Meghan’s hour

The wedding of Prince Harry, sixth in line to the British throne, and Meghan Markle, actress and former star of the legal drama Suits, is almost upon us. The cake has been commissioned from a Hackney bakery — ‘a lemon elderflower cake that will incorporate the bright flavours of spring’, according to a palace statement — and alterations are still being made to the wedding dress (the bride reportedly keeps shrinking). By 19 May, the spotlight will be firmly on the bride and groom, since William and Kate are again in the bleary-eyed enchanted zone of new parents, this time of a baby boy: Kate has thus been relieved of any formal role, save the task of turning up with the wriggling newborn at the wedding.

All is primed, yet in the run-up to the big day itself the country seems to have divided into those happily in the sparkly grip of Marklemania and the contrarian voices of what John Major once called ‘the knockers and sneerers’. Chief among the latter group recently was the 79-year-old Germaine Greer, who has — with her undiminished talent for stirring an argument — assumed the national role of an outspoken uncle on his dangerous fourth glass of Rioja.

‘I think she’ll bolt,’ predicted Greer. ‘She bolted before. She was out the door.’ Voicing similar concerns, but from a more traditionalist starting point, was the 70-year-old former Conservative MP Ann Widdecombe. From her incarceration in the Celebrity Big Brother house in January, Widdecombe professed herself ‘uneasy’ about the Harry-Meghan union. ‘I think she’s trouble,’ she said. ‘Background, attitude, I worry.’

Increasingly, I find that such doomy forecasts, often borne on a few meaningfully freighted words — ‘celebrity culture’, ‘divorcee’, ‘that bit older’ — are pushing me firmly into the Markle camp.