Ephraim Hardcastle
HAS the Queen made Prince charles her regent in all but name? He will appear at the Royal Maundy service this week in her place. last month he received 31 new High court judges at Windsor and made them knights and dames, a task previously undertaken by the monarch. charles already leads events at the cenotaph. He is expected to take centre stage for much of Royal Ascot. ‘We have effectively a co-monarchy for the first time since William and Mary arrived in 1689,’ says my source. ‘charles’s unofficial elevation also removes any danger of [Princes] Andrew or Harry having to step in as counsellors of state.’
IS the late Soviet spy Kim Philby rotating in the Moscow grave in which he was interred with full military honours, including three volleys fired by a KGB guard? The newspaper that gave him cover as its Beirut correspondent while he fed secrets to the Russians, The Observer, published an uncharacteristically bellicose leading article on Sunday demanding Nato’s ‘direct intervention to create a safe haven in western Ukraine protected by Nato air power’. Which, say experts, would trigger World War 3 with Russia.
SOPHIA Myles, 42, who played lady Penelope Creighton-Ward in the 2004 film Thunderbirds, recalls: ‘For a long time within my career as an ingenue, whenever I was on camera, it was all about getting the perfect angle... to be the object of desire. And so what’s been really nice is to move into work where it’s not completely based around the way I look.’ or, as the great actor-manager Sir donald Wolfit, pictured, put it: ‘I used to be a tour de force. now I am forced to tour.’
PRINCE Andrew’s recollections about being a helicopter pilot in the Falklands, which appeared briefly on ex-wife Sarah’s Instagram page, prompts the thought: Is he considering an autobiography? His controversial nephew the Duke of Sussex is doing one. So is the blameless Duke of Kent. But a tell-all by Randy Andy would rock the House of Windsor. Alternatively, the threat of writing one might guarantee him generous treatment in the slimmed-down reign of brother Charles.
PARIS’S 90-year-old journalistic legend claude Angeli claims in le canard enchaine that French military attaches in Washington say the US is considering formally abandoning its current ‘no first use’ nuclear missile policy if ‘America’s vital interests’ are deemed at stake in Ukraine. My French source says: ‘Angeli is informed by a network of military and spooky types he has built up over decades.’ Tin hats on for easter?
CHANCELLOR Rishi Sunak’s hero-to-zero fall from grace prompts questions about his mysterious trip to California ‘on Government business’ during the Covid crisis last December. As a green card holder, he can live and work in the US, where his family has a swish ocean-overlooking home in Santa Monica. He can eventually qualify for US citizenship if that is what he wants. It never did become clear what Government business he was transacting there.