Police officers cannot be bought as “private bodyguards for the wealthy”, the Duke of Sussex has been told.
Government and police lawyers said on Tuesday that specialist protection officers “put themselves in harm’s way” and that this should only be done in the public interest. They are defending a judicial review action by the Duke against the Home Secretary for the decision to refuse his request for police protection.
Two questions preoccupied the media in the run up to the coronation of King Charles III: how ‘multicultural’ should the coronation be? And should the royal family atone, or even make financial recompense, for its role in slavery? Last month, the king himself refused to rule out paying reparations for the transatlantic slave trade. Then, on the day of the coronation, we had Bridgerton star Adjoa Andoh complaining on ITV that the royal line-up on the Buckingham Palace balcony felt ‘terribly white’ and unrepresentative of modern Britain.
While the newly crowned monarch was at the heart of many positive stories, commentators were not so charitable about Prince Harry
The coronation of King Charles dominated front pages around the globe, with many observers reflecting that the ceremony marked the modernisation of the British monarchy.
A glowing commentary by Michael Higgins in Canada’s National Post saying that Canadians could “rejoice in our new King”. However, he rejected the “homage of the people”, writing: “Whoever thought it was a good idea that the public — whether they be at home or abroad — should pledge allegiance to the King should be put in medieval stocks befitting a medieval idea. There is something deeply anachronistic and unsettling at expecting the ‘common man’ to pay homage to their monarch. Serfs have served their time.”
LONDON— King Charles III presides over a monarchy in robust financial health. Behind this is a booming real-estate portfolio of bucolic farms, wholesale warehouses and prime London offices that has helped cover a royal spending spree.
No one outside the palace is exactly sure how rich the monarchy is, or of the personal wealth of its incumbent, Charles, who was crowned on Saturday. The institution’s income comes from a variety of sources, including taxpayers, profits from large tracts of land and undisclosed privately held investments.
This disparity will be the Monarchies downfall.
“At the drinks before the dinner, a small group were talking to the monarch and she explained that Harry meeting Meghan had become a complete catastrophe and described her as evil,” the source claimed.
“Everybody’s eyebrows hit the ceiling,” the source recalled.
“It was out of character for the Queen to use such a word as ‘evil’ to describe Meghan, but she saw straight through her.
Ahead of the coronation, those wanting to get rid of the monarch include Australia, Canada and Jamaica
Citizens in six of the 15 Commonwealth realms that recognise the King as head of state would vote to become republics, a poll has found.
Canada, Australia, the Bahamas, Jamaica, the Solomon Islands, and Antigua and Barbuda would all vote in favour of becoming republics if a referendum were held tomorrow, according to the survey by Lord Ashcroft has found.
Radical anti-royalists known for defacing statues of monarchs and slipping past security in Windsor Castle to kiss on the King’s bed are planning to join protesters at the coronation.
No More Royals, a new student-led campaign group on the “extreme wing of the anti-monarchy movement”, intends to mingle with crowds of more mainstream republicans on Saturday, The Times has learnt.
Abolition of the monarchy seems always in Canada’s future, never its present.
This is one message of a new poll of Canadians and other Commonwealth citizens by Michael Ashcroft, a pollster and former deputy chairman of the U.K. Conservative Party.
Even a clearly phrased referendum held tomorrow is not certain to succeed, despite strong republican opinions across Canada, the poll suggests.
I find myself wishy one day and washy the next on the question of the Royal family. If woke lectures become the norm I would lean toward severance in short order however.
The remote South Pacific tribe that worships Prince Philip is preparing to hold a party for the Coronation of King Charles III.
Villagers on the island of Tanna in Vanuatu will raise the Union flag, dance and drink kava, an intoxicating drink made from pulverised roots, according to a local leader.
As the King is crowned in Westminster Abbey on Saturday, people will gather 10,000 miles away in the villages of Yakel and Yaohnanen.
An American think tank is to sue the US government for access to Prince Harry’s immigration files to confirm whether he admitted past illegal drug use on his visa application.
The Heritage Foundation, a right-wing organisation based in Washington, has demanded to know whether the Duke of Sussex, 38, confessed to taking drugs when he moved to California in 2020. In his recent memoir, Spare, the duke, who is at odds with the royal family, admitted using marijuana, magic mushrooms and cocaine.
The US should deny him entry on his return from the coronation. Too many now believe themselves above the law.
When King Charles III is crowned on Saturday, he will undergo a ritual so rare in modern British history that it last occurred 70 years ago, roughly the wait between sightings of Halley’s comet. And yet the coronation has yet to capture the imagination of a Britain preoccupied by other concerns.
Images of the new king — in chocolate, in Legos and in wax — are popping up in bakeries, toy stores and at Madame Tussauds wax museum. Ancient relics of coronation, like the Scottish stone of destiny, are being delivered to Westminster Abbey for the ceremony. Charles and his queen consort, Camilla, are rehearsing every step of the service in a specially staged room at Buckingham Palace.
A challenge fit for a king
On September 10, 1946, British foreign secretary Ernest Bevin remarked, “kings are pretty cheap these days.”
His comment was directed at the displaced monarchs who floated, dispossessed, around Europe, but it might also have been a dig at the ailing king George VI, who had found his métier in wartime but struggled to regain it afterwards.
The Duke of Sussex appears to have scuppered any hope of a reconciliation with his brother at the Coronation after claiming in court documents that the Prince of Wales received a secret payment from Rupert Murdoch’s company over phone hacking.
Prince William received a “huge sum” as part of a private settlement for being a victim of hacking, Prince Harry alleged in High Court papers made public on Tuesday as part of his case against the owners of the News of the World and The Sun.
Meghan Markle will not attend the coronation of her father-in-law, King Charles III, on May 6. In an interview with Oprah in 2021, Markle accused a member of the Royal family of expressing “concerns” about the potential skin color of her and Harry’s (then unborn) son.
Responding to speculation that this may have something to do with her absence, Markle’s press secretary said that, on the contrary, Markle is “going about her life in the present, not thinking about correspondence from two years ago related to conversations from four years ago.” A friend of the couple confirms that Markle has “moved on” from the race row.
