the American and British media, post the Harry and Meghan interview, it absolutely is racist. It’s horrendous. Evil. Bigoted. Especially so in the US (a country where barely over 10 per cent of the married population is actually inter-racial). But these are generally the views of people who don’t actually know what they are talking about. Because they are not part of, or in the slightest bit close to, an inter-racial couple. So first the obvious declaration