Then Meghan Markle and Prince Harry attend church at Sandringham on Christmas Day, 2017. Photograph by Mark Jones.

A bridge too far? The Harry-Meghan interview

March 7, 2021

Just how damaging was the interview Oprah Winfrey did with Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, on Sunday, March 7 on CBS? Put Prince Charles’ revelations about him never loving Diana, Princess of Wales, together with Diana’s “there were three in this marriage”, multiply it a gazillion times and you have an idea of the damage quotient not only for the royal family but for the Sussexes as well.

Lost horizon: Harry, Meghan and the monarchy

March 5, 2021

It’s the interview many will be talking about whether you’re a royal watcher or not – Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s sit-down with Oprah Winfrey, which airs on CBS Sunday, March 7, from 8 to 10 p.m.

Already snippets of the interview have provoked a strong reaction, with monarchy loyalists decrying the Sussexes’ whining about being relieved of their royal duties and patronages and Sussex supporters lambasting the crown for shutting the pair out amid an atmosphere of stultifying tradition and corrosive racism. Not since the War of the Roses – or at the very least, the “War of the Waleses” between Prince Harry’s parents, Prince Charles and Diana, Princess of Wales – has an English dynasty been so divided, you might say. But actually a better analogy is what one poster described as a Wimbledon final played not on grass but across the Atlantic.

The gun control movement’s #MeToo moment

February 24, 2018

Just as The New York Times’ Harvey Weinstein series ignited #MeToo, so the shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, has galvanized a movement – and a generation – against gun violence in a way that we thought the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting would but never did.

I know: We’ve been here before – too, too many times. But this time feels different as high school students have taken to the streets and to buses – latter-day Freedom Riders, Oprah Winfrey called them – to protest the absolute lunacy of children, and the rest of us, being held hostage by people who think their Second Amendment rights entitle them to assault weapons.

Why does their right to own guns that should only be in the hands of the professionals trump our peace of mind? ...