Royal family

Charles III’s first address to the nation as King began by speaking of sorrow – and went on to speak of love. He used ‘love’ or its cognates eight times in that short speech. He spoke of his ‘darling Mama’ and ‘dear late Papa’, of love for Harry and Meghan, love for his people and for tradition, and the loving support of his ‘darling wife’. He spoke, too, of grief and consolation. In setting out his stall as King – if that’s not too vulgar an expression for what he has been doing over the past few days – Charles III has done so in terms of feeling. He has

I went to the O2 on Sunday night to see the comedians Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock. Chappelle, who survived an attempt to cancel him last year, didn’t disappoint, delivering some hilarious, politically incorrect jokes, and Rock was equally seditious, although his set went on for too long. But the rest of the evening was pretty painful. The effort it takes to get to this relic of the New Labour era is truly Herculean. Indeed, Rock made a joke about it, claiming he’d set off from his hotel on Wednesday morning and only just arrived. The Tube station is North Greenwich, one beyond Canary Wharf, and your only hope of

We’ve all spent months bracing ourselves for what our leaders assure us will be a dreadful winter. As the weather turns, we can look forward to ruinous energy bills, runaway inflation, collapsing health services, strikes, blackouts, more strikes, violent crime, and perhaps even – why not? – a nuclear war with Russia. As if that weren’t bad enough, Meghan and Harry are back, wafting over all the way from Montecito, California on billowy clouds of bonkers publicity, self-pity and self-help mumbo-jumbo. On Monday, as Britain announces a new prime minister, Meghan and Harry will attend a ‘One Young World’ summit for youth leaders in Manchester, where Meghan will deliver the

It seems that the last two years of interviews, podcasts and media briefings actually count as Meghan keeping shtum. Towards the end of a 6,500-word interview with the Cut, which covers the duchess’s views on the monarchy, the British press and racism, she says that she ‘never had to sign anything that restricts her from talking,’ adding ‘I can talk about my whole experience and make a choice not to’. At this point, Mr S doesn’t know whether this is an attempt at satire or if Meghan genuinely believes her ‘truth’.  The interview, titled ‘Meghan of Montecito’, comes less than a week after her Archetypes podcast with Serena Williams (in which listeners might have hoped