Time for everyone to find an olive branch

When sorrows come, they come not single spies but in battalions.” King Charles and the Princess of Wales will know well Claudius’s line in Hamlet. What wicked bad luck for both of them to be struck down by cancer within months of each other.

The twin diagnoses show this is the new model for official royal announcements of such grim news: honesty about a cancer diagnosis after initial discovery, but with a veil drawn over the exact form of cancer.

You hope that those who speculated so nastily about the Princess’s condition and the state of her marriage to William will repent of their gossip. Her devotion to him and their children was clear in her dignified, moving, melancholy statement. And you hope that this double blow will have some thawing effect on the deep chill between William and his brother Harry.

This is the moment for brotherly reconciliation. How much William must now want his closest friends and family to be around him. For all the terrible damage wrought between them in recent years, the brothers share a bond like no other, not least the dreadful trauma of their mother’s premature death.

How the Duke and Duchess of Sussex must deeply regret the past three years. Their interview with Oprah Winfrey attacking the monarchy in 2021 was swiftly followed by a series of horrors for the Royal Family. First, the death of Queen Elizabeth II in 2022. And now these two diagnoses. Surely Prince Harry and his wife must realise that hostilities must now be ended?

Now is the time not just for

Will the news thaw relations with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex?

Here is the perfect opportunity for the Sussexes to bury the hatchet

judicious silence, but for active support of Harry’s sister-in-law. Last night that appeared to have been achieved, with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex issuing a joint statement in which they wished the Princess well: “We wish health and healing for Kate and the family, and hope they are able to do so privately and in peace.” But, more importantly, this must also be conveyed in private. Now is, of course, the time to quietly offer their sympathy, something I’m sure will happen. This terrible news transcends any family feud. In our own private lives, we have all had that terrible feeling of “Oh I wish I could have told them how much I love them/how sorry I am.”

The tenor of the Princess of Wales’s announcement was optimistic – that she is on the road to recovery. God willing, the same applies to the King.

These intimations of mortality are nothing but horrifying. But they provide lucid visions of what really matters in life. Here is the perfect opportunity for the Sussexes to bury the hatchet with the Waleses.

Apart from anything else, their popularity is at an all-time low in Britain while, naturally, support for the King and the Prince and Princess of Wales is soaring in their time of need. Kate indicated she would now retire once more from the public gaze to concentrate on her recovery, as she should. What a boost it would be if, during those months, reconcilliation could be won.

Harry Mount is the author of ‘How England Made The English’ (Penguin)