Prince of Wales is said to want Buckingham Palace, Sandringham and other royal homes to go from ‘private spaces to public places’
The Prince of Wales reportedly plans to give people greater access to the royal palaces when he becomes king.
Charles wants Buckingham Palace, Clarence House, Windsor Castle, Sandringham and Balmoral to be transformed from “private spaces to public places”, according to the Sunday Times.
Continue reading...University of Southampton spends ‘hundreds of thousands’ on legal battle preventing access due to government veto
When the diaries and letters of Lord and Lady Mountbatten were “saved for the nation” in 2010, it should have created an invaluable public resource. Instead, a writer has spent four years and £250,000 of his own money in an ongoing – but still frustrated – attempt to force Southampton University and the Cabinet Office to allow the public to view them.
The university bought the Broadlands archive, named after the Mountbattens’ Grade I-listed house, for £2.8m in 2010, attracting funding by stating it would “preserve the collection in its entirety for future generations to use and enjoy” and “ensure public access”.
Continue reading...Duke of Sussex also speaks of ‘genetic pain and suffering’ in royal family in new interview in US
The Duke of Sussex has appeared to criticise the way he was raised by Prince Charles, discussing the “genetic pain and suffering” in the royal family and stressing that he wanted to “break the cycle” for his children.
In a wide-ranging 90-minute interview, Prince Harry, who is expecting a daughter with Meghan and is already father to Archie, two, likened life in the royal family to a mix between being in The Truman Show and being in a zoo.
Continue reading...Honorary position challenged by Labour after Queen’s cousin allegedly told reporters he could be hired for £10,000 a day to contact Putin’s team
Claims that the Queen’s cousin was willing to use his royal status to sell privileged access to Vladimir Putin’s regime have raised questions over whether he should keep his honorary position in the British army, according to Labour.
Prince Michael of Kent allegedly told undercover reporters posing as investors from South Korea that he could be hired for £10,000 a day to make “confidential” representations to the Russian president’s team.
Continue reading...Special programme investigates if the broadcaster ignored the way controversial reporter landed scoop
It was one of the most controversial and shattering TV programmes the BBC has ever broadcast. And early next month, the corporation is to return – in a Panorama special – to its 1995 interview with Princess Diana by the then little-known Martin Bashir.
Related: How did the Martin Bashir I knew become TV’s anti-hero?
Continue reading...Sophie, who updated public on grieving royal family, and Edward look set to take on increasingly high profiles
In the immediate aftermath of the Duke of Edinburgh’s death, the royal who most regularly visited Windsor, gracing television screens and newspaper photographs, was the Countess of Wessex.
Through Sophie, 56, wife of Prince Edward, 57, the public learned how the royal family was navigating its grief.
Continue reading...Mary Lou McDonald says she is sorry the late Duke of Edinburgh’s uncle was killed by IRA bomb in 1979
The Sinn Féin president, Mary Lou McDonald, has apologised for the IRA’s 1979 murder of Lord Mountbatten, the Duke of Edinburgh’s uncle.
Speaking after the funeral of Prince Philip, she told Times Radio she was sorry that Mountbatten, 79, had been killed when the fishing boat he was on was blown up by an IRA bomb.
Continue reading...With the poignant sight of the widowed Queen, the world glimpsed an era that is not just ending, but inevitably on its way
You could barely see her, but you could glimpse the future. Maybe it was the sepulchral gloom of the dark wooden stalls of St George’s chapel, or perhaps it was the restraint of a TV director keeping their distance, respecting the privacy of the moment, but the Queen was hardly visible in the live coverage of her late husband’s funeral on Saturday. Masked and in an unlit corner, the monarch was all but unseen.
When the camera did catch her, it made for a poignant sight: the widow alone, an image that “broke hearts around the world,” in the words of the Washington Post, but one that will resonate in the UK especially. Even the sternest republican has long admitted that an extraordinary bond exists between Elizabeth and the people who have been her subjects for nearly seven decades. Now, if anything, that bond will be strengthened.
Continue reading...The royal family have released a reading of The Patriarchs – An Elegy by Simon Armitage to mark the Duke of Edinburgh’s funeral. The poet laureate said that he wanted the poem to address the duke’s values and personality. ‘A lot of the commentary has been around duty and service – I saw it as a prompt for writing something dutiful, and in service of all people like him.’
Prince Philip’s funeral was an unusual affair, watched by the monarch from her familiar seat in the family chapel
Nearly everything about the setting itself must have felt touchingly familiar. Just before 3pm the Queen took her usual place in the corner oak pew under the ancient banners of the Knights of the Garter in St George’s Chapel, Windsor – her family’s “home” church. It was a seat she had occupied countless times for Sunday communion, for christenings and weddings and funerals. Only this time, for what must have seemed the first time, her consort and husband, her “strength and stay” of almost 75 years was not sitting beside her. During yesterday’s funeral service for Prince Philip, the monarch remained steadfast as ever, head down, perhaps grateful for her black mask, with only the ever-present cameras for company. In her bubble of one, however, socially distanced from the sparse congregation around her, it went without saying that she had never looked quite so alone.
Until last March the only funerals that many of us had ever watched on screens had probably been royal ones. Princess Diana’s, maybe the Queen Mother’s. The long months of pandemic have made virtual send-offs horribly commonplace, though. Death and farewells have come to Zoom and Facebook Live. That fact gave a particular poignancy to yesterday’s events, attended by only 30 of Philip’s family and closest friends, instead of the planned 800.
Continue reading...Social distancing, face masks and only 30 mourners at service for the Duke of Edinburgh
When future historians come to retell the story of the pandemic, the image of the Queen sitting alone, masked and in mourning, will surely rank among the most poignant.
The Duke of Edinburgh’s final farewell at St George’s Chapel was like no other royal funeral. And though not a family like any other, with mourners limited to 30 and only the pallbearers not socially distanced, it was in no small way symbolic.
Continue reading...Queen will behave with dignity and courage but will need the support of the nation, says Justin Welby
The Queen may behave “with extraordinary dignity and extraordinary courage” but the Duke of Edinburgh’s funeral at Windsor Castle on Saturday will be an “anguished moment” for her, the archbishop of Canterbury has said.
Justin Welby spoke as Buckingham Palace revealed there will be no sermon and no eulogy to Prince Philip, who for seven decades played a prominent role in the nation’s public life.
Continue reading...Body language experts will aim to dissect estranged princes’ movements and the Queen will pay silent tribute to her husband
All eyes will be on the sibling princes, not seen together since their frosty appearance at Westminster Abbey’s Commonwealth Day service more than a year ago, just before the Duke and Duchess of Sussex departed for good. Brought very close by the death of their mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, they are now separated by more than the Atlantic. It falls to cousin Peter Phillips to fill the physical and emotional gulf between the two as they walk apart behind their grandfather’s coffin.
Continue reading...Brothers will be separated by cousin Peter Phillips as they walk behind coffin, Buckingham Palace reveals
The Dukes of Cambridge and Sussex will walk apart for their grandfather’s funeral, which is likely to see the Queen sitting alone, details released by Buckingham Palace reveal.
Prince William and Prince Harry, whose troubled relationship was further strained after the Sussexes’ controversial interview with Oprah Winfrey, will be separated by their cousin Peter Phillips as they walk behind the coffin of the Duke of Edinburgh on Saturday.
Continue reading...Martin Buckley, Carl Gardner, Margaret Vandecasteele and Pete Bibby on the death of the Duke of Edinburgh and media coverage of it
“Inevitably he will be remembered for the gaffes,” BBC TV told me on Friday. I interviewed the Duke of Edinburgh for the BBC over 20 years ago for a documentary presented by George Monbiot. The duke (whom we were talking to as president of the WWF) was informal and funny, and his intelligence shone through; he had a manifest love of nature and a terrifically detailed grasp of his environmental brief. The gaffes are a tired trope, endlessly headlined by our alternately sycophantic and feral media. Yes, the duke was impatient with the constraints he was permanently under, and yes, he occasional showed archaic attitudes. But at this time, it would be nice to acknowledge his positive qualities.
Martin Buckley
Farringdon, Hampshire
• I and many of your readers, I’m sure, would like to complain about the 13 pages on Prince Philip in Saturday’s Guardian (10 April). I would be interested to know what percentage of your readers read any of it. After all, by Saturday morning we all knew everything we wanted to know about him, and more, due to almost a full day’s blanket coverage on radio and TV. I expected better than a repeat performance across your pages.
Carl Gardner
London
Duke of Edinburgh’s family say his death was ‘peaceful and gentle’ as they prepare for funeral on Saturday
The Queen has described the death of the Duke of Edinburgh as leaving “a huge void” in her life, Prince Andrew has revealed, saying it had brought home to him the loss suffered by so many during the coronavirus pandemic.
The Duke of York said the Queen had “described his passing as a miracle”, thought to refer to the fact Prince Philip died peacefully at home with her and not alone in hospital amid Covid regulations.
Continue reading...Analysis: though she will probably find it hard without Prince Philip, the Queen is unlikely to step down
The Queen, newly widowed, will find it “difficult” without the support she has leant on over 73 years of marriage to the Duke of Edinburgh, but royal observers have dismissed any speculation that she might consider stepping down.
The former prime minister Sir John Major acknowledged that her position as monarch was “a very lonely position”. He told BBC One’s The Andrew Marr Show: “There are a limited number of people to whom she can really open her heart, to whom she can really speak with total frankness, to whom she can say things that would be reported by other people and thought to be indelicate.”
Continue reading...Service to be held at Windsor on 17 April and include Duke of Edinburgh’s request that his coffin be borne on a Land Rover
Prince Charles has paid tribute to his “dear papa” as details of the Duke of Edinburgh’s funeral plans emerged, including Prince Philip’s special request that his coffin be borne on a Land Rover.
Speaking at Highgrove, the Prince of Wales said: “My dear papa was a very special person who I think above all else would have been amazed by the reaction and the touching things that have been said about him.”
Continue reading...Salutes held across the UK as well as in Gibraltar after Queen’s Elizabeth’s husband died aged 99 on Friday
Prince William has withdrawn from this weekend’s Bafta awards ceremony, the organisation said in a statement.
“In light of the Duke of Edinburgh’s passing, the Duke of Cambridge will no longer be part of Bafta programming this weekend
The King of Saudi Arabia, one of the many Middle East autocrats with whom the British royal family has longstanding ties, has sent his condolences to the Queen.
King Salman’s telegram, sent late on Friday evening according to the official Saudi Press Agency, said:
We received with utmost sorrow the news of the death of His Royal Highness Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, and as we express to Your Majesty, the Royal Family and the friendly people of the United Kingdom, the warmest condolences and sincere consolation, we supplicate that you may never see any harm or mischief.
I have received with utmost sorrow the news of the death of His Royal Highness Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. I express to Your Majesty, the Royal Family and the friendly people of the United Kingdom, the warmest condolences and sincere consolation, wishing you permanent good health, and that you may never see any harm.
Continue reading...Australian prime minister says he hopes Queen Elizabeth will ‘find great comfort in your faith and your family’
The Australian prime minister and governor general have paid tribute to Prince Philip, who has died aged 99, saying he was “no stranger to Australia” having visited the country more than 20 times.
Scott Morrison said Australians sent their love and deepest condolences to Queen Elizabeth and the royal family. He stated Philip “embodied a generation that we will never see again”.
Continue reading...