Ephraim Hardcastle
What’S happened to the long-planned, first-ever, full-scale royal visit to Israel, to commemorate the centenary of the Balfour Declaration? The visit is due to be undertaken by Prince Charles, or a lesser royal, in November, but the Foreign Office is ‘rowing back’ on the idea, says a source. has Israel-averse Saudi Arabia objected? In 2007, emails from then-Charles aide Clive Alderton – mistakenly copied to the Israeli ambassador – counselled against a visit, saying Israel might use it to ‘burnish’ its international image. In 2015, Arab expert Alderton returned to Clarence house, having been our envoy in Morocco, as private secretary. A coincidence? THE Duchess of Cambridge is in Luxembourg today meeting Grand Duke Henri, 62, and his Cuban-born Grand Duchess, Maria Teresa, 61. Why? Goodness knows, but she might ask if they’ll consider ordering the elephant in this particular room – Jean-Claude Juncker, Luxembourg’s former PM, and the current EU Commission president – to keep a civil tongue in his head when referring to the UK. Mexican-born Laura Alverez, the third Mrs Jeremy Corbyn, pictured, has declined the BBC’s invitation to join her husband on The One Show, as the PM did this week with her husband, Philip May. Comely Laura, 47, doesn’t support her husband on public occasions – not even the Queen’s 2015 Buckingham Palace state banquet for the Chinese president. While applauding her independence, if she isn’t willing to demonstrate her support for Jeremy, why should anyone else do so? FORMER royal butler Paul Burrell, 58, says he approves of his late employer, Princess Diana, appearing as a ghost in the BBC TV drama, King Charles III, commenting: ‘She will always haunt the House of Windsor.’ Burrell says he speaks to Diana’s ‘ghost’ in his dreams, claiming she says to him: ‘When are you going to tell the world that I’m still here?’ Can it be long before the commercially minded ex-flunkey fixes ticket-only Diana seances? Mischievous biographer Tom Bower, 70, describes to me his plan to publish a Prince Charles book in time for the heir to the throne’s 70th birthday next year: ‘It’s a study of his resurrection since the death of Diana in 1997. Then his approval rating was 4 per cent. Now it’s about 55 per cent but it’s falling again. It’s an untold story.’ Oh dear, I hope hRh doesn’t feel that he has to sue Tom – like previous Bower subjects Robert Maxwell, Richard Branson and ex-Telegraph proprietor Lord (Conrad) Black, although none was successful. FORMER James Bond star Sir Roger Moore, 89, who appeared with Hervé Villechaize in the 1974 Bond movie The Man With The Golden Gun, is enthusiastic about HBO’s plan to make a film about the 3ft 11in actor, wondering: ‘Who’ll play me?’ Sir Roger claimed in a memoir that Villechaize, who played the Bond villain’s assistant and shot himself in 1993, aged 50, was ‘a sex maniac,’ adding: ‘He had a lust for ladies. When we were in Hong Kong he would find girls in girly clubs with a flashlight. “You, you, not you,” he’d say.’ Fancy!