Way of the World Michael Deacon

After the Duchess of Sussex gave that extraordinary interview to Oprah Winfrey about the misery of life in the Royal family, the Queen responded with a phrase of great delicacy and tact. “Recollections,” she said, “may vary.” At the time, I don’t suppose the Duchess agreed. But perhaps now she can finally see the wisdom of Her Majesty’s words.

On Monday, an American magazine published an interview in which the Duchess revealed she’d once been paid the most moving compliment. In 2019, while she was attending the London premiere of the remake of The Lion King, a South African member of its cast told her: “When you married into [the Royal] family, we rejoiced in the streets the same we did when Mandela was freed from prison.”

What a lovely thing to say. The only trouble is, no one seems to know who said it. Dr John Kani, who voiced the part of Rafiki the mandrill, says that he was the only South African member of the cast, that he’s never met the Duchess, and that in South Africa her wedding was viewed as “no big deal”. The only other South African involved in the film, he says, was a composer named Lebo M. Mr M says he did meet the Duchess. But he says he doesn’t recall talking about Nelson Mandela.

How puzzling. Still, I’m sure there’s an innocent explanation. There must have been some other, as yet unidentified, person who paid the Duchess that unique and unforgettable tribute.

At any rate, I do feel for her. Because there is now a grave risk that heartless jokers will start paying her ludicrously extravagant compliments, purely to see whether she’ll repeat them to the media.

If so, I dread to think what her next interview will be like.

“I was speaking to this guy from England, and he said: ‘Forget Mandela. You’re like Jesus, Gandhi, Martin

Luther King and Gary

Lineker all rolled into one.’ To be mentioned in the same breath as those four amazing activists was just so humbling. Jesus is someone whose work I’ve always admired, and if

I can achieve even half of what he did, I’ll really feel I’ve made a difference.”

Councillors in Edinburgh have decided to apologise for the city’s involvement in the slave trade. I’m sure the Left will loudly applaud them. Personally, though, I won’t be joining in.

After all, none of these fine councillors, to the best of my knowledge, has ever run a sugar plantation in the West Indies. Nor, as far as I’m aware, has anyone else living in Edinburgh today. These crimes were committed by people who died 200 or more years ago. And apologising for crimes committed by other people, centuries in the past, is pointless. Sometimes, it can even look absurd – such as in March this year, when Nicola Sturgeon apologised to the victims of the witch trials of the 1560s.

Anyway, it’s too easy. Apologising for something that you yourself have done is difficult. It involves admitting that you were wrong, and engenders feelings of shame and self-loathing. It makes you feel as if you are, or have been, a bad person.

Apologising for something that someone else did in centuries past, however, is the opposite. It isn’t difficult. It incurs no cost to your reputation. And it certainly doesn’t make you feel like a bad person.

On the contrary, it makes you feel – and look – like a wonderful person. How compassionate you are, how noble, how righteous. I wonder if this might explain why politicians seem to spend more time apologising for things that other people did in the past, rather than things they’ve done themselves.

Then again, these are gloomy times, and we could all do with a boost to our self-esteem. In which case, I hereby issue a public apology for the Spanish Inquisition, the Mongol Empire, and the Visigoths’ Sack of Rome.

There, I feel better already.

B lackadder is always glorious, but if I had to pick a favourite series, I’d go for Blackadder the Third.

I love the episode in which Edmund helps Baldrick become the MP for a rotten borough. Only two men stand in their way – until, by sheer chance, both suddenly die in the most unfortunate circumstances. One, reports Edmund, “accidentally brutally cut his head off while combing his hair”, and the other “accidentally brutally stabbed himself in the stomach while shaving”.

I don’t know whether Vladimir Putin has ever watched that particular episode, but he must surely know the feeling. His own opponents and critics are similarly accident-prone. Just this week, Ravil Maganov – a Russian oil executive who had spoken out against the invasion of Ukraine – died after falling from a sixth-floor window.

It’s remarkable how many people in Russia fall from the windows of tall buildings. In 2018, it happened to Maksim Borodin, a journalist who had revealed that Russian mercenaries fighting in Syria were suffering huge casualties. In 2007, it happened to Ivan Safronov, a journalist who had exposed the failure of a new intercontinental missile. And in spring 2020, during the first wave of the Covid pandemic, no fewer than three Russian doctors fell out of windows after complaining about a lack of PPE. These are just a few examples.

Mr Putin must be baffled. I suppose he can only assume that, like those two unfortunate men in Blackadder the Third, these people were simply the victims of tragic household accidents. Perhaps, he thinks, they suddenly lost their balance while watering their windowboxes, or while admiring the view of their glorious homeland.