July 26, 2026

Was William "Furious" About a Tiara? The Camilla Wedding Snub Story, Meghan's Reported Spending Ultimatum for Harry.

Show Notes
Transcript

WILLIAM WAS REPORTEDLY "FURIOUS" AGAIN — THIS TIME OVER A TIARA — IN A WEEK THE ROYALS BARELY MOVED AND THE PRESS INVENTED THE REST.

Mark Francis on a week made almost entirely of anonymous stories: the claim that Camilla refused Peter Phillips's bride a tiara, reports that Meghan is pushing Harry to rein in his spending and his UK trips, and the tabloid habit of calling William "furious" no matter what he does. Plus the one story with real weight — the King's quietly rewritten role in the Sovereign Grant report — a warmer glimpse of Charles and Camilla, and a stack of Diana's own honeymoon letters that cut through nearly thirty years of conspiracy invention.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/palace-intrigue-king-charles-meghan-markle-and-all-the-royal-family-gossip--4522904/support.

Palace Intrigue is a daily British royal family podcast covering King Charles, Meghan Markle, Prince Harry, Kate Middleton and the House of Windsor. New episodes every day. Follow on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. Part of the Caloroga Shark Media network.

WEBVTT

1
00:00:00.200 --> 00:00:12.000
Ah Caloroga Shark media that low and welcome to Palace Weekly.

2
00:00:12.039 --> 00:00:14.839
I am in post Mark Francis. It's been a week

3
00:00:14.839 --> 00:00:18.239
in which almost nothing happened and a truly heroic quantity

4
00:00:18.239 --> 00:00:21.600
of words were spent describing it. Prince William was reported

5
00:00:21.600 --> 00:00:24.440
to be furious about a tiara, Meghan was reported to

6
00:00:24.480 --> 00:00:27.600
be ordering Harry to stop tipping so generously. A memoir

7
00:00:27.640 --> 00:00:31.480
confirmed that Prince Edward is and I quote definitely not gay.

8
00:00:31.920 --> 00:00:34.159
A former housekeeper revealed that the secret to landing a

9
00:00:34.240 --> 00:00:36.920
royal job is spotting a dead fly on the carpet,

10
00:00:37.280 --> 00:00:40.479
and a branding expert offered Meghan's strategic advice she did

11
00:00:40.520 --> 00:00:43.920
not ask for the summer as ever delivers. So here's

12
00:00:43.920 --> 00:00:45.600
the question I want to hold on to for the

13
00:00:45.640 --> 00:00:47.320
rest of this show, because it's the one the week

14
00:00:47.439 --> 00:00:50.600
keeps circling back to. When the Royals do very little.

15
00:00:50.679 --> 00:00:54.039
What exactly are we talking about? And the uncomfortable answer

16
00:00:54.079 --> 00:00:58.479
most weeks is ourselves. The Palace has finished quietly rewriting

17
00:00:58.520 --> 00:01:01.320
the description of the King's role. Last year, the Sovereign

18
00:01:01.359 --> 00:01:04.519
Grant Report called him Head of the Church of England

19
00:01:04.519 --> 00:01:07.719
and defender of the faith. This year, he is Supreme

20
00:01:07.760 --> 00:01:11.120
Governor of the Church of England, a man who protects

21
00:01:11.200 --> 00:01:15.760
the space for faith within the multi faith nation. Those

22
00:01:15.799 --> 00:01:18.439
two phrasings sound like a small edit. They are not.

23
00:01:18.840 --> 00:01:21.879
The title Supreme Governor was deliberately chosen back in the

24
00:01:21.920 --> 00:01:25.719
reign of Elizabeth I, precisely because it avoided implying the

25
00:01:25.760 --> 00:01:30.640
monarch held spiritual authority over the Church. The sovereign guards

26
00:01:30.719 --> 00:01:35.280
the church's constitutional position, while the bishops handle the actual religion.

27
00:01:35.799 --> 00:01:38.959
So this is old, careful language, and Charles has spent

28
00:01:39.000 --> 00:01:42.239
his whole life poking at its edges. You may remember

29
00:01:42.280 --> 00:01:46.280
that in a nineteen ninety four documentary with Jonathan Dimbleby,

30
00:01:46.840 --> 00:01:49.480
the then Prince amused that he might prefer to be

31
00:01:49.959 --> 00:01:53.040
defender of the divine rather than defender of the faith.

32
00:01:53.640 --> 00:01:57.400
Not a missing word, a different word entirely. To most listeners,

33
00:01:57.439 --> 00:02:01.040
it sounded like gentle royal philosophy. To institutional scholars, it

34
00:02:01.079 --> 00:02:05.560
sounded like someone quietly suggesting the whole arrangement might be negotiable.

35
00:02:06.680 --> 00:02:10.199
The whole arrangement might be negotiable given that the coronation

36
00:02:10.280 --> 00:02:12.719
oath is fixed by an Act of Parliament dating to

37
00:02:12.919 --> 00:02:17.039
sixteen eighty eight and cannot simply be updated on a whim.

38
00:02:17.240 --> 00:02:20.919
Charles always insisted he'd been misunderstood that he wanted to

39
00:02:20.960 --> 00:02:24.800
be a protector of faiths alongside defending the established Church,

40
00:02:25.280 --> 00:02:28.360
not instead of it. His coronation in twenty twenty three

41
00:02:28.479 --> 00:02:31.639
formally settled it. He took the oath, he was proclaimed

42
00:02:31.680 --> 00:02:34.639
Defender of the Faith, and the Archbishop of Canterbury added

43
00:02:34.680 --> 00:02:38.159
a careful little preface about fostering an environment where people

44
00:02:38.159 --> 00:02:41.840
of all faiths may live freely. The words stay the same,

45
00:02:42.400 --> 00:02:45.560
the frame around them shifted just slightly to acknowledge the

46
00:02:45.560 --> 00:02:48.680
country that now exists rather than one. The oath was

47
00:02:48.719 --> 00:02:53.879
written for a very British solution. Nobody entirely satisfied, nobody

48
00:02:54.039 --> 00:02:58.520
entirely displeased, And that really is the same question England

49
00:02:58.520 --> 00:03:01.439
has been quietly arguing since Henry the eighth was first

50
00:03:01.520 --> 00:03:04.240
handed the title Defender of the Faith by Pope Leo

51
00:03:04.319 --> 00:03:07.360
the tenth and fifteen twenty one. Who defends the faith?

52
00:03:07.479 --> 00:03:11.039
Which faith? And what defending it actually requires? Even the

53
00:03:11.039 --> 00:03:15.120
Week's most substantial story was on inspection five centuries old

54
00:03:15.960 --> 00:03:19.560
now to the manufactured version of exactly the same activity,

55
00:03:20.039 --> 00:03:23.879
the tabloids deciding what the royals mean royal insight of

56
00:03:23.919 --> 00:03:26.439
deep Crown said, the quiet part out loud this week,

57
00:03:26.479 --> 00:03:28.560
and I want to give it room because it is

58
00:03:28.680 --> 00:03:33.599
essentially this show's entire thesis articulated by someone else. If

59
00:03:33.639 --> 00:03:36.360
you gathered every story published about the Prince of Wales

60
00:03:36.400 --> 00:03:39.319
in the last three years in which an unnamed source

61
00:03:39.439 --> 00:03:43.319
described his emotional state, Deep Crown wrote, you would picture

62
00:03:43.360 --> 00:03:46.479
a man in a condition of near perpetual white hot

63
00:03:46.599 --> 00:03:50.800
volcanic fury, pacing the corridors of Kensington Palace at midnight,

64
00:03:50.960 --> 00:03:55.680
rattling the wainscotting, frightening the staff. The English language, he noted,

65
00:03:55.719 --> 00:04:00.639
offers a magnificent range of words for human displeasure, vexed, agree, peaked,

66
00:04:00.759 --> 00:04:04.199
put out, rankled, And the tabloid press has surveyed all

67
00:04:04.199 --> 00:04:07.719
of it and decided unanimously and apparently forever, to pitch

68
00:04:07.719 --> 00:04:12.680
its tent on furious and never leave his theory, And

69
00:04:12.840 --> 00:04:14.960
it is not a flattering one for the press. Is

70
00:04:14.960 --> 00:04:18.360
that furious keeps Harry relevant. If William is furious, it

71
00:04:18.360 --> 00:04:20.680
means Harry got to him. The wound is fresh, the

72
00:04:20.759 --> 00:04:23.680
drama is live. But what if the truer word is

73
00:04:23.720 --> 00:04:27.160
that William has with some discipline, simply moved on. That

74
00:04:27.279 --> 00:04:30.439
is a far less exciting story, that is almost no

75
00:04:30.600 --> 00:04:34.519
story at all, and so we get furious instead. Deep

76
00:04:34.560 --> 00:04:36.759
Crownd says, the people who have actually been near William

77
00:04:36.839 --> 00:04:42.160
lately use different words indifferent, detached, and from one who's

78
00:04:42.160 --> 00:04:45.959
known him for years, he's moved on. He's genuinely moved on,

79
00:04:47.560 --> 00:04:51.360
right on. Q the Weak supplied exhibit a Radar Online

80
00:04:51.399 --> 00:04:54.199
reporter that William was yet furious this time because Queen

81
00:04:54.199 --> 00:04:57.720
Camilla allegedly refused to let Peter Phillips bride Harriet Spurling

82
00:04:58.000 --> 00:05:00.199
borrow a tiara from the royal vault on the ground

83
00:05:00.240 --> 00:05:03.120
that she isn't royal by blood. An unnamed sore said

84
00:05:03.120 --> 00:05:06.399
William was disgusted Camilla would stir up trouble to show

85
00:05:06.399 --> 00:05:09.920
off her power. For context, Peter's first wife wore one

86
00:05:09.920 --> 00:05:12.439
of Princess Anne's tiaras in two thousand and eight, and

87
00:05:12.560 --> 00:05:15.720
Zara borrowed another of ants for her wedding in twenty eleven.

88
00:05:16.079 --> 00:05:18.959
So there is a genuine precedent buried in here somewhere,

89
00:05:19.199 --> 00:05:23.279
But the claim is anonymous, unconfirmed, denied by nobody, because

90
00:05:23.279 --> 00:05:25.959
it was put to nobody and arrives pre loaded with

91
00:05:26.319 --> 00:05:30.079
the only adjective the press permits itself. Harriet, in the

92
00:05:30.199 --> 00:05:32.920
end married without a tiara, and the world kept turning.

93
00:05:33.839 --> 00:05:36.560
Even the advice columns joined the in. Nadine Dorries in

94
00:05:36.639 --> 00:05:39.720
the Daily Mail suggested William consult his mother in law,

95
00:05:39.800 --> 00:05:42.519
Carol Middleton, on the grounds that Carol has her own

96
00:05:42.639 --> 00:05:47.120
wayward younger sibling, naughty uncle Gary Goldsmith four times married

97
00:05:47.240 --> 00:05:50.000
a man of some tabloid history, and did not banish

98
00:05:50.040 --> 00:05:52.920
him from the family when Kate married in Gary attended

99
00:05:52.920 --> 00:05:57.040
the twenty eleven wedding. Put your pride aside, Dorries advised

100
00:05:57.040 --> 00:05:59.720
the future king, and you may just get your brother back.

101
00:06:00.319 --> 00:06:04.519
Sound counsel. Perhaps also an entire national newspaper column instructing

102
00:06:04.519 --> 00:06:07.000
a man on how to feel about his family based

103
00:06:07.040 --> 00:06:10.279
on nothing he has said or palancing just a moment.

104
00:06:14.639 --> 00:06:17.560
Which brings us to the Sussexes, who this week generated

105
00:06:17.600 --> 00:06:21.040
an enormous amount of coverage and almost no actual facts,

106
00:06:21.160 --> 00:06:26.120
a distinction that, as we've established, rarely slows anyone down close.

107
00:06:26.160 --> 00:06:28.240
It reported that Megan is pushing Harry to cut away

108
00:06:28.279 --> 00:06:30.839
back on his trips to Britain on the reasonable sounding

109
00:06:30.839 --> 00:06:32.680
grounds that the bills are huge and there's nothing to

110
00:06:32.720 --> 00:06:36.040
show for it. The same unnamed source extended this into

111
00:06:36.079 --> 00:06:39.680
a general austerity drive. Harry is apparently a very generous

112
00:06:39.720 --> 00:06:42.800
man who loves to leave outrageous tips and lend money

113
00:06:42.800 --> 00:06:45.879
to friends no questions asked, and is now in district

114
00:06:45.959 --> 00:06:48.800
orders to think twice about opening his wallet. I have

115
00:06:48.879 --> 00:06:51.399
no idea whether any of this is true. Neither, i'd

116
00:06:51.399 --> 00:06:53.839
wager does the source. But it is a tidy little

117
00:06:53.879 --> 00:06:56.560
story because it lets you picture and Megan confiscating the

118
00:06:56.600 --> 00:07:01.120
credit card, and the pictures of what these stories are for. Meanwhile,

119
00:07:01.199 --> 00:07:04.519
Duncan Larcom, Writing and Woman Magazine reported that Harry's estrangement

120
00:07:04.600 --> 00:07:07.120
now reportedly extends past his father and brother to the

121
00:07:07.160 --> 00:07:10.879
wider cousinhood that this one's close friendship with Zara Tyndall has,

122
00:07:10.959 --> 00:07:14.639
in Larcom's phrase, almost entirely evaporated. This is the man

123
00:07:14.680 --> 00:07:17.519
who is often credited with introducing Zara to Mike Tindall

124
00:07:17.560 --> 00:07:20.079
at the two thousand and three Rugby World Cup, and

125
00:07:20.160 --> 00:07:23.680
who was, apart from a student cousin with university commitments,

126
00:07:23.920 --> 00:07:27.800
the only royal cousin absent from Peter Phillips Recent's wedding evaccurate.

127
00:07:27.839 --> 00:07:31.160
That's genuinely sad if sourced the way everything else this

128
00:07:31.319 --> 00:07:35.079
week was sourced as a shrug in dinner jacket. Then

129
00:07:35.120 --> 00:07:39.720
the recycling bin Radar Online revived speculation of a documentary

130
00:07:39.759 --> 00:07:43.120
that has not been announced about a Diana anniversary still

131
00:07:43.160 --> 00:07:46.720
a year away, that Harry is second Megan might feature

132
00:07:46.759 --> 00:07:49.879
in any thirtieth anniversary tribute to his mother, and that

133
00:07:49.879 --> 00:07:52.680
women is deeply irritated by Harry's habit of comparing his

134
00:07:52.680 --> 00:07:56.399
wife to Diana. The comparison is real. Harry did say

135
00:07:56.639 --> 00:07:59.759
back in the twenty twenty two Netflix series that so

136
00:07:59.839 --> 00:08:03.319
much of whom Megan is echoes his mother's compassion and warmth.

137
00:08:03.839 --> 00:08:06.199
Everything built on top of it. This week was anonymous,

138
00:08:06.519 --> 00:08:09.120
and Hello offered the tender code of that Archie a

139
00:08:09.120 --> 00:08:11.720
little bit. Reportedly, don't grasp who the Royal family are

140
00:08:11.839 --> 00:08:15.240
at all, being raised as normal kids, though young Archie

141
00:08:15.279 --> 00:08:18.959
apparently loves that his granddad lives in the castle. Broadcaster

142
00:08:19.079 --> 00:08:22.639
Kirsty also predicted that in about twelve years these children

143
00:08:22.759 --> 00:08:26.480
will rebel and bitterly resent the British life taken from them,

144
00:08:26.800 --> 00:08:29.480
which is a bold forecast to make about the interior

145
00:08:29.560 --> 00:08:33.440
lives of a six and a five year old. If

146
00:08:33.480 --> 00:08:36.440
you want the sober version of all this, Tessa Dunlop

147
00:08:36.480 --> 00:08:39.240
supplied it in The Independent, and it's worth hearing because

148
00:08:39.240 --> 00:08:42.200
it cuts against the sentiment. Harry, she wrote, is on

149
00:08:42.240 --> 00:08:44.840
a losing streak that may get worse, and the naive

150
00:08:44.919 --> 00:08:47.440
among us who hoped Childs would give his stubborn, grieving

151
00:08:47.480 --> 00:08:52.000
son a soft landing are misreading the institution entirely. The

152
00:08:52.000 --> 00:08:56.720
monarchy has survived revolution, regicide and abdication precisely by not

153
00:08:56.759 --> 00:08:59.320
taking risks with the leaky prince who will very soon

154
00:08:59.360 --> 00:09:02.799
be yesterday's news. She's harsh about it. She notes the

155
00:09:02.840 --> 00:09:05.600
relationship between Charles and Harry was never especially close by

156
00:09:05.720 --> 00:09:09.279
ordinary standards, given the boarding schools and the legions of staff.

157
00:09:09.440 --> 00:09:11.960
But she's making the honest point that the family is

158
00:09:11.960 --> 00:09:15.120
not obliged to be a soft touch, and the conservative press,

159
00:09:15.320 --> 00:09:20.480
the monarchy's lifeblood, is frankly enjoying the spectacle. And here's

160
00:09:20.519 --> 00:09:23.399
the line that ties the whole Sussex circus back to

161
00:09:23.440 --> 00:09:25.919
the top of the show. A friend of Diana told

162
00:09:26.000 --> 00:09:28.600
Rob Shooter this week that the late princess would have

163
00:09:28.639 --> 00:09:31.759
handled the press very differently from her youngest son, that

164
00:09:31.879 --> 00:09:35.360
Diana never saw every journalist as the enemy, that she

165
00:09:35.440 --> 00:09:39.360
built relationships with correspondence, she trusted and played the long game,

166
00:09:39.799 --> 00:09:42.519
that she'd been disappointed by the path Harry has chosen,

167
00:09:43.120 --> 00:09:46.600
declaring war on the media rather than learning to manage it.

168
00:09:46.960 --> 00:09:50.679
Whether or not that friend exists, the observation lands because

169
00:09:50.720 --> 00:09:53.960
it's the difference between someone who understood she was inside

170
00:09:54.000 --> 00:09:56.559
a story and someone still trying to sue his way

171
00:09:56.879 --> 00:10:01.080
out of one. Catherine Mayer put the broadcast frame on

172
00:10:01.200 --> 00:10:05.080
it in Iron News, arguing provocatively that Britain actually needs Meghan.

173
00:10:05.320 --> 00:10:08.159
Throughout history, she wrote, Royal women have been pitted against

174
00:10:08.159 --> 00:10:12.720
each other and Blim versus Catherine of Aragon, Diana versus Camilla,

175
00:10:12.799 --> 00:10:15.840
and now the cartoon Kate versus the cartoon Megan, each

176
00:10:15.960 --> 00:10:19.200
strapped to a set of values she never volunteered for.

177
00:10:19.679 --> 00:10:22.519
An entire economy of hate has grown up around the Sussexes,

178
00:10:22.879 --> 00:10:25.559
Meyer argues, and the monarchy, which can only add to

179
00:10:25.600 --> 00:10:28.480
its balcony through marriage or birth, has just lost Andrew

180
00:10:28.720 --> 00:10:31.720
and it's putting short of working. Royals might one day

181
00:10:31.759 --> 00:10:34.799
regret failing to keep the people who saw themselves reflected

182
00:10:34.840 --> 00:10:37.279
in Megan, you needn't agree with a word of it

183
00:10:37.320 --> 00:10:40.360
to notice it's the same machinery deep Crownd described viewed

184
00:10:40.399 --> 00:10:43.080
from the other end, more palace in just a moment,

185
00:10:47.320 --> 00:10:49.399
Now to the good stuff, because the gaps between all

186
00:10:49.440 --> 00:10:52.639
that invention a handful of genuinely real moments slipped through,

187
00:10:52.960 --> 00:10:55.159
the ones where you actually glimpse a person rather than

188
00:10:55.200 --> 00:10:59.360
a narrative. Start with the King laughing. Dame Elaine Page

189
00:10:59.399 --> 00:11:02.559
received her damehood at Windsor this week, and, being, as

190
00:11:02.559 --> 00:11:05.279
she put it, particularly short, she found the King up

191
00:11:05.320 --> 00:11:07.759
on a dais, leaning down beside her ear to murmur

192
00:11:08.240 --> 00:11:10.639
keeping your hand in, are you? She shot back that

193
00:11:10.679 --> 00:11:12.840
she's working on a new album and would send him

194
00:11:12.840 --> 00:11:15.159
a signed copy, and Charles, by her account, roared with

195
00:11:15.320 --> 00:11:19.480
laughter loudly enough to break the choreography of an investiture.

196
00:11:19.879 --> 00:11:22.879
She shared the ceremony with David Beckham, collecting his knighthood.

197
00:11:23.000 --> 00:11:26.159
Camilla separately has sent her a message for the Olivier Awards,

198
00:11:26.200 --> 00:11:29.840
calling her a defining figure in musical theater. It is

199
00:11:29.879 --> 00:11:31.879
a small thing, and it's also the most human the

200
00:11:31.919 --> 00:11:35.080
monarchy got all week, and speaking of the marriage at

201
00:11:35.080 --> 00:11:37.840
the center of it, the King, according to Giles Brandreth

202
00:11:37.919 --> 00:11:42.960
sometimes calls Camilla Mebuba, an Urdu word meaning my beloved,

203
00:11:43.600 --> 00:11:46.919
a nod to his decades of visits to India and Pakistan,

204
00:11:47.279 --> 00:11:49.600
and he's used it in public at a British Asian

205
00:11:49.639 --> 00:11:52.879
Trust event no less. Robert Hartman adds that friends have

206
00:11:53.000 --> 00:11:57.480
jokingly called Camilla Lorraine the Punton la Rain the Queen,

207
00:11:58.120 --> 00:12:00.679
a joke she found funny and Charles parent did not.

208
00:12:01.279 --> 00:12:04.200
The sister Annabel Elliott describes them as Yin and Yang,

209
00:12:04.759 --> 00:12:08.000
polar opposites who work brilliantly, and calls Camilla his rock.

210
00:12:08.600 --> 00:12:10.679
Camilla's own explanation for a marriage that took a very

211
00:12:10.679 --> 00:12:13.639
long and very public road to get here is disarmingly plain.

212
00:12:13.960 --> 00:12:17.399
It's just sort of friendship, really laughing at the same things,

213
00:12:17.519 --> 00:12:20.879
getting on with life. Two memoirs opened the same window

214
00:12:20.919 --> 00:12:23.639
from further back. Ruthie Henshall, the West End Star, has

215
00:12:23.639 --> 00:12:26.279
written about dating Prince Edward from nineteen eighty eight to

216
00:12:26.399 --> 00:12:29.159
nineteen ninety three, and her account of a bow moral

217
00:12:29.200 --> 00:12:32.720
weekend is all removable, washable sofa covers and dogs everywhere,

218
00:12:32.720 --> 00:12:35.519
and the Queen, the actual Queen, perched on the arms

219
00:12:35.519 --> 00:12:37.960
of her sofa like any other mother face lighting up

220
00:12:37.960 --> 00:12:40.519
when Edward walked in, throwing her arms around him to

221
00:12:40.519 --> 00:12:43.519
talk about horses and wildlife. Henschell was struck by how

222
00:12:43.559 --> 00:12:46.720
informal they all were, right down to sneaking into palace

223
00:12:46.759 --> 00:12:49.919
cupboards for biccardi and coke. She also felt the need

224
00:12:49.960 --> 00:12:54.559
to record for the historical Archive that Edward was romantic gentlemen.

225
00:12:54.919 --> 00:13:00.879
Her capital is not mine, definitely not gay, noted Former

226
00:13:00.960 --> 00:13:04.399
Royal chef Darren McGrady offered the same contrast in dessert form.

227
00:13:04.600 --> 00:13:07.679
When young William wanted chocolate ice cream at Buckingham Palace,

228
00:13:08.039 --> 00:13:10.200
the Queen would press a button some of the page

229
00:13:10.279 --> 00:13:12.519
in seat of a twenty minute relay through the head chef,

230
00:13:12.799 --> 00:13:16.080
the pastry chef, the silver pantry, the glass pantry, and

231
00:13:16.120 --> 00:13:19.159
the linen room. At Kensington, William would wander into the

232
00:13:19.240 --> 00:13:22.720
kitchen and ask McGrady directly, be told, help yourself and

233
00:13:22.840 --> 00:13:25.559
go sit on the windowsill, eating Hagan dance from the tub.

234
00:13:26.360 --> 00:13:29.919
The Queen loved dark chocolate sixty percent and up. Charles,

235
00:13:29.919 --> 00:13:32.120
for the record, doesn't like chocolate at all. He'd rather

236
00:13:32.159 --> 00:13:34.799
have an orange olive oil tea cakeer, a slice of

237
00:13:34.799 --> 00:13:39.159
banana bread. The whole institution in one freezer. The most

238
00:13:39.240 --> 00:13:41.759
quietly affecting thing this week came from a new biography

239
00:13:41.759 --> 00:13:44.240
by Tom Quinn, and it belongs right under Deep Crown's

240
00:13:44.320 --> 00:13:48.200
argument about Furious. A former Kensington Palace maid claims Kate

241
00:13:48.240 --> 00:13:50.320
had to teach William some of the ordinary business of

242
00:13:50.360 --> 00:13:53.759
parenting out of the children a piggyback, and that William said,

243
00:13:53.840 --> 00:13:57.159
very quietly, my father never gave me a piggyback. The

244
00:13:57.200 --> 00:13:59.559
same book describes Charles and William as two men who

245
00:13:59.559 --> 00:14:02.879
both get irritated quickly, who are picky, and it credits

246
00:14:02.960 --> 00:14:06.559
Kater's the household's peacemaker, the one who calms William when

247
00:14:06.559 --> 00:14:09.919
he gets fractious, the one who supposedly said he sometimes

248
00:14:09.960 --> 00:14:12.559
has to be treated as her fourth child. Read that

249
00:14:12.600 --> 00:14:14.600
next to a week of headlines calling him furious, and

250
00:14:14.639 --> 00:14:17.879
you get the real sympathetic version underneath the invented one.

251
00:14:18.200 --> 00:14:20.879
Not a raging air rattling with the wainscoting, just an

252
00:14:20.919 --> 00:14:24.360
occasionally touchy man who grew up without piggybacks and married

253
00:14:24.399 --> 00:14:27.440
someone who steadies him. That's not a scandal. It's a person,

254
00:14:28.679 --> 00:14:30.519
and you can see that person in the work he

255
00:14:30.600 --> 00:14:33.759
actually does. I knuse Vicky Spratt spent three years following

256
00:14:33.799 --> 00:14:39.320
William's homewards project Newport, then Sheffield alongside Gordon Brown, then Aberdeen,

257
00:14:39.320 --> 00:14:42.200
where a young woman named Erin, newly housed after becoming

258
00:14:42.200 --> 00:14:45.200
homeless through a relationship breakdown, said she'd felt like a

259
00:14:45.200 --> 00:14:47.639
bird and now felt safe enough to properly show up

260
00:14:47.639 --> 00:14:51.200
for her own life. Spratt's blunt assessment is that with

261
00:14:51.279 --> 00:14:53.519
more than one hundred and thirty four thousand households in

262
00:14:53.559 --> 00:14:57.559
England stuck in temporary accommodation and rough sleeping in London

263
00:14:57.559 --> 00:15:00.399
at record highs, the future King is in affair, doing

264
00:15:00.399 --> 00:15:04.279
the government's job, and doing it rather well. No, anonymous

265
00:15:04.279 --> 00:15:07.399
sources required just a man carrying furniture up three flights

266
00:15:07.399 --> 00:15:11.480
of stairs. The odds and ends were as ever the

267
00:15:11.559 --> 00:15:14.480
fun bit. George starts at Eton with what one source

268
00:15:14.519 --> 00:15:17.919
called a ring of steel, drone monitoring teams on the rooftops,

269
00:15:18.200 --> 00:15:21.320
the perennial impossible brief of keeping a boy both safe

270
00:15:21.320 --> 00:15:25.000
and normal. A fashion columnist crowned William the style icon

271
00:15:25.039 --> 00:15:27.759
for the radical achievement of owning trousers that fit and

272
00:15:27.799 --> 00:15:30.960
declining to wear a quarter zip under every jacket, and

273
00:15:31.039 --> 00:15:34.559
a former royal recruiter revealed her favorite interview trick, leaving

274
00:15:34.600 --> 00:15:36.240
a dead fly on the carpet to see whether the

275
00:15:36.279 --> 00:15:39.559
candidate notices picks it up. One in ten does that,

276
00:15:39.679 --> 00:15:43.679
apparently is the special Housekeeper, which leaves Diana and I

277
00:15:43.679 --> 00:15:45.639
want to end there because the two got very different

278
00:15:45.720 --> 00:15:47.919
treatments this week, and the gap between them is the

279
00:15:47.919 --> 00:15:51.679
whole point of this episode. One treatment was the sludge

280
00:15:51.919 --> 00:15:55.279
Radar online and others review the machinery. The French case

281
00:15:55.320 --> 00:15:59.200
file sealed until twenty eighty two, which stinks of a coverer,

282
00:15:59.360 --> 00:16:02.519
an x I six officers claims about strobe lights in

283
00:16:02.559 --> 00:16:05.600
a missing hour, Keith Allen insisting she was murdered over

284
00:16:05.679 --> 00:16:09.559
land mines, and the self described spiritual adviser recasting Diana

285
00:16:09.600 --> 00:16:13.039
as a white witch bearing gemstones in the Kensington Gardens

286
00:16:13.720 --> 00:16:16.000
for the record, The official investigation in both France and

287
00:16:16.039 --> 00:16:18.600
Britain concluded the crash was caused by a drunk driver

288
00:16:18.679 --> 00:16:22.120
going too fast while pursued by paparazzi, and found no

289
00:16:22.159 --> 00:16:25.559
evidence of MI six, the royal family or the government.

290
00:16:25.799 --> 00:16:29.639
Nearly thirty years on, the invention machine still runs. The

291
00:16:29.720 --> 00:16:32.039
other treatment was real and it was just a stack

292
00:16:32.080 --> 00:16:35.679
of old letters. Diana's school friend Katherine Hanbury is selling

293
00:16:35.759 --> 00:16:38.399
letters and photographs she's kept in the desk drawer for

294
00:16:38.399 --> 00:16:40.919
forty five years. And the young woman in them is

295
00:16:40.960 --> 00:16:43.000
not a witch or a conspiracy or a foil in

296
00:16:43.039 --> 00:16:46.559
anyone's culture war. She's a hopeful girl who thought she

297
00:16:46.600 --> 00:16:49.240
had met her prince and wrote home from her nineteen

298
00:16:49.240 --> 00:16:52.679
eighty one honeymoon about blissful sun and calm seas, who

299
00:16:52.679 --> 00:16:55.559
confessed she adored being outside all day and hated London,

300
00:16:55.919 --> 00:16:58.639
who said being married was wonderful and that royal life

301
00:16:58.639 --> 00:17:02.080
felt like playing with growener. She loved tidy in rooms

302
00:17:02.080 --> 00:17:06.279
and organizing drawers. She was, in Hanbury's words, the real deal,

303
00:17:06.759 --> 00:17:09.039
someone who never tried to be anything other than her

304
00:17:09.079 --> 00:17:12.000
real self. I don't think there will ever be anybody

305
00:17:12.400 --> 00:17:15.759
like her. That's the one worth keeping, Not the version

306
00:17:15.759 --> 00:17:18.799
we invent when nothing happens, The real one, in her

307
00:17:18.839 --> 00:17:22.319
own handwriting, before any of us decide what she meant,

308
00:17:23.400 --> 00:17:26.400
go give you a kit. A piggyback by my France

309
00:17:26.440 --> 00:17:28.839
has been thanks to John McDermot. This is Palace Weeklygan

310
00:17:29.519 --> 00:17:30.160
good terms

Was William "Furious" About a Tiara? The Camilla Wedding Snub Story, Meghan's Reported Spending Ultimatum for Harry.

Listen On

Recent Episodes