Ephraim Hardcastle
MIGHT the Queen fear for the future of her beloved Balmoral under Nicola Sturgeon’s Scottish independence ambitions? Sturgeon’s SNP needs Green Party support to press ahead with severance from the UK. Greens co-leader Patrick Harvie, calling the monarchy ‘outdated’ and ‘discredited’, seems to have a covetous eye on Balmoral. ‘Royal shooting and hunting estates can be put to better use serving the local communities and creating more jobs,’ he says menacingly. Queen Victoria, whose beloved Prince Albert purchased Balmoral for £32,000 in 1852, would not be amused.
THE mystery of the whereabouts of the soft porn photos Philip Larkin snapped of lover Monica Jones is revealed by her biographer, John Sutherland, who quotes one of her letters to the poet: ‘Remember the Playboy pose which you arranged: do you? Bra & sweater pushed up, just enough to show breasts. Does it rouse you? I bet not.’ Explains Sutherland: ‘They no longer exist. They went with the boxes of his porn hoard that, after his death, she, his executor, instructed to be burnt.’
HEAVENWARD glances and brisk paper shuffling from Susanna Reid, pictured, on ITV’s Good Morning Britain when former Commons Speaker John Bercow accuses her of having a soft spot for the PM. ‘He’s your favourite puppy dog, apparently. You call him “Boris”,’ mewls the ex-Squeaker. ‘That’s insulting towards me,’ she fires back. ‘I think a lot of people call him Boris.’ Positioned between Bercow and guest co-presenter Alastair Campbell, she snaps: ‘I feel like I’m stuck in a Tony Blair sandwich.’
DOES Washington ambassador Dame Karen Pierce remain persona non grata with the Russians? Following her celebration of the Queen’s birthday at the United Nations, Karen and her guests, including a Brazilian drag queen, inadvertently invaded Moscow’s adjoining Sputnik Lounge. She tells Vogue: ‘The Russians are not helpful, to put it mildly, on LGBTQ rights.’
DAVID Miliband, president of the International Rescue Committee, seeks an intern to work with ‘talented individuals’ in his New York office for 12 weeks. Salary? Nil. David, Gordon Brown’s foreign secretary, scrapes along on £721,000 a year.
MONDAY’S reopening of the National Gallery features an exhibition of J M W Turner ‘in conversation’ with Giovanni Canaletto. Might Canaletto, who painted Venice around a century before Turner fetched up canalside with his easel, ask if the Englishman imitated his style? Lots to talk about chaps!
ENSCONCED in Lady Antonia Fraser’s Holland Park drawing room, The Oldie interviewer Valerie Grove enquires about the armchair she last saw occupied by Antonia’s late husband Harold Pinter. ‘I had to give it away,’ explains her ladyship. ‘I could not bear to think of anyone else sitting there.’ Valerie’s next book? Great Conversation Stoppers Vol 1.