Tag Archives: King Charles III

Charles the Third, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of His other Realms and Territories King, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith.

Notes on the 2026 State Opening

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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.

Charles III and Artemis II

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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.

Notes on the England Coast Path

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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.

 

 

Commonwealth Day 2026

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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.

Fanciful February Flotsam

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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.

Paws, Peers and Poor Processes

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The Chief Mouser

Tomorrow will be a significant anniversary in British politics: It will be fifteen years since Larry, the cat pictured above, was appointed Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office. If he makes it another three years he will be the hold the record in that office. Already he is on a record six Prime Ministers and will soon greet his sixth Cabinet Secretary as well (see next paragraph). Actually, it would be interesting to do a census of the human officials currently working in Downing Street to see how many predate him. Larry, who was adopted by the Camerons just as the government’s modern web presence was being established, is the first to officially hold the title, but culturally it goes back just over a century to Rufus (or Treasury Bill), who performed the role during the premiership of Ramsay MacDonald. Larry is now well-established as an international celebrity in his own right, to the point that the government is rumoured to have made special plans for the announcement of his eventual death (he’s 19 years old). Despite this, there have also been reports that he is rather lazy and incompetent in his actual job of killing vermin. Yesterday Larry’s own Twitter account acknowledged the passing of his former colleague Palmerston, who was Chief Mouser to the Foreign & Commonwealth Office from 2016 to 2020.

The Cabinet Secretary

Sir Chris Wormald succeeded Simon Case as Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Home Civil Service fourteen months ago, having previously been Permanent Secretary at the Department of Health & Social Care since 2016. Whereas his tenure in that job was on the long side, his time as Cabinet Secretary is the shortest in the history of that post. Last summer there were already leaks from Number 10 suggesting that the government regretted his appointment and wanted him out. Two days ago it was announced that he would step down “by mutual consent”. Before the announcement had even been made there was speculation in the press that Sir Keir Starmer intended to choose Dame Antonia Romeo as his replacement. Romeo has spent the last ten months as Permanent Secretary at the Home Office, and for four years before that she was at the Ministry of Justice, where she concurrently held the ancient office of Clerk of the Crown in Chancery which among other perks gave her a prominent seat at the coronation. While she is a favourite among constitutional scholars (such as Elijah Granet of Legal Style Blog), there were also briefings against her by some former colleagues. So far, Starmer has not named a successor to Wormald, but has said that Romeo will form a troika with Catherine Little and James Bowler while the position lies vacant.

The Lord Doyle

Matthew Doyle is, like Peter Mandelson, a figure from the Blair years brought back to help Starmer’s government only to quickly bring the regime into serious disrepute (and for very similar yet unrelated reasons). Doyle was appointed Downing Street Director of Communications (a role created in 2000 for Alastair Campbell and later satirised with the fictional Malcolm Tucker) after the 2024 general election and stayed until 28th March last year. On 10th December it was announced that he had been nominated for a life peerage. He was created Baron Doyle on 8th January and took his seat in the upper house four days later. Four weeks after that he was suspended from the Labour Party. Given that the government was already embroiled in the Mandelson scandal, this was particularly embarrassing for Starmer. Conservative backbencher Lord Harper pointed out that Doyle’s letters patent were not sealed until after the revelations came out and thus it would have been possible for the Prime Minister to postpone or withdraw his ennoblement. This was confirmed by House of Lords authorities.

Discussing this on the Parliament Matters podcast, Mark D’Arcy made an observation that I have long held:

Even though the House of Lords is half of the legislative process in Parliament, it’s remarkable how little most people in the House of Commons actually know about how it works. It’s another country from whose bourne no traveller returns as far as the Commons is concerned. Not quite true actually. A couple of them have. But it is this very strange feature of Westminster life that there is so much ignorance in the Commons about the workings of the Lords and very little inclination to learn much about it either.

He had earlier brought up a speech made in the Commons by Darren Jones, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister, about proposed legislation to allow disgraced peers to be deprived of their baronies. I’m a little surprised D’Arcy didn’t highlight what the minister actually said, because at one point while bringing up the Titles Deprivation Act 1917 he managed to get World War One and World War Two confused. Worse still, nobody else in the chamber at the time pointed this out.

The Next State Visit

Nothing about Their Majesties’ outbound diplomacy has yet been confirmed for this year, but already we have one inbound state visit on the cards: The President & First Lady of Nigeria will be coming to Windsor Castle on 18th March. This is unusually early in the year for such an event (as they normally don’t start until the autumn) and is only the second time in the present reign that a Commonwealth president has been received in such a way. President Tinubu last had a royal audience in September 2024, and before that was visited in his home country by James Cleverly in 2023.

The Palace of Westminster

It has been over six years since the Parliamentary Buildings (Restoration & Renewal) Act was passed, yet progress on the actual restoration has been negligible. The House of Commons and House of Lords Commissions recently put out a joint report predicting that the work could take up to sixty-one years and cost up to £39 billion. This naturally has caused widespread outrage and been held up as the perfect symbol of the British state’s incapability of getting anything done in the modern age.

The R&R Programme in its current state was savaged in The Critic by Nicholas Boys Smith, Founding Director of Create Streets. Smith’s article seems to have been taken up by Parliamentarians themselves, with Lord Hannan of Kingsclere in particular claiming

Rarely have I seen an article taken up by politicians as swiftly and as thoroughly as this one. Every MP and peer is talking about it.

although of course that will be hard to objectively verify. Although Smith himself does not mention it directly (despite the article name), I have seen a few commentators bring up the possibility of Charles III personally taking charge of the project. While that may seem outlandish by the conventions of modern politics, there is a logic to it: Charles has been dedicated to the cause of traditional architecture for many decades, and has arranged the construction of two entire towns (Poundbury and Nansledan) in less time than the Westminster restoration is expected to take. Given that the Palace is technically a royal residence, it is also worth bringing up restoration works on other royal residences which the royal family still occupy: The rebuilding of Windsor Castle after the 1992 fire was completed in five years without a government grant, and the refurbishment of Buckingham Palace is expected to be completed next year with relatively little disruption along the way. It may solve a different problem, too: It has been known for a long time that the royals themselves are not all that keen on Buck House and have long wished to shift the emphasis to Windsor as the main residence. Elizabeth II & Philip Mountbatten were happily embedded at Clarence House before the death of George VI and would have continued living there had Churchill not insisted they move. As the 2020 pandemic seized the nation, the late sovereign decamped to Windsor for the duration of the lockdown, and as restrictions eased she decided not to move back. Charles & Camilla are likewise still at Clarence House, even continuing to use it for their private social functions and all the charities they founded as Duke & Duchess of Cornwall. The refurbishment has given them the perfect excuse not to move, as well as to redirect state visits to Windsor. As the building returns to an available state next year it could be a canny strategic move for him to graciously offer it to MPs and peers while he takes back control of Westminster. Caroline Shenton’s book Mr Barry’s War details the reconstruction of the Palace in the nineteenth century following the great fire. It mentions that Parliament turned down an offer from William IV to move to Buckingham Palace. This time around it may prove harder to refuse. Furthermore, a lot of the delay in the current project is due to some MPs’ and peers’ reluctance to commit to a full decamp, understandably fearful that once they take their foot out of the door they may never get it back in again, or that by the time they do their old home will have changed beyond all recognition. The King’s own hand at the tiller may be just the reassurance they need.

UPDATE (15th February)

Professor Norton has put out an article on the matter of peerage nominations and their opportunities for withdrawal.

The King’s Cancer Message

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Since the announcement last February that His Majesty had (an unspecified form of) cancer, speculation about the monarch’s health was inevitable. In just the past few days I found a handful of headlines suggesting that he was on death’s door:

The above are the few I can find that are close to original. There were plenty of duplicate headlines either from other news sources that were mirror sites of these, or that repackaged the same articles, or at least referred to these as their source. They all seem to come from one interview with an unnamed royal insider and the story was not picked up by any of the remotely reputable British papers (or even some of the fairly disreputable ones) so I would judge that it is safe to dismiss as trash.

Early yesterday it was announced that Charles III himself would release a message about his experience. Some outlets referred to this as his “cancer journey”. Based on the headlines above, one would expect the message to be that he would soon, well… arrive. The message wasn’t actually released until after 8pm, so for the entire day viewers were held in suspense. This strikes me as perhaps a misstep, since the vacuum allowed further morbid rumours to circulate.

The King actually announced that he was recovering and his treatment could be reduced next year. Clearly, he does expect to see the Christmases of 2026, 2027 and beyond after all.

The message was uploaded on the royal family’s official YouTube channel as a standalone video but it was also broadcast on Channel 4 as part of an episode of Stand Up to Cancer. The video on the YouTube channel was clearly extracted directly from the television broadcast as, unlike their other videos, there were no title cards featuring any royal insignia. Instead all the onscreen graphics were from Channel 4, and it even had the “4” logo in the top left corner throughout. This could be an oversight, or perhaps it was at the channel’s own insistence.

Notes on the German State Visit

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Last week Windsor Castle hosted the last of three state visits this year, featuring Frank-Walter Steinmeier & Elke Büdenbender, President & First Lady of the Federal Republic of Germany.

This one made the news far less (most likely because it was far less controversial) than that of Donald Trump in September. Unlike Trump, Steinmeier was able to partake in the public-facing elements of a state visit, such as the carriage ride through the streets of Windsor and an address in the royal gallery of the House of Lords.

This was in some ways the reciprocation of the state visit which our King & Queen made to Germany in 2023. In his state banquet speech Steinmeier said to Charles

“the fact that your very first trip abroad as King brought you to Germany was a special symbol of the German-British friendship, a gesture of appreciation which meant a great deal to me and to us Germans.”

This is not strictly true as Their Majesties had been planning to visit France first, but that visit was postponed a few months as Macron dealt with protests over state pensions.

The King’s speech at the same event included this quip

“our languages, English and German, [ ] share such deep common roots, but now do sound a little different. It is undoubtedly true, that your language contains a very large number of very long words. As someone who has spent some time trying to learn a little Welsh, I have some sympathy for the proposition that needless gaps between words are a dreadfully inefficient use of paper… “

There was no exchange of honours this time, as Steinmeier had already been appointed an honorary GCB during the aforementioned 2023 visit. He and Charles both wore their red sashes to dinner. The Prime Minister, a KCB, notably continues not to wear his badge.

The Duke of Kent did not attend the state banquet but he later separately met the Bundespräsident at a service at Coventry Cathedral, to commemorate its bombing during the Second World War. It is worth remembering that the Duke is now the only living British prince to have been born before that war started. We got a rare glimpse of his royal cypher on a wreath lain at the old altar.

Steinmeier also had a meeting with Sir Keir Starmer at 10 Downing Street. While his state visit was still going on Starmer also had an unrelated meeting with the Prime Minister of Norway, and already since the President’s departure he has held another “Coalition of the Willing” meeting including Chancellor Merz.

From a ceremonial perspective there is little innovation here (bar a lot of stories about tiaras), as the proceedings stuck closely to the template established by recent precedents. The most interesting parts are His Majesty’s and His Excellency’s speeches, which I think, well, speak for themselves.

Recent state visits have been good opportunities for uploading free-licence photographs to Wikimedia Commons but sadly on this occasion the pickings have been very limited as the government Flickr accounts’ only pictures of Steinmeier are of his visit to Downing Street, leaving out anything involving the royals. Those on the Parliamentary accounts are not released under the correct licence, and it doesn’t look as if the German government has the same attitude to copyright that the British one does so finding anything from their end is also unlikely.

Royals and Remembrance

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Once Halloween and Guy Fawkes Night have passed, poppy season is all that remains to block Christmas from achieving total domination for the rest of the year. There are, of course, two separate dates for this occasion — Armistice Day (always 11th November, the exact anniversary of the end of the First World War) and Remembrance Sunday (second Sunday in November, a broader commemoration of war dead). Both of these events involve two-minute national silences… assuming, of course, that a silence actually falls. Due to the logistics and practicalities of the working week, some organisations have to hold subsidiary events outside the universal dates. Silences here can be hard to regulate if everyone around isn’t coordinated with it. I remember quite a few occasions from childhood when a reverent, contemplative peace was anything but. Even the highest are not immune to this: The Queen attended a service at Westminster Abbey last Thursday, but it was immediately outside rather than inside the main building. As you would expect from an open-air event in central London on a weekday, the “silence” was actually filled with a lot of traffic noise as well as two different emergency sirens. The only blessing was that at least there were no dogs barking. I’m actually a little surprised that this phenomenon hasn’t been the subject of a Family Guy cutaway by now, given that it would be an easy way to get two minutes of padding with minimal animation.

Another big event in November is the United Nations Climate Change Conference, now taking place in Belém, Brazil. The Prince of Wales flew down some days in advance to present his Earthshot Prize, which Sir Keir Starmer also attended, though neither stayed for COP30 itself. This is the latest in a long line of solo overseas engagements undertaken by the heir apparent since his wife’s cancer diagnosis last year*. William was back in time for the Sunday cenotaph service but he missed the Festival of Remembrance at the Royal Albert Hall on Saturday night. Prince George attended for the first time, in his father’s place. The festival includes the religious and patriotic music expected for a solemn occasion, but also a handful of modern entries. One of these was a cover of Avicii’s The Nights. I can’t work out whether it adds to or detracts from the spirit of the event to know that Avicii himself, err, left this world behind some years ago, his life clearly remembered but tragically brief, and predeceased his father. He was from Sweden, a country formally neutral in both world wars. The festival featured multiple performances from Sir Rod Stewart, who sported the unusual sartorial combination of a knight bachelor’s badge hung from an open shirt.

The cenotaph ceremony in Whitehall traditionally involves the laying of wreaths by senior royals, senior servicemen, cabinet ministers, diplomats, various officials representing the British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies, and leaders of the significant political parties in the House of Commons. This has always been a bugbear for Nigel Farage, because his parties have so far never met the threshold of six MPs needed to qualify. UKIP in 2015 got 12.6% of the popular vote but only one seat. Douglas Carswell, as the party’s sole representative in the Commons, was regarded for procedural purposes as an independent rather than a leader. Reform in 2024 got 14.3% of the vote and five seats. The cruel twist here is that since the election the Reform caucus has gained two members (one from defection, one from by-election) but also lost two of the originals, so that when November came they were back as they started. It should be noted that the six-member rule, introduced in 1984, has exceptions for the Northern Ireland parties to avoid the appearance of sectarian bias. It is also possible for two or more parties to coalesce for this purpose, as Plaid Cymru and the Scottish National Party have done since 2001**.

The Princess Royal was also absent from the London commemorations, having gone on a royal tour of Australia. She instead paid her respects at the ANZAC memorial in Sydney. It is a little extraordinary for two royal overseas visits to take place at the same time, especially when both of those away from the United Kingdom are counsellors of state. Recently I have been constructing a Wikipedia page listing all of Anne’s official overseas travel (similar to those which already exist for other senior royals) but it has quickly become a little overwhelming to see just how busy she is, with twenty such journeys listed in the Court Circular just for the last two years.

One ought probably to discuss heraldic matters now. In some of the photographs of Anne’s visit I can see her two crosses and a heart flying in various places. I didn’t see William or Camilla flying theirs in the outings aforementioned. Close-up shots of the wreaths laid and crosses planted also show royal symbols. The Queen’s monogram appeared on hers, complete with the Tudor crown. William’s, even now, still uses the pre-Carolean design (note the oak leaves and lack of arch on the coronet). The King’s wreath did not use his monogram, but instead the full royal achievement with BUCKINGHAM PALACE underneath. Once again it was the old-style illustration with St Edward’s crown.

Sir Lindsay Hoyle is something of a vexillophile and has taken to Tweeting whenever a new flag is flown from New Palace Yard. In 2021 he began making a point of raising the flags of the Overseas Territories. His most recent example was the flag of the British Indian Ocean Territory, allegedly celebrating its national day. I can’t find photographic evidence (including on Parliament.UK) of the flag actually flying in the yard, so I can only go on the image shown in the Tweet itself. The BIOT flag includes the Imperial crown, sometimes with a cap of maintenance and sometimes without, but always in the St Edward form. Hoyle’s picture had a Tudor crown. I cannot find this version on the territory’s website or any other source. Is it a custom make? The BIOT is currently the subject of a slow-moving but high-stakes political controversy as Starmer’s government intends to cede sovereignty of the landmasses to Mauritius. This would mean that the territory as a political entity ceases to exist, hence no point updating the flag. I notice that there was not a representative of the BIOT among all the other BOT representatives laying wreaths at the cenotaph. The flag of the BIOT has been widely used in the campaign against the handover, including by the displaced islanders themselves. The bill to ratify the handover passed the House of Commons and recently had its second reading in the Lords, but then there were reports that the government has paused its progress due to public resistance. In this context it is tempting to read Mr Speaker’s Tweet as a not-so-subtle dig at the Prime Minister.

Finally, a point about Flickr: The cenotaph ceremony and the Earthshot prize both produced plenty of government photographs which can be moved onto Wikimedia Commons. The former had two photographers: Simon Dawson for the Prime Minister’s Office and Gunter Hofer for the DCMS. After migrating both albums across I quickly realised that the time stamps given in the metadata were wrong. Dawson’s were one hour too late (probably not adjusted for daylight savings) while the DCMS ones were in some cases out by a whole year! This feels like an elementary mistake for a professional photographer. Sadly there are not likely to be many photographs of Anne’s excursion to Sydney for the reasons I explained last year.

FOOTNOTES

*The Princess of Wales appears not to have gone abroad on official business since 15 October 2023.
**The SNP alone has won at least six seats in every subsequent general election, so in practice the utility of this alliance is one-sided.

Rolling Coverage

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It quickly became apparent that the Duke of York’s dedication on 17th October to cease the use of his titles and honours was not enough to satisfy the public mood and so, not even a fortnight later, a further announcement was made that His Majesty would be taking measures to enact these changes in a formal way, and also that the changes would go further by removing his princely title as well so that he became Andrew Mountbatten Windsor. No notice to this effect has yet appeared in the London Gazette, but then it is fairly normal for that publication to lag by a few days and indeed for these processes themselves to take a few days to carry out. This is the first time since 1917 that a Prince of the United Kingdom has had that dignity removed in this way.

Less than a day after this announcement it was noted that the Roll of the Peerage had been updated to omit his name*. This is not actually a roll of parchment but rather a PDF. It is uploaded on and accessed through the website of the College of Arms but is actually controlled by the Ministry of Justice. As the page explains, the Roll was created as a government register of everyone who possessed a peerage of any rank of the United Kingdom or its predecessor states, the Roll of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal having been rendered quite inadequate for that purpose following the House of Lords Act 1999. Newly-created peers are added to the Roll automatically but those who have inherited their titles but those who inherit their titles are responsible for writing to the Secretary of State with the necessary documentation to prove their succession. It is also possible for those already listed to request their own removal. The absence of a peer from the Roll does not actually cause his peerages to cease to exist but does effectively mean that the state in its official capacity will cease to recognise him as holding them. This is probably as close as Andrew can get to fully giving up his dukedom and its subsidiaries without an Act of Parliament being passed specially for that purpose.

This has of course led to another flurry of edits on the former prince’s Wikipedia page. Some commentators noted how quickly the page had been moved from “Prince Andrew” to “Andrew Mountbatten Windsor“, but actually this was against procedure so the page name was reverted and not moved again until editor consensus was established. It would have been a lot more convenient for us if both of last month’s announcements had been made as one so that two separate page moves (and thus two separate discussions) would not have been needed. Of course, this still doesn’t entirely resolve matters because there is still some confusion as to whether “Mountbatten Windsor” needs a hyphen, as the royal warrant from 1960 includes one but the recent announcement does not. There is a further important, if largely academic, point to be made that even if Andrew has agreed to simply go by Mr from now on, he could still be called Sir until his knighthoods are fully removed, or indeed Lord as the younger son of a duke.

FOOTNOTES

*Contrast this version (archived on 16th December last year) to this one (archived yesterday): The first two pages list the principal peerages of members of the royal family, then the rest of the document lists all the non-royal peers. Within both groups the titles are listed alphabetically, so “York” was previously the last of the royals. Now he doesn’t appear at all. I note that the current version omits the “Latest revision” date underneath the Crown Copyright line on the first page, which makes me think that yesterday’s update was done in a hurry.

EXTERNAL LINKS

UPDATE (5th November)

The Gazette website has now published (as of noon today) notices confirming the removal of Andrew’s titles:

  • THE KING has been pleased by Letters Patent under the Great Seal of the Realm dated 3 November 2025 to declare that Andrew Mountbatten Windsor shall no longer be entitled to hold and enjoy the style, title or attribute of “Royal Highness” and the titular dignity of “Prince”.
  • THE KING has been pleased by Warrant under His Royal Sign Manual dated 30 October 2025 to direct His Secretary of State to cause the Duke of York to be removed from the Roll of the Peerage with immediate effect.

The first appears only in the London Gazette, while the second also appears in the Edinburgh and Belfast. So far I have not seen any of the usual experts dissecting these, although that will likely come in a few days. These are of course only the Gazette notices and not the full texts of the relevant documents, for which I have already seen some of them say they will file FOI requests. I will note that the removal of princely titles does not take the form of a royal licence, and refers to its target as already being named Andrew Mountbatten Windsor. The second, despite its triple publication, only refers to the Dukedom of York so the removal of the subsidiary earldom and barony must be read as implicit. It says that His Majesty directed the action rather than the Duke himself requesting it as the original warrant laid out, so presumably the new warrant must be amending the original in some way.