Ephraim Hardcastle
WITH Buckingham Palace now committed to a Coronation reflecting Britain’s glorious pomp and pageantry, King Charles has yet to resolve how he will fulfil his pledge to make it more inclusive of other religions. In the ceremony, the Archbishop of Canterbury will ask the King two lengthy questions, commencing: ‘Will you maintain and preserve inviolably the settlement of the Church of England, and the doctrine, worship, discipline, and government thereof, as by law established in England?’ With the crowning shortened from three hours to one, how will Charles find the time to answer such long-winded queries and still include all other faiths?
KING Charles can thank his mother for the survival of his Christmas message references to food banks and the cost of living nightmare. For her early annual broadcasts HM sought approval from the PM, gradually exerting her right to speak off her own bat and make them more personal. Without her example, would Charles’s mention of those struggling to find ‘ways to pay their bills and keep their families fed and warm’ have survived Downing Street’s blue pencil?
PRINCE Harry’s provocative choice of Spare as the title of his memoir rankles in the gilded corridors, where two previous reserves had to reluctantly step up to the plate. George V was never meant to reign but the death of his elder brother Prince Albert Victor in the 1892 flu pandemic changed the course of his life. And George VI should have lived a quiet life in the countryside had not his elder brother Edward VIII decided to put his American divorcee before the throne. Might both have envied spare heir Harry?
HISTORIAN Max Hastings, claiming Meghan has replaced Wallis Simpson, pictured, in the affection of Americans, recalls his late mother, journalist Anne Scott-James, assembling a stable of duchesses for a Vogue ‘Gallery of Beauties’ to mark King George VI’s 1937 Coronation and getting an irate cable from the magazine’s New York matriarch Edna Woolman Chase. ‘She demanded to know why my mother had not included in the shoot the greatest aristocratic beauty of all, the Duchess of Windsor.’ Adds Max: ‘We should be jolly grateful that Meghan and Harry traffick with Netflix, not Nazis.’
LIAM Neeson, 70, explains why he will not play younger roles: ‘I want to face my age on screen. I come from a nation of storytellers, and without blowing smoke up Ireland’s a***, we’re renowned for it. I want to keep that tradition going. And part of that is facing one’s age.’
JOHN Cleese tweets from a Miami hotel where, on a previous visit, the manager returned his slippers from the spa asking for proof of identity. ‘Today,’ twitters Cleesey, ‘I booked a massage at the spa. They asked for my name and room number. And then for a telephone number. I suggested the one we were using.’ Fawlty Towers Lives!