Meet the Hollywood princess
Andrew Morton’s account of Meghan Markle tells the story of a spirited heroine who overcomes life’s obstacles and conquers the world
Meghan Markle’s teacher remembers her as “one of the top-five outstanding students in my career”.
You have to wonder what happened to the other four. When Markle writes on her blog:
“My hair is primped, my face is painted, my name is recognised, my star meter is rising, my life is changing,” she is still years away from meeting Prince Harry, but has already bagged a hit television series and is on her way to founding a lifestyle site, launching herself as an international humanitarian and delivering a speech to the United Nations that gets a standing ovation from Ban Ki-moon.
That blog was anonymous, written under the title Working Actress, but is one of the invaluable sources that Andrew Morton has plundered for this biography, Meghan: A Hollywood Princess.
Morton made his name with his 1992 book on Diana, Princess of Wales ,an unrivalled coup based on tapes secretly recorded by Diana herself. There is no such access here, but times have moved on: Markle’s thoughts on everything from Donald Trump (bad) to holistic plant-based food delivery services (good) are available online, whether via television appearances, her Instagram feed or her (now defunct) website, The Tig, an aspirational guide to living your best Californian life. We learn that Markle loves the Amalfi Coast, meditation and dressing her dogs in jumpers. She “never leaves home” unless she has green juice and chia seed pudding in the fridge, which makes one worry how long she’s going out for and whether they’ll go off. A reference to “filthy, sexy mush” — surely the Meghan Markle biography we want to read — turns out to be a description of her boiled courgettes. Morton doesn’t unpick this carefully curated version of Markle’s life. Instead, he weaves it into a highly readable book that could come straight from the shelf marked “uplifting fiction”: a spirited heroine who overcomes life’s obstacles and con-
quers the world. Imagine Barbara Taylor Bradford’s A Woman of Substance
crossed with Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop.
My favourite description is of Markle flying to London for her first date with Prince Harry: “As Meghan nestled back in her seat in preparation for landing at Heathrow Airport, she had love and marriage on her mind.”
Morton has done the legwork speaking to people from her past and the first half of the book is the most compelling as it traces our heroine’s determined rise.
After a detailed family history, including the slightly strained relationships that come with divorced parents and half-siblings, we see that her passion for good works and good publicity was forged early. There is a touch of the Becky Sharp as she sets about finding fame, finally landing her big break as Rachel Zane in the US legal drama Suits.
Up to this point, the prose reads like fan fiction. Now, briefly, we get something more interesting, when her first marriage to Trevor Engelson is on the skids.
“Meghan, a selfconfessed perfectionist who was as fastidious as she was controlling,” dumps him and sends back her wedding ring by registered mail. A “networker to her fingertips”, she cuts off old friends once the Suits job elevates her to higher circles — “the Meghan chill”.
Then, we move on to Prince Harry. Morton knows as much as any other Royal watcher about the intimacies of Harry and Meghan’s romance — nothing whatsoever. “She understood him as a man, not a title,” he writes breathlessly.
What do we learn about the newest member of our Royal family? The overall impression is of a bright, caring, driven young woman who deserves everything she has.