Ephraim Hardcastle
PRINCE Albert’s biographer AN Wilson reveals that the diaries kept by Queen Victoria’s husband are missing. Researching his book, AN hunted ‘in vain’ at Windsor Castle’s Royal Archives. ‘They are the holy grail of historical diaries,’ he says. ‘I think they are there somewhere. I don’t believe they have been hidden or suppressed but they’ve been misplaced somehow.’ He adds: ‘It will be a sensation if they ever come to light. It is unthinkable that his grieving widow, herself one of the finest diarists of the 19th century, could have destroyed them. What can have happened to them?’
MEANWHILE, absent from the newly published first volume of the unexpurgated diaries of Chips Channon is how the USborn socialite met and fell in love with his wife, heiress Honor Guinness, and reinvented himself as a friend of royalty. Channon’s journals for that period remain missing, with editor Simon Heffer launching an appeal for their recovery. ‘We just don’t know about 1919-22, which also covers his time at Oxford,’ he says, adding that he is currently finalising Volume III covering Channon’s life up to his death in 1958. ‘These last diaries were also lost. They then turned up at a car boot sale. If any of your readers know where the earlier journals are ask them to get in touch.’
NEW minister for Europe Penny Mordaunt has become the poster girl for sexual health services in French hospitals and doctors’ surgeries after her photograph was inadvertently used to promote a healthcare company. Penny, pictured above left with the French actress Catherine Deneuve, has graciously granted retrospective permission for the photo to stay in place, saying: ‘It was a simple mistake – they had clearly mixed me up with Catherine Deneuve.’
ROY Greenslade’s Guardian attack on the credibility of rape victim Mairia Cahill sparks a call for his ex-boss Alan Rusbridger to stand down from the Irish government’s Future of Media Commission. Miss Cahill has written to Irish PM Micheal Martin, while government-supporting senator Regina Doherty states: ‘Given that Roy Greenslade was allowed to act as an IRA proxy under his watch for 20 years it is, at best, poor judgment. It merits Mr Rusbridger being taken off the committee with immediate effect.’
JEREMY Paxman’s contention that any fool could read the TV news is disputed by former ITN anchor John Suchet, who quotes former colleague Martyn Lewis: ‘Aren’t we lucky, John? We’re two of only a few journalists in the country who can sit in front of a camera, know there are five million people on the other side of it, open our mouths and speak coherently without becoming gibbering wrecks.’ Adds Suchet: ‘The job may become more familiar the longer you do it, but it never gets easier.’