School’s out for Kate on Jubilee trip
FOR the Duchess of Cambridge, it would have been a chance to say a special thank-you to the school where she is said to have blossomed. For Marlborough College to have its most famous alumna cut the ribbon opening its new state-of-the-art Malaysian school would have been the icing on the cake after its successful campaign to recreate the ethos of its Wiltshire sister college in south-east Asia.
Certainly college officials were quietly confident that when Kate and Prince William made their trip on behalf of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee to Malaysia, Singapore and the Solomon Islands in September, a royal visit to the school would be included.
However, I hear that those hopes have been dashed. And in Singapore yesterday the blame was being laid at the door of British officials who were said to have let it be known that the possibility of the Duchess opening a top private school conveyed the ‘wrong image’.
After two wretched terms at
TWO months short of her 90th, Baroness Trumpington has admitted she had no idea of the impact her two-fingered gesture to Lord King would have. The peeress says she had forgotten that cameras were covering the Lords debate when King motioned towards her as he remarked that the survivors of World War II were looking old. She says: ‘When I am in the House of Lords I don’t think about television. So as far as I was concerned it was private. But I thought he was rude — you don’t say that to ladies!’ Quite so.
Downe House, the former Kate Middleton arrived at Marlborough aged 13 excelling at sport and her studies. She is said to have grown in confidence there, eventually captaining the First XI hockey team.
She went from there to St Andrews University, where she met William, while her sister Pippa and brother James followed her to Marlborough.
The co- ed school, the first major public school to admit girls, has been planning an offshoot on the southern tip of Malaysia, just across the causeway from Singapore, for more than five years.
Says an insider: ‘ With Kate coming here on a tour anyway, it seemed the perfect fit for her to visit. It’s a shame, but one can only assume that the Government thinks that having a member of the Royal Family opening a private school for supposedly privileged people just doesn’t look good.’
Royal insiders point out that neither the Duke nor the Duchess have any say on where they go or what they visit on royal tours.
A spokesman tells me: ‘ The programme will be confirmed in due course. It reflects Her Majesty’s Government’s objectives and the way in which Singapore wishes to celebrate the Jubilee.’