Now is the time of year when flies become a menace, so it is necessary to replenish one’s supplies of bug spray.
Yesterday when wandering the isles of the OneBeyond shop on King Edward Street, I came across an interesting sight on the household aisle: A selection of bottles of Jeyes Fluid, in two different types. The type on the left was in plastic bottles while the type on the right was in metal. While they were clearly the same product, the labelling had been completely redesigned. What struck me most was that the metal bottles bore a royal warrant, while the plastic did not. Looking closer I saw that the inscription said “BY APPOINTMENT TO HM THE QUEEN” and that the armorial achievement was that of the sovereign undifferenced, with St Edward’s Crown. Clearly the warrant was to the Elizabeth II, rather than to her successor.
Elizabeth died in 2022 and all such warrants issued in her name expired in 2024. The Royal Warrant Holders’ Association maintains a list of holders, which is periodically republished with updates. I found this one from April 2023 which showed Jeyes still among the late sovereign’s suppliers, but this one from April 2026 does not list them. Evidently Charles III did not renew the agreement. This must have come as quite a blow to the company, as they are said to have had a warrant since 1896.
The company’s own website still displayed the royal arms as late as 20th March 2025, but had dropped them by 24th April. Strangely, on the bottle itself the manufacture date is given as 15th April 2025 — long after the warrant should have ceased to be used.
The placement of these two types of the same product adjacent is a little strange. I suppose the shop must have had some older bottles still in stock (and still in date), or perhaps acquired them when another store threw them out. This is typical of the business model of hard discount chains like this.
Incidentally, I did not find any fly spray, and had to buy it from the Home Bargains store on the other side of the road instead.
Now is the time of year that the Royal Household publishes its financial reports detailing the use of the Sovereign Grant and other money sources. It is a chance for the public to look at “The Firm” as a business, and likewise for The Firm to advocate for itself on that basis. Obviously these are aimed at a higher reading level than most of the Palace’s announcements.
Earlier this year there was an additional publication: A report by the National Audit Office on the arrangements for Crown Estate properties which members of the family and their staff occupy. This was prompted mainly by the surrender of the Royal Lodge by the former Prince Andrew.
I have read through the majority of these documents (though the full Sovereign Grant Report, at 161 pages, may not be completed for some time). I will not comment on the majority of their contents as they are dense with financial jargon, but will highlight a couple of interesting revelations.
Working Royals
The definition of “working royal”, meaning one who carries out public duties on behalf of the sovereign, has sometimes been contested. This year’s documents appear to offer a canonical list of who currently counts. Page 35 of the NAO report says
3.10 In addition to The King and Queen, there are nine working members of the Royal family supporting the duties of the Sovereign: The Prince and Princess of Wales, The Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, The Duke of Kent, The Princess Royal, The Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh and Princess Alexandra.
This exact line is repeated in the Palace’s own financial report (page 3). This is obviously a rather smaller list than we would have seen a decade ago, due to several members from that time having died or withdrawn from duties (whether voluntarily or not) without anyone yet arriving to replace them.
The same page in the NAO report, as well as a few other sections, define four people as being outside the firm:
Princess Beatrice Princess Eugenie and The Prince and Princess Michael of Kent
The report repeatedly refers to “The Prince and Princess Michael of Kent”, giving them the definite article (with capital T, no less) normally reserved for royals in the first generation of descent from a monarch.
Sir Timothy Laurence is not mentioned in these documents even though, despite his lack of royal style or title, he definitely is on the duty roster. The status of the Duke of Edinburgh’s children and His Majesty’s grandchildren is also left unresolved.
(At this point I will take the opportunity to plug the work of Canadian journalist Patricia Treble, who has written in detail several times about the looming demographic crisis for the working royals. She noted in a post from April this year that contrary to official reports she considers Alexandra “effectively retired” due to the rarity of her appearances in the last few years.)
Buckingham Palace
Much of the word-count of the recent literature concerns the major refurbishment works on this residence, which had fallen into a dangerous state of disrepair by the early 2010s.
Over the last decade there have been multiple updates in formal documents, as well as the royal YouTube channel, about the work being done to overhaul the palace’s systems, structures and services.
Although it is now a prominent British icon — to the extent that “the Palace” is frequently used as the principal metonym for the entire institution of the monarchy — the physical structure has often been a source of problems. Histories of the late Georgian and early Victorian period will often point out that the construction ran well over budget requiring the replacement of the architect, and that the finished product was riddled with faults including sewer overflow, smoke accumulation and rat infestation. This was a recurrent theme in the first season of ITV’s Victoria series, and also got a sketch on Horrible Histories.
There were several renovations over the next century (including to repair bomb damage after the Second World War) which fixed some problems but not all. By the time of Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee there were news stories about windows losing too much heat, plastic buckets to catch leaks, and blocks of masonry nearly killing people when they fell to the ground.
Even aside from its structural shortcomings, a lot of monarchs simply didn’t like living there: William IV, who reluctantly inherited the unfinished work from his elder brother, preferred to stay at his own custom-built residence at Clarence House (so-called because he was Duke of Clarence at the time). Victoria was initially excited to move in, but later in her reign would leave it abandoned for most of the year in favour of Osborne and Windsor.
Towards the end of George VI’s reign Philip Mountbatten & The Princess Elizabeth made their home at Clarence House as Duke & Duchess of Edinburgh. Following the latter’s accession to the throne they were reluctant to move to Buckingham Palace, only doing so because Sir Winston Churchill insisted it was the only proper place for the reigning monarch to live. It is speculated by historians that the royal couple at the time only gave way because they were relatively young and inexperienced on the throne whereas Churchill was very elderly and had achieved a near-divine status in the public mind, whereas by the end of the reign that dynamic had more than reversed. We can’t know for sure, but it feels a mightily-convenient coincidence that this announcement has been made at a time when the party in government is having a leadership contest, meaning that the incumbent is a caretaker who, in terms of effective political authority, may as well not exist.
Drawing of Clarence House from 1874.
Late in Elizabeth’s reign Clarence House became the official residence for Prince Charles’s own household, and there were reports that both he and his mother wished to shift the emphasis of the monarchy away from Buckingham Palace, perhaps even abandoning it as a residence altogether, and make Windsor Castle the principal royal residence. In Elizabeth II’s last few years events conspired in favour of this: In 2017 Prince Philip formally retired from royal duties and, while his wife continued at Buck House, he moved to Wood Farm on the Sandringham estate (where his middle son now lives). In 2020 when the pandemic hit and lockdown was imposed, they both moved to Windsor and had their “bubble” headquartered there. Over that year and the next the Castle was host to Philip’s funeral and a visit by President Biden after a G7 summit. Trooping the Colour, scaled down due to social distancing requirements, was also relocated there on both years. In early 2022 as the pandemic abated it was announced that Elizabeth would not move back to London, instead keeping Windsor as her main home and merely commuting when necessary.
On Charles’s accession he and Camilla had been living at Clarence House for nearly two decades. Although “Clarence House” as an organisation (a metonym for their separate household as Prince of Wales & Duchess of Cornwall) was formally dissolved at that point and merged with that at Buckingham Palace, the ongoing renovation works gave the couple an excuse not to actually move in. For over three years now Their Majesties have used Buckingham as the workplace for their constitutional and public functions as King & Queen, but kept Clarence House as their main London home. It also continues to be the venue for their private social functions as well as gatherings related to the charities and businesses they established there during the prior reign. At the end of 2024 the building works reached the state rooms, so that the next run of state visits (so far France, United States, Germany and Nigeria) were all redirected to Windsor as well.
Now that the restoration work is nearing completion, a long-term decision needs to be made. This week it was announced to reporters at a press briefing that Their Majesties will continue their current arrangements indefinitely, with no plans ever to move. This effectively makes official what has already quietly been the case for the past six years: Buck House is the monarch’s residence no longer. Prince William seems likely to follow suit here: The Prince & Princess of Wales have long had their official residence at Kensington Palace (which is also the metonym for their household), but where they and their children actually live has varied. Late last year the family moved into Forest Lodge, Windsor, and described it as their “forever home”.
This change may feel momentous, but royal residences have come and gone over the centuries: Westminster, Whitehall, Hampton Court, Richmond, Eltham and St James’s have all at some point been the home of the sovereign, then faded into the background (or, indeed, been destroyed). My suggestion to offer Buck House to Parliament again remains in place.
A photograph of Their Majesties in the Lords Chamber on 13th May, acquired through the United States embassy and therefore presumed to be public domain.
The May-June period tends to be quite a busy one in terms of grand royal ceremonies with equestrian components: In the past few weeks we’ve had the State Opening of Parliament, the Trooping of the Colour, the installation of Knights of the Garter and the races at Ascot. The first two events have, in recent years, been a good opportunity to get free-licence photographs of the senior royals for Wikimedia Commons. This year, unfortunately, the pickings have been quite slim.
For the state opening, the official House of Lords photographs have been uploaded to Flickr as “All Rights Reserved”. Those from the House of Commons are Non-Commercial No-Derivatives. The only ones I’ve actually been able to find and upload are a quartet from the Instagram account of the United States Embassy. There were also three photographs of the procession along the Mall taken by Alansplodge.
For Trooping the Colour, the Government Flickr accounts which took so many photographs in 2023, -4, and -5 have not taken any this year, so we are reliant on the generosity of digital marketing consultant John Pannell. He also got a lot of snaps at the event in 2022.
Pannell’s shot of the Princess of Wales in a landau with her sons. Princess Charlotte is either obscured or out-of-frame throughout the album.
Neither Garter Day nor Ascot usually get covered by government photographers so free-licence photographs of those events are restricted to the occasional shots by amateurs who release their own work. Of course, in the case of Garter Day it is only the procession which can be photographed at all while the rest takes place inside the castle, though on this occasion we did get a verbal account from the Since Attlee & Churchill podcast.
It is worth mentioning that though the Buckingham Palace Flickr account quietly stopped posting back in 2018, there is a separate feed from Kensington Palace with albums for three of these four events. Of course, these are also All Rights Reserved and thus out of bounds for Wikimedia.
The State Opening of Parliament took place today. This opens the second session of the fifty-ninth Parliament of the United Kingdom, and the third of the new Carolean era. There was not one in 2025*, but at least Their Majesties got to open the Canadian parliament instead.
Notes on the Ceremonial Elements
The King has a new Parliamentary robe (and Dr Allan Barton has already made a video about it). Previously he wore the one made in 1937 for his grandfather.
The Queen, having worn something different in 2024, seems to be wearing her coronation gown as she did in 2023, albeit without the gold highlights this time.
Ed Davis had his first state opening as Black Rod. He addressed the Commons as “this Noble house” rather than “this Honourable house”. Nobody pulled him up on that, at least publicly.
David Lammy attended his first state opening as Lord Chancellor. He revived the tradition of walking backwards down the steps of the throne having handed the speech to the monarch.
The Duke of Norfolk, the Lord Carrington and the Lord de Mauley all took part in the royal procession as Earl Marshal, Lord Great Chamberlain and Master of the Horse respectively. They still have access to Parliament for these purposes, but are no longer actually members of the upper house as a legislative body (though de Mauley will shortly be reappointed).
The Duke of Norfolk did not wear his Parliamentary robe (with its characteristic four strips of miniver) over his uniform. Having been removed as a legislator he can likely never wear it again. He last wore it in 2022, omitting it in 2023 and 2024.
The Princess Anne, as Gold Stick-in-Waiting, did not attend this state opening or that in 2024, but did in 2023.
The choreography was a little different this time: In 2022 and 2023 Charles entered the Lords chamber through the door on the government side and departed through the door on the opposition side, Camilla vice-versa. This time they entered as normal but both departed through the opposition side, walking adjacent.
One again Charles had four pages holding his train while Camilla only had two, so the end of her robe trailed along the carpet.
Dennis Skinner last attended a state opening in October 2019. Since then nobody else has picked up his tradition of jibes at Black Rod. This time somebody (not yet identified) shouted “Not Now, Andy!” as the door was knocked, referring to Andy Burnham’s attempts to get back into the lower house.
Notes on Photography
Both of the Parliamentary Flickr accounts uploaded a good selection of stills from the event. Unfortunately neither set used a Wiki-compatible licence this time, so they can’t be moved across. On the other hand, the government website’s page about the speech decided to illustrate it with not with a photograph from today’s event, but rather what is clearly a crop of one of the post-coronation portraits at Buckingham Palace on 6th May 2023.
Previously the copyright on these portraits was very tightly controlled, but by using it here HM Government may have inadvertently released it under OGL3. It has already been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons and will probably stay there until someone clarifies otherwise.
The Political Element
Of course, we must not forget that the event is not pure theatre: The actual speech is the most important part as that lays out the government’s agenda for the next year. This, however, assumes that there will actually be a government.
The fallout from Labour’s poor performance in the local elections is still raging and the night before the state opening four junior ministers had to be replaced because they resigned in protest at Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership. So far this is nowhere near the scale of what happened to Jeremy Corbyn in 2016 or Boris Johnson in 2022 but for this to happen at all on a day like this is still very concerning for any government. At time of posting there are rumours circling that Wes Streeting, Secretary of State for Health & Social Care, may be about to resign from the Cabinet and begin a leadership challenge. If this does occur, it will be interesting to see how much of today’s speech ever actually gets implemented. Watch this space, I suppose.
There were no new appointments made to the Order of the Garter in 2025, the most recent addition being the off-cycle appointment of the Emperor of Japan as a Stranger Knight on his state visit in 2024.
Today three new Knights Companion were announced, leaving just one vacancy among the ordinary category: Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield, Lord O’Donnell and Lord Burnett of Maldon. All three are crossbench life peers. Actually, all of the non-royal recipients of the Garter so far this reign have been life peers. By contrast, the fifteen still-living members added by Elizabeth II comprise seven life peers, four hereditary peers and four commoners. It may be too early to determine if this represents a significant trend.
O’Donnell was Cabinet Secretary from 2005 to 2011. From lectures and documentaries I get the sense that he was a particularly-revered holder of that office. It is also notable that he was the last in a long string to be simultaneously Head of the Home Civil Service, Cabinet Secretary and Permanent Secretary to the Cabinet Office, after which there was an attempt to split these into three separate roles (though the first two were reunited not long afterwards). His first name is formally Augustine, but in practice is nearly always given as Gus, giving him the initials G.O.D. Ironically, while he is now a Knight of the Garter and has since 2005 been a Knight of the Bath as well, he has not been appointed to the Order of St Michael and St George, which denies him the opportunity to live out this classic joke from Yes, Minister.
Burnett was Lord Chief Justice of England & Wales from 2017 to 2023, his six-year tenure making him the longest-serving LCJ since Geoffrey Lane (1980-1992).
He doesn’t seem to be as famous as O’Donnell, though I note he was part of the divisional court of the Queen’s Bench Division for the Miller 2 case in 2019. After retiring from the English judiciary he became Chief Justice of a commercial court based in Kazakhstan.
Both Burnett and O’Donnell are the sort of people one could expect to receive the Garter based on their offices as the existing membership included Lord Butler of Brockwell and Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, though neither office guarantees the award and there are plenty of emeriti from each who have not received it.
Hennessy is the exception here, as although a parliamentarian he does not seem to have held any particular public office, whether governmental, ministerial, diplomatic, judicial or vice-regal. There have been a handful of people like this, like Mary Soames and Edmund Hillary, but they are definitely a rarity. He co-founded the Institute of Contemporary British History in 1986 and has been Attlee Professor of Contemporary British History since 1992 at QMUL since 1992. He has written at least two-dozen books on history and politics, making him the most (first?) prominent academic to receive the nation’s highest order. Norton must be quietly seething.
I illustrated Hennessy’s shield for Wikimedia Commons in 2022. It is about what one would expect for a man who has worked in academia. I suspect that Rs-nouse will be re-illustrating it in his characteristic style fairly shortly. Neither O’Donnell nor Burnett had arms listed in Debrett’s 2019, so the hanging of their banners in St George’s Chapel will be an exciting revelation.
Garter appointments are traditionally announced on 23rd April because it is St George’s Day, St George of Lydda being the patron saint of the Order of the Garter since its inception in 1348 and of England more generally thereafter. In modern times, today is also the eighth birthday of Prince Louis of Wales. I can’t help wondering if the Duke & Duchess of Cambridge quietly kicked themselves for having already given the name George to their July-born first son, thus missing another chance for poetic alignment.
Louis & George in June 2023
On another note, we are approaching the tenth anniversary of the EU Referendum, and with it the tenth anniversary of when Theresa May succeeded David Cameron as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. It is also the year that he turns sixty and she seventy. Both have been ennobled relatively recently but neither has received any British order of chivalry. I had thought that this would be a good occasion for one of them to receive the Garter, but evidently that will have to wait for some time yet.
At time of writing, the world is eagerly awaiting the launch of the Artemis II mission, a planned flight around the moon and back. As is so often the case in astronomy, the facts of this excursion ruin one’s sense of perspective: Although humans landed on the moon itself all the way back in 1969, all of the great many manned flights, both state and commercial, since 1972 have only been as far as Low Earth Orbit. This mission, if successful, will take its crew further away from this planet than any human has ever previously ventured. Though this is a great achievement for humanity as a whole, and although it makes the Earth (with all the various human-made satellites surrounding it) look pathetically small, there is still a nationalist element to be considered here: While lots of countries have a space programme of some description, only the United States of America has ever achieved manned flights of these distances, and every human thus far to travel beyond LEO has been American.
That will change with Artemis II, as one of the crew is Canadian: Colonel Jeremy Hansen, part of the Canadian Space Agency since 2009 and a veteran of the Royal Canadian Air Force. He appeared as flag-bearer as part of the Canadian delegation at the coronation in 2023 and was subsequently awarded the British version of that year’s coronation medal.
Yesterday His Majesty sent an open letter to Hansen specifically concerning the upcoming launch. I have not seen any photograph of a paper version, but the text has been uploaded to the Royal Family website, as well as the Firm’s Twitter account and that of the Canadian Space Agency. The letter says that “as the first Canadian to venture to the Moon, [Hansen] carr[ies] not only the hopes of [his] fellow Canadians and the Commonwealth, but also the aspirations of humanity itself” and also makes references to the Astra Carta programme. It should be clear that Charles here is writing principally in his capacity as King of Canada (as emphasised by the fact that it’s in French as well as English), and indeed the CSA’s Tweeted version explicitly credits him as such, yet as I have remarked before (posts passim ad nauseam) both images show the new illustrations of the British royal arms with the Tudor crown.
Arms of the Canadian Space Agency, granted in 1991
All the photographs of Hansen in his space suit show St Edward’s crown featured prominently on his name badge, suggesting that the “Trudea crown” has not yet been rolled out to that extent. This flight could therefore represent the furthest that anyone wearing an official representation of said crown has ever travelled, which ought to be a good story for the heraldic record book.
UPDATE (2nd April)
The Canadian Armed Forces Cyber Command has unveiled its new heraldic badge, which does indeed use the Trudeau crown.
The King, fresh off his farewell to President Tinubu, made headlines on the cliffs of Seven Sisters, Sussex, on Thursday by officially opening what may physically be his largest namesake, the King Charles III England Coast Path.
Charles’s coat looks quite like the sort of thing my grandmother would have worn.
As the government’s press release explains, the project actually long predates his reign, his name being appended to it in 2023 as part of his coronation celebrations. It resulted from the Marine and Coastal Access Act passed all the way back in 2009 and, as all the updates on this other government webpage indicate, it was supposed to be completed by 2030, then optimistically brought forward to 2020, then pushed back again during the pandemic.
The ambition was to link up all the existing footpaths, as well as carving out new ones where needed, to create a continuous walking trail which covered the entirety of the English coast line. Of course, the English coast line itself is not continuous, as England has sizeable land borders with Scotland and Wales. A Wales Coast Path, proposed in 2006 and completed in 2012, links up to the English one in two places and there is also a Scottish Coastal Way in the pipeline. As this is a devolved matter, the institutions are not entirely alike and it is not certain if the other two will ever bear the monarch’s name, or if Northern Ireland will attempt something similar. Even now, despite the official opening this week, the English path has 20% still to go and is expected to be completed at the end of 2026. “Coast” is also being used in quite a broad sense, as the path incorporates trails along not only the seas, but also the rivers — including the Humber, which runs quite close to my house and along which I walk fairly regularly.
The situation with the naming and timing has some echoes of the Elizabeth Line, the commuter railway through Greater London from Reading to Shenfield, which likewise was a combination of new paths built from scratch and old ones appropriated. The proposals had been floated as far back as the 1940s and work finally began in 2009. The construction project was called Crossrail, and this by default might have become the name of the completed railway. It was only in 2016, in the run up to Elizabeth II’s ninetieth birthday, that the line was named after her. The name was slightly controversial as it gave the false impression of being part of the London Underground rather than a different railway in its own right. The completion was originally scheduled for 2018 but, inevitably, there were delays and services did not run until 2022. The repeated schedule slips raised concerns over whether Elizabeth herself would live to open her namesake line. In the event she did open the first section in May that year, but had died by the time the rest opened in November.
Hopefully His Present Majesty will not exhibit the same phenomenon.
The Commonwealth of Nations traditionally has its annual day of celebration on the second Monday in March. This is marked in many ceremonies around the world, but most prominent is a special service at Westminster Abbey, put on by the Royal Commonwealth Society, attended by the Head of the Commonwealth and several members of his family, along with diplomatic and cultural representatives from the various member countries. The service includes some speeches, some religious readings, a parade of member states’ flags and a series of musical performances from groups representing different global regions.
For all of this century so far the Abbey service has been broadcast live by the BBC (specifically “BBC Studio Events”), and the last few have been archived on iPlayer, as well as the Corporation’s YouTube channel. This year, however, the highly controversial announcement was made that the service would not be aired, the time-slot being given instead to a rerun of Escape to the Country. Allegedly this was made on cost grounds. Although the headlines initially only referred to live broadcasts, it later became apparent that the service had not been properly filmed at all. This is a rather baffling decision on the embattled BBC’s part. Given how much experience they have shooting in the Abbey — not just for these services, but also for weddings, coronations, funerals and military commemorations — it really should be second nature by now. Also, given that they have recently lost the rights to broadcast this year’s Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, as well as some other high-profile sporting events, one might have expected them to defend their remaining prerogatives with all their might.
The service did not go totally unrecorded: There are stills available on Getty Images, the order of service can be read from the Abbey’s website and the ITN Royal Family Channel has a 25-minute montage. Unfortunately the latter does not compare to the BBC productions of previous years, being rather crudely shot from a handheld camera and focusing more on the arrivals and departures at the doorway than on the event itself.
While those interested in the content of the speeches can obviously read them from the handout, and those wishing to inspect the outfits of the royals and dignities in attendance can do so from the stills, the elaborate music and dance routines cannot really be enjoyed in this manner. The whole experience is akin to watching a Telesnap reconstruction of a missing Doctor Who episode.
If the BBC does not reverse this decision next year, perhaps the Society (or whichever body is actually in charge of this decision) will offer it to another broadcaster, or even setting up their own in-house film unit to either sell to the networks or publish online. The knock-on effects for the airing of other royal events could be severe.
UPDATE (16th March)
Happily it turns out at least some of the event was professionally recorded, as the RCS’s website has released a handful of clips. Even more happily, my comparison to missing Doctor Who turned out to be apt as it was revealed on Friday that two more episodes have been found.
Some notes on three recent topics which I did not deem worthy of full-length articles in their own right:
Andrew’s Arrest
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was yesterday arrested at his home on the Sandringham estate and taken for police questioning, being released later the same day. He is suspected of misconduct in public office.
The King put out a statement acknowledging the situation and essentially declaring that he would not interfere with the process of law. Of course, even if Charles is going to personally recuse himself, his position as incumbent sovereign means that his name will be frequently invoked during any legal proceedings, as any prosecution would formally be “The King against…” (written as “R -v-…”), the barristers arguing for both for and against Andrew would likely be King’s Counsel and if the former prince is incarcerated it would be in one of His Majesty’s Prisons, “at His Majesty’s Pleasure”. Also, of course, the royal arms will be used on a great many letterheads in the process.
Something similar happened with the Duke of Sussex’s lawsuits regarding his security provision: As a judicial review case it was formally “The King on the application of…” and the defendant was one His Majesty’s Principal Secretary’s of State. The case was, furthermore, heard in The King’s Bench Division. As reported in The Telegraph, this was
the infelicitous situation where the King’s son is suing the King’s ministers in the King’s courts. That is pulling the King in three directions.
The government is also apparently considering legislation to remove Andrew from the line of succession to the throne. Given that he is now eighth in line with the first seven all being at least twenty-three years younger than him, the effect of this will be more symbolic than practical. The need to coordinate any legal changes with the governments of the other Commonwealth Realms add further political friction. There have also been calls to formally remove his eligibility to serve as a Counsellor of State. His removal from the line of succession would do this automatically, but otherwise it could be done by a relatively simple Act of Parliament. This status only applies to Britain so the other Realms would not need to be consulted.
A principle that has been invoked many times during these events is that “No-one is above the law.” while it doesn’t help his brother, the phrase is not strictly true: The King himself is immune to arrest in all cases due to the principle of sovereign immunity which applies to varying degrees to lots of heads of state both monarchical and republican.
Bishopric Gets Bishop Rick
Yes, I am including this one solely for the pun. Richard “Rick” Simpson has been announced as the next Bishop of Durham. The diocesan office, one of the five ost senior bishops in the Church of England, has been vacant for nearly two years since the retirement of Paul Butler. In the interim the role has been delegated to Sarah Clark, Suffragan Bishop of Jarrow, who herself was recently chosen to become the next Diocesan Bishop of Ely. It should also be noted that Sarah Mullally, having had her election confirmed on 28th January, took her seat in the House of Lords two weeks ago, but will still not be installed at Canterbury Cathedral for another month.
Chagos Chaos
Donald Trump has flip-flopped yet again on the British agreement with Mauritius to cede sovereignty of the Chagos Islands. Recently a group of four Chagossians, led by Misley Mandarin, staged a landing on the islands themselves in protest at the attempted handover. The British government ordered their eviction but that has been temporarily blocked by a court order. There has been yet another “pause” of the passage of the relevant legislation through the House of Lords where scrutiny has been very strenuous and embarrassing for the executive.
More Publications, More Podcasts
Dominic Sandbrook, whom I count among the notable people with whom I’ve communicated, is mostly famous now as the co-host of The Rest is History, an enormously successful podcast. He has recently launched another podcast, The Book Club, which he co-hosts with Tabitha Syrett. Their first episode is on Wuthering Heights. Having not read it yet, I must try very hard to avoid repeating lines from the climax of Peep Show episode 39, clips of which I now very frustratingly cannot find. Twenty-five minutes in there is a discussion of the poems and songs in The Lord of the Rings, with Syrett saying she skips over them and Sandbrook saying they’re the best bit. When I read the trilogy aloud to my mother in 2020-21 I included all of them, turning to amateur channels such as Clamavi de Profundis for musical guidance. I have learned a great many of them by heart and practice them while walking the dog along the river bank.
Sandbrook’s idea for a podcast based on books is, of course, far from original. I have already blogged about two different book-related podcasts in the last few years and searching BBC Sounds for “book club” reveals quite a long list. The idea that literacy is essential to civilisation, and that the widely-recorded decline in reading over recent years represents a serious threat thereto, is gaining traction in intellectual circles. Times columnist James Marriott, whom I’ve had on my directory page since last summer, is fast emerging as the the leader of the movement. His own book, The New Dark Ages, is already gaining critical acclaim despite the fact that it isn’t due to be published for another few months.
Secretarial Succession
Dame Antonia Romeo has indeed been appointed Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Home Civil Service, a few days after the resignation of Sir Mark Wormald. Allegations against her have apparently failed to amount to anything.
Westminster Woes
Political power-couple Richard Marc Johnson and Lee David Evans, speaking on their own podcast (yes, yet another one), discuss the state of the Palace of Westminster (as I brought up last week). They also concur with the idea of putting Charles III in charge on the grounds that the royal family clearly has a much stronger track record with this than MPs, peers and civil servants do.
There was a fair bit of media interest generated two days ago when the Prince of Wales took his elder son to London homeless charity The Passage.
Nowadays most television news broadcasts have a ticker graphic at the bottom of the screen which gives the top few trending headlines. News headlines often adopt a strained form of English which omits various words from a sentence for the sake of concision. When it comes to ticker reels, this is often so that the sentence can fit within the width of the screen without needing to use an illegibly-small font*.
In this case, the BBC ticker reported the royal headline as “George joins Prince William in preparing meal for homeless“, raising the awkward question of why the former’s princely title was omitted while the latter’s was retained. The next was an entirely-unrelated headline about the final of the latest series of Strictly Come Dancing, in which the celebrity finalists were Amber Davies, Karen Carney and George Clarke. The ticker omitted all their surnames, resulting in two adjacent titles involving apparently-mononymous Georges. A viewer unfamiliar with the subject matter could have thought they were the same person. There may have been yet another headline about “Andrew” in the same rotation, but I can’t find the clip on iPlayer to check.
Prince George of Wales in 2023
George Clarke in 2024
As it turned out, there was a royal connection in the Strictly story: The Queen had written a message to two outgoing presenters, which was read aloud by Craig Revel Horwood during the broadcast. The online text of the message was headed by the Timothy Noad illustration of the royal arms (rather than the impaled arms of the actual sender, as might have been more appropriate), and signed “Camilla R”. Horwood read it out as “Her Royal Highness, Queen Camilla” which of course is not correct. The page on his clipboard is briefly visible but never properly shown to the camera.
For the past year Sir Stephen Fry has been playing the role of Lady Bracknell in a production of The Importance of Being Ernest. He performed a small skit in that role for this year’s Royal Variety Performance. Jason Manford, the host, introduced the character as “Lady Augusta Bracknell”. This another pet peeve of heraldists, for she derives her title as the wife of a peer (of unspecified rank, but presumably not a duke) rather than as the daughter of an earl or above.
*This is less of a problem when the text continually slides from right to left instead of the bar rotating vertically every few seconds.
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Robin Stanley Taylor 
