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Kalaroga Shark Media. Hi and welcome to Palace Weekly. I
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am your host, Mark Francis. It has been a week
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in which Prince Harry and Meghan Markle pulled their two
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small children out of school after precisely two days, citing
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the security of the school run, and then, in more
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or less the same breath, posted a montage of their
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idyllic new country life so rich in identifiable landmarks that
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the internet reportedly located their house in about two and
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a half seconds. That is the whole week, really, in
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one contradiction. But there was more. Harry turned 42, Uganda
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quit the Invictus Games, and then, thanks to a retiring
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courtier Harry once nicknamed the Wasp, unquit. A lorry in
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the Netherlands was broken into and robbed of exactly four books,
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all of them copies of Charles Spencer's new Diana memoir,
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and a gossip columnist published a novel entitled crowning little
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Lilibet as queen. So the question worth holding is the
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one that Sussexes never quite answer. What does privacy actually
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mean to two people who cannot stop broadcasting it? Let's
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get into it. Start with the school, because it's the
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story that made everything else make sense. Archie, seven, and Lilibet, five,
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began at a private school in the Cotswolds and were
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withdrawn after two days. The reason, per the family, was
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the school run On the first morning, ITV's Chris Shipp reported,
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the Sussex car and the second vehicle carrying their private
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security got separated in heavy traffic near the school, leaving
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the children's car effectively stranded, while the protection team sat
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stuck several cars back. The team had tested the route
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over the summer, but the children's places were only confirmed
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in August, so no one had driven it under real term-time,
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everybody's-doing-the-school-run conditions. By the end of day one, it was
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clear it wouldn't work. The children had a trial day
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at a new school on Monday and started there Tuesday.
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There is a genuinely human cost here worth pausing on.
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Two very young children having crossed an ocean and left
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every friend they had, made to start over twice inside
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a fortnight. And there's a fair case made by broadcaster
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Benjamin Butterworth that no one uproots a five and seven
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year old on a whim. You'd only do it if
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you were seriously frightened. And the crucial difference is that
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William and Kate's children come with the full apparatus of
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state protection, while Harry's, for now, do not. But there
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was an equally fair case on the other side. Former
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MP Louise Mench noted that the Waleses take their children
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to school in this country without a single published photograph
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or any hounding at all, because that's simply what Britain does.
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And Di Davies, a former head of royal protection, asked
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the sharpest question of all. Do you really need to
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run a conspicuous two-car convoy on the school run with
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two little children? Keep a lower profile, he said, and
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you'd be safer. Robert Jobson was less gentle, suggesting Harry
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buy an alarm clock set at 45 minutes early and
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join the real world. Running underneath it, the security machinery
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finally turned over. RAVEC, the committee that decides royal protection,
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had commissioned fresh risk assessments for both Harry and Meghan,
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granted them interim protection while it works, and asked the
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couple to hand over their schedules and daily routines, the
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school run included. It does not mean automatic police protection
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is coming back. It means the question is at least
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being properly asked years after Harry lost the court fight
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over exactly this. And then the paradox arrived right on
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cue in the same days the family was fleeing one
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school over privacy and security. Meghan posted that country life montage.
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The fire, the muddy boots, the children on their bikes
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as a herd of deer crossed the path. Harry and
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the kids in a fishing boat set gloriously to Wham!
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Within hours, online sleuths were using the lake, a distinctive bridge,
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the trout, and that very herd of deer to work
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out where the family was living. Then a parent's WhatsApp
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group leaked, exposing Meghan's actual phone number. The observation wrote itself,
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and half the internet wrote it. The greatest threat to
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Meghan Markle's privacy is Meghan Markle. You cannot secure a
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school run for a family that livestreams its own address.
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More Palace in just a moment. That contradiction, wanting to
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be unseen while refusing to stop being seen, turns out
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to be the engine of the entire week. Take the
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fight over two words. Last week, the King's letter called
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the Sussexes akin to private citizens. This week, the Telegraph
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reported Harry took real exception. He'd prefer public figures, and
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is reportedly weighing whether to challenge the wording, possibly even
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legally worried it could undercut his bid for security. sit
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with that a moment, a couple demanding privacy and objecting
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to being called private. Carol Malone called it childish, Piers
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Morgan called it stinking hypocrisy, and warned of a rival
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royal family. And the friction was real enough that, according
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to News 24, Harry and Charles, who'd been speaking weekly,
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ordinary calls about the grandchildren and their schooling, have stopped
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talking directly, the king reportedly waiting for cooler heads to prevail.
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The letter's teeth, meanwhile, drew actual blood. and then didn't. Uganda,
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which had joined the Invictus Games in July, abruptly withdrew
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its military chief, saying he would not be construed as
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opposed to his majesty. For a day, it looked like
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the Sussex Soap Opera had begun devouring the one unimpeachable
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thing Harry ever built. PR man Mark Borkowski called it
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the warning, the brand beginning to consume the cause. and
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then it resolved itself in the most quietly ironic way imaginable.
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Sir Clive Alderton, the senior courtier retiring next year, the
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man in grey Harry nicknamed the Wasp in spare, simply
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got on the phone to Kampala, clarified that the King
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warmly supports veterans' causes, and Uganda came straight back. The
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hawk Harry demonised turned out to be the one who
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saved his games. On the feud itself, the news was
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that there was no news, which is its own kind
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of news. Charlotte Griffiths reported that friends who'd hoped Harry
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might have come home contrite found him exactly where he
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was in 2020, still, in her word, infuriated with the institution.
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Charles has reportedly concluded that personally nagging William to reconcile
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only makes him dig in harder, so he's outsourced the
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job to Princess Anne and the Duchess of Edinburgh, hoping
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two more voices might move the needle Kate couldn't. There
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was also the now-obligatory Camilla ultimatum in two flatly contradictory
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versions from the same outlet in the same week, one
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claiming she told Charles to choose between her and Harry,
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the other insisting she only ever wanted the private family
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kept separate from the public monarchy, both anonymous, neither confirmed,
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and together a tidy illustration of how much of this
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is simply invented to fill the space. There was, though,
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a genuine strategy visible under the noise. Tom Sykes calls
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it exposure therapy, the steady drip of low-key sightings. Meghan
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getting a coffee, Harry asking for a towel at Soho's
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farmhouse pool, designed to make the Sussexes' presence in Britain
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feel ordinary, unremarkable, boring, which is the one thing it
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never has been. The trouble is that the star of
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the strategy may not want to be here at all.
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Multiple reports had Meghan homesick within weeks, missing her mother,
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her friends, the beach, even the chickens, and Alison Boshoff
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predicting she'll shuttle back to Montecito every half-term and holiday,
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doing five-week stretches in what one source unkindly called her
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Cotswolds Prison. A woman drip-feeding proof she's settled in while
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quietly booking flights home is the privacy paradox in yet
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another costume. More Palace in just a moment. Which brings
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us to the version of the privacy paradox that actually aches, Diana.
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Harry is reportedly developing a documentary about his mother ahead
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of next year's 30th anniversary, provisionally titled Diana, The Unheard Truth,
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said to be built around previously unreleased recordings of her,
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and quietly approaching her old friends to take part. To William,
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according to multiple accounts, this lands as a posthumous invasion
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of his mother's privacy, and worse, a commercialization of her,
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the airing of her most private pain, nearly 30 years
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on for a streaming check. The brothers made a documentary
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about Diana together in 2017, back when they were still speaking,
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that Richard Kay noted was the last time they were
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truly in step. Now even their mother, has become contested territory.
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William feeling, as one broadcaster put it, that Diana's legacy
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should exist without being brought to life for the Sussexes
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to step into her shoes. It's sharpened into a real
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incident this week. A Diana Award fundraising dinner had reportedly
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been booked for the 18th. Tom Sykes says an event
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genuinely was in development, a performer lined up, and it
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was quietly cancelled. Sykes and others tie the collapse to
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Meghan that she was keen to attend, had reportedly begun
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approaching British designers to dress her, arrived with a list
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of what one commentator called superficial asks, and that William
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simply would not have his mother's memory used, in Sykes' phrase,
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as a relaunch pad for Meghan in Britain. Whatever the
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precise truth, the shape is unmistakable, a charity in Diana's name,
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folding under the weight of her son's inability to be
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in the same room, and hanging over all of it
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the strangest footnote of the week, four copies of Charles
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Spencer's Diana memoir, and nothing else, stolen from a lorry
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in a Dutch lay-by days before publication. Someone, somewhere, wanted
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to read it first. Now the counterweight, because one brother
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had a genuinely lovely week. While the tabloids insisted, as
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they always do, that William was raging about Harry, William
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himself was on Dartmoor being introduced to two alpacas named
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Treacle and Noodle, asking their owner with visible delight whether
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they were allowed in the house. He was praised for
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quiet diplomacy, representing the king at Norway's royal funeral, walking
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to in step with Princess Anne rather than ahead of her.
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He and Kate visited the Isle of Bute he published
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an essay on the climate calling for what he termed
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urgent optimism and on Tuesday he'll walk a red carpet
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with Tom Cruise the same day as it happens that
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Harry appears at the Clinton's summit in New York which
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should make for a tidy tabloid split screen. Somewhere in there,
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Daniela also watched Kate open the working year in a
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sharp suit in Liverpool and dubbed her the business princess.
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Chekhov's show-don't-tell made flesh. While the Sussexes narrate, the Waleses
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simply appear. The recurring joke of this program is that
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William is reported to be furious roughly every 11 minutes.
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This week, he mostly seemed to be having the time
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of his life with a couple of alpacas. Harry, for
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his part, launches his own British autumn this month, and
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it is anything but low-key. the Wellchild Awards, the inaugural
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Invictus Spirit Awards, and, the least private gesture available to
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a man asking for privacy, a charity skydive before flying
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to New York for the Clinton's summit. Elsa framed the
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coming collision precisely. Who would you rather read about? A
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princess competently cutting a ribbon, or a duke hurling himself
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out of an airplane? That is the whales' whole problem
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in a sentence. They have professionalized the quiet, dutiful version
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of the job, The Sussexes generate melodrama, the way plants
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make oxygen, and melodrama tragically sells. And the rest, briefly
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and more happily, King Charles got to keep his two
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Hungarian horses, after Budapest sent a strongly worded letter demanding
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their return, then admitted the letter had been worded inaccurately,
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then discovered the paperwork had recorded the coronation gift as
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a loan, leaving officials in a sentence for the ages,
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working to ensure that the gift is truly a gift.
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Rob Shooter published a novel imagining a Balmoral helicopter disaster
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that ends with Lilibet crowned Queen Elizabeth III. A premise
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palace figures reportedly want to read early and won't be
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allowed to, and which our own count of the succession
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suggests would require the near-simultaneous removal of seven people ahead
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of her, plus any children they might have had by then,
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it is, we can confirm, extremely unlikely. And Ricky Gervais
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asked whether he'd accept a knighthood, said he might do
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it purely to annoy the people it would annoy, which is,
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when you think about it, the most royal reason imaginable.
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The Yorks, meanwhile, kept enduring, downward. Sarah Ferguson, reportedly holed
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up with Eugenie in Portugal, is said to want to
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face-to-face with Charles to ask, in effect, whether there's any
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road back at all, having watched her entire support system vanish.
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And a former Royal Protection officer, Paul Page, said he
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has lodged a written statement with the FBI alleging that
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security procedures were relaxed for women visiting Andrew at Buckingham Palace,
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Ghislaine Maxwell among them. Andrew has always denied wrongdoing, Paige
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has a flawed conviction of his own, which is the
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sort of detail that tends to matter when a witness
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comes forward, and none of it as ever has been established.
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The story simply refuses to end. So where does the
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week leave us? With a family that pulled its children
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out of school to be unseen, and filmed them for
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the world the same week, that demands privacy and rejects
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the word private, that wants to honour a mother's memory
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and some fear to sell it, the truth the Sussexes
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keep circling, is that they never really wanted privacy at all.
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They wanted control of their own exposure, which is a
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different thing, and an impossible one. And the cruelest irony
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sits right at the centre. The one person in this
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whole story who truly lost her privacy, utterly and finally,
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was Diana. 29 years on, her two sons spent this
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week at war over what's left of it. One determined
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to guard it, one determined to publish it, and neither
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it seems able simply to let her rest. And they
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haven't If you'd like to email us, our address is
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thepalaceintrigue at gmail.com. If you're on Spotify, leave us a comment.
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says listen uninterrupted and get the show commercial free for
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five bucks a month. We appreciate your support. I'm Mark Francis.
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My thanks to John McDermott. This is Palace Weekly. Good times.