Meghan and Harry have never grasped the notion of ‘only connect’

In June 2017 Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair, was surprised when Jane Sarkin, his features editor, told him they should do a cover story on Meghan Markle, the star of Suits. Carter had never heard of Markle, but then nor had most people. In her own eyes she was a huge Hollywood celebrity, but actually she was mainly unknown outside Canada, where Suits was filmed. She wasn’t even the star of the series; she was about sixth in the billing. But Sarkin knew something else about her: that she was rumoured to be marrying Prince Harry.

Markle happily agreed to the interview, but said, of course, she could not talk about Harry. She wanted to be celebrated as a global ‘activist and philanthropist’. The trouble was that Vanity Fair’s meticulous fact-checkers could not find any evidence of her activism and philanthropy, so that claim had to be dropped. And then, when asked about Harry, Meghan answered, ‘We’re a couple. We’re in love’, which gave the magazine its cover line: ‘She’s just wild about Harry.’ Buckingham Palace was furious; and Meghan claimed to be furious too. Why hadn’t the magazine focused on her philanthropy and activism?

Harry and Meghan had met a year earlier, on a blind date at Soho House, and he was so smitten that a fortnight later he flew to Toronto to stay with her for a week, and then invited her to Botswana – the fourth girlfriend he had taken there. He stayed with her again in Toronto, and invited her to Nottingham Cottage, his home in the grounds of Kensington Palace. It was there that he proposed to her and presented her with a ring, but he said they must keep the engagement secret until he’d asked his grandmother. That was why the Vanity Fair cover was so ill-timed.