Royal Commentators, reporters and authors

[wannable]

It's an expense paid by the RVC...so usually the RVC or the organization seeks for a venue and host.

If you say so. Although, I like to listen to all parties that talk about history.

[Curryong]

I like to listen to everyone who is historically trained and knows something about the subject to talk about it. Not a gossipy author who peddles lies about the RF she is supposedly defending. ?Cookie? anyone?

[Macrobug67]

Okey Dokey, guys.  Getting a little heated. Deep breath.  Namaste.  And if that doesn?t work, can I interest anyone in a nice glass of Merlot.  :flower3:

[wannable]

 :bday: I bet Lady C had Merlot in her cuppa  :shake: :laugh10:

But really, I wrote to RVC, they confirmed, wait for their Annual Financial statement reporting.  :orchid:

[Curryong]

Confirmed what about this tiresome woman? That they paid for it all while Lady C swanned around playing Lady of the Manor. That I can well believe. And it still leaves her as a fantasist and poser.

[wannable]

Fox News
@FoxNews
Piers Morgan to join FOX News Media, News Corp in global deal that includes TV show, columns, books.

[TLLK]

Honoured? I?m not sure that if I were a volunteer with the RVS I?d feel ?honoured? by attending a tea party hosted by a snobbish, gossip peddling fantasist of an author. In fact I?d be gracefully declining. But to each his and her own.

As you pointed out @Curryong, there are likely those who will choose to decline when they realize who the is the acting hostess. However there are those who likely are unaware of who Lady Colin Campbell is or that she's an author.

[wannable]

None of the descriptions constitute a criminal?!

[TLLK]

Amol Rajan: BBC media editor apologises for ?rude and immature? comments about royal family after documentary controversy | The Independent

The BBC?s media editor has apologised for ?rude and immature? comments he made about the royal family in articles nearly a decade ago.

Amol Rajan, 38, described the Duke of Edinburgh as a ?racist buffoon? and the Prince of Wales as ?scientifically illiterate? in comment pieces published by The Independent newspaper in 2012.

One article described the Queen?s Diamond Jubilee as ?little more than the industrialisation of mediocrity? also criticised the Duke of Cambridge and Duke of Sussex, who he said were ?the sort of posh nice-but-dims our democracy has struggled for centuries to remove from authority?.

A second piece published later the same year said the public roles of the William and his wife Kate, the Duchess the Cambridge, were a ?total fraud? and called on them to ?renounce the luxuries of royal patronage and aristocracy?.

Rajan, who edited The Independent between 2013 and 2016, presented a controversial recent BBC documentary examining the relationship between William and Harry.

In a statement posted on Twitter on Thursday, the journalist, who is also a presenter for Radio 4?s Today programme, apologised for any offence his words in the 2012 article had caused.

He wrote: ?In reference to very reasonable questions about some foolish commentary from a former life, I want to say I deeply regret it.

[wannable]

They all (Royal Correspondents) are at holiday/social media twitter hiatus, except Omid and the Sussexsquad.  They went into a Mega Metldown Christmas day onward.

Wishing them all peace 🕊

[wannable]

01/01/2022

Omid starts the year angry.


Omid Scobie
@scobie

Nice behind the scenes details on Kate?s life from former Kensington Palace private secretary Rebecca Priestley in the Mail. Comes not long after Jason Knauf was given the nod to break his NDA and help the Mail?s publisher fight Meghan in their court appeal. Cosy relationship.

He's angry because Rebecca English wrote that Camilla Tominey is correct, that she investigated and there are ''several'' witnesses that were there at Charlotte's fitting.

Who are the several; Meghan's party, Kate's party AND the 'Designer Party'....just saying.

[PrincessOfPeace]

Omid is an expert on cosy relationships. #FindingFreedom.

He literally gave Meghan a hug at the last engagement she did as a royal.

[Macrobug67]

Quite a few of the RR seem a bit hypersensitive the last few days.   

[PrincessOfPeace]

Online troll arrested for making chilling death threats against TV star Piers Morgan and his son Spencer

[TLLK]

Camilla Tominey also received online death threats against herself and her three children in the past seven months.

This Morning?s royal expert Camilla Tominey victim of terrifying death threats - Mirror Online

This Morning's royal expert Camilla Tominey has opened up about the vile death threats she has received both on her own life and that of her family.

Camilla posted one of the graphic messages she has received on her social media accounts as she demanded it stops now.

The mum-of-three claims the death threat came from a fan of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry.

She had attracted criticism after speaking out against Harry, who she has branded "insensitive" and "self-pitying" and claimed he is "out for vengeance" against the Royal Family.

She was also responsible for the story that claimed Meghan made Kate Middleton cry in a row, which Meghan said in her Oprah Winfrey interview was actually the other way around, with Kate making her cry.

The horrifying message from an anonymous user read: "Hate your three kids. They should not be breathing. They must die! "We are watching you and yours. That nasty husband of yours cannot watch them all the time you know.

"We know where to get you all."

It chillingly concluded: "We don't lie, we act. We love to [knife emojis] you will be a pleasure to kill."

Camilla wrote alongside the message: "We must call out online hate when we see it, which is why I am posting this death threat, sent to my website this morning in the name of #HarryandMeghan ?fandom?.

[PrincessOfPeace]

Meghan Markle tried to cancel me - she's in for a very nasty surprise, says Piers Morgan ahead of his new Sun column

[Curryong]

Didn?t expect anything else from Piers than more broadsides against Meghan and Harry. He is getting extremely boring on the subject.

[PrincessOfPeace]

Harry and Meghan after me again via Twitter lawyers. I said that their victim feelings happen every now and again and the rest of the time they are strong enough to tell the world how to behave. Thankfully Twitter says it is not subject to removal.

- Angela Levin ( Prince Harry biographer )

https://twitter.com/angelalevin1/status/1482716807677022208?s=20

[wannable]

Omid Scobie
@scobie

@TiffanyPollard and @NeNeLeakes sign ME UP

Omid wants to be in Celebrity Big Brother

[wannable]

I want to expand on Omid Scobie's ''allow'' Duchess Kate.

The rumor is that Prince Harry's book has made a U turn; he will be centering it on his wife Meghan and how the BRF didn't ''allow'' her to carry out projects. Allegedly Harry's father will take the hit again from his moaning son.

IF so (we have to wait for Harry's memoir), Harry used to be okay working in the firm's pecking order, met Meghan, now he isn't okay with it.  BUT, the thing is, IF they ever want to work as an employee, or a team, or under any company, organization that is not owned by themselves, there is always a pecking order AND most importantly ALL of them (companies worldwide) work via AUTHORITY that approves or not investments, projects, etc. When one reads policies and procedures of EACH company, the first page of approvals always comes from the first in command CEO signature with that of the second in command CFO. 

CEO/CFO
General Manager/Finance Manager
President/Vice President

and so on. 

Let us see where this word ALLOW hits the bookshelves late 2022, no date of release, but reported as 'late 2022'.

[TLLK]

Assets of Meghan Markle and Harry's friend to be seized by Crown: report

The assets of Omid Scobie, the co-author of Prince Harry and Meghan's biographer and friend, are likely to be seized by  the Crown, said a report.

Writing for mailplus.co.uk, Richard Eden wrote that Scobie is "facing action to close his publishing business, Meyou Ltd, after he failed to provide legally required financial information. It faces ?compulsory strike-off? as it hasn?t filed any accounts since 2019."

[TLLK]

Omid Scobie's thoughts on the Sussexes' meeting with the Queen.

Why Prince Harry is asking questions about people around the Queen

[wannable]

He has been recently hired by Yahoo News, as the Executive Royal Editor.  IF he only really went to the BRF events in person rather than misinforming/disinforming, like today's Anne/Kate visit.  They didn't go to 'learn' (Omid's tweet) they went to visit the 'new' installation, where both charities patronages are located 'now'.

[wannable]

Philip Hensher
You can make anything up about the royal family and it will be printed as fact
There are no compelling new witnesses or discoveries in Tina Brown's much-hyped book, but plenty of repeated implausible gossip
The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor The Truth and the Turmoil Tina Brown


There are quite a few things that Tina Brown doesn't know: what ?jejune means; when Louis XIV came to the throne; what the passive voice in prose is (not recollections may vary); what members of the aristocracy are called (Lady Romsey becomes Lady Penelope Romsey) or what members of the royal family are called (the Dowager Duchess of Gloucestershire puts in an appearance).Another thing she doesn't know (which she shares with other authors of works in this obscenely overstuffed genre) is what's been going on between members of the royal family in the period between the death of Diana, Princess of Wales and the death of the Duke of Edinburgh which we aren't likely to find out until the real private papers and emails become available to some future Jane Ridley. The title of this book is a bit of a swiz.

Until then, in the accounts of writers with various degrees of access, intelligence and perception, all we have is tittle-tattle, and the occasional flash of authentic feeling expressed in public. Some of the gossip in The Palace Papers, like all books of this sort, is grossly implausible. There is a claim of something very private that the future Duchess of Cornwall said to the Prince of Wales the first time they went to bed together, which is dutifully footnoted to a volume by the American journalist Kitty Kelley. A moment's thought will show how unlikely it is that either person would have shared this with anyone without it having the most disastrous effect on their relationship. But the line is too good to be dropped. At this point one starts to think about volumes of royal muckraking that you can make up anything and have a fair chance of it being repeated. If I said in this review that I happened to know that all the Prince of Wales's siblings were in the habit of referring to him among themselves as Blodwen, I dare say it would soon find its way into print as a matter of fact.

I've had my encounter with the species. There was a moment in the 1990s when I was lurching through Soho after a protracted lunch and came across three policemen outside an advertising agency. What's going on,I asked. The Queen was coming, I was told. Despite my scepticism, I thought I would wait around, and lit a cigarette. Almost at once a black limousine drew up and a policeman leapt forward, opened the door and out she popped. My admiration for Her Majesty is unlimited, and I burst into applause. What she was doing visiting an advertising agency in Soho I never discovered. But she slowed very slightly and gave me a look at once beady and slightly alarmed. And then she was in, shaking the hands of creatives.

The point, I guess, is that the most glancing encounter with any of even the top 30 in line to the succession or their spouses is likely to make an impression in the street, at the theatre, at a concert or at a party. They still occupy a large place in our national imagination. Their utterances, when they make them, are pored over for implications; their choices are analysed and probably invented, too. Among many things Brown mentions in her breathless chronicle as evidence of their convictions are the placement of family photographs and the role of jewellery and hats. The suggestion that the Queen's choice of brooch to wear for Donald Trump's state visit somehow indicated her disapproval of him shows just how fevered such speculation can get.

This is yet another book about the past 25 years in the royal family, including the Andrew debacle, the Prince of Wales's life since he remarried, and William and Catherine Cambridge (she knew instantly that she was talking to a hostile stranger when a tabloid investigative reporter phoned her and asked Is that Kate Middleton?). The Cambridges are dignified, charming, very private and well-behaved, and Catherine's unheralded visit to Clapham Common to lay flowers for Sarah Everard was much appreciated locally.

The Sussexes, on the other hand, are richly comic characters, and the ludicrous series of disasters, petulance, pompous edicts and self-promotion without thinking things through make the last third of the book unintentionally amusing. High points include Meghan treating the Queen's dresser, Angela Kelly, like a contract stylist at NBC when she arrived bearing the Queen's choice of wedding tiara, and Meghan's terrifyingly well-choreographed social ascent without, apparently, ever getting to know anyone. How do you know them a family friend asked George and Amal Clooney at the wedding. We don't, they said (according to Rachel Johnson). I couldn't find any original discoveries here or compelling new witnesses, and Outside the House of Windsor might have been a more accurate subtitle. But I admit to not being familiar with the entire bibliography, having better things to do, such as reading the collected works of Charlotte M. Yonge.

The book is terribly written and gloriously meaningless: The Queen's frail liege man found heavenly release from his life of service. Gently, and with love, she let him go. I quickly found a kind of joy in mapping Brown's devotion to that heinous crime of prose, elegant variation: the Duchess of Sussex is the family fledgling and, earlier on, the earnest, freckle-faced tween; the Duke is the sexy royal wild card with the Brad Pitt stubble. The Duke of York is a now divorced horndog eternally on the hunt, with a guffawing, boob-ogling pickup style and, more concisely, a coroneted sleaze machine. A journalist is a limpet-like royal scoop-monger. The Michael Kents are a low-boil money-grubbing embarrassment.

Some of this may be meant to appeal to Brown's primarily American audience, including the report that Her Majesty joined the cast on stage and received a cacophonous five-minute standing O with cheers and whistles. I think some of those readers haven't been encouraged to see when a joke is being made, however coarse  such as the young Princes calling a courtier Black-adder, or the Duke of York bursting in on a journalist lunching with his wife and saying: What are you doing with this fat cow? It's not just a writer assessing an audience, however. I think Brown actually likes it, and even thinks it's classy. At any rate she feels equipped to be rude about other people's prose and ventures on a mind-boggling comparison of the Middleton family to characters in Trollope, Dickens and George Eliot, as if to demonstrate quality.

I doubt whether the recent disasters will do much to harm the institution in the long term. As they used to say in Vienna: The situation is hopeless, not serious.The cavorting and self-regard of the Sussexes has emphasised the dignity, duty and good sense of the Queen, the Prince of Wales, the Duchess of Cornwall and the Cambridges. If the institution of the monarchy has sunk, it has probably only done so to this observable degree: that if some catastrophe wiped out the entire Cambridge family, it is more likely that we would opt for a republic rather than give Prince William's brother the crown.

In a curious aside, Brown observes that during a brief break-up in their courtship, Catherine Middleton could have become the wife of a duke or a billionaire as though that might have been a step up. Perhaps the institution has reached this level. If in the future the Sussexes weary of each other and Meghan decides to marry a Californian tech trillionaire, a royal prince would, perhaps for the first time in history, look like a step on the way to the real social summit. I think we can live with that.

WRITTEN BY
Philip Hensher
Philip Hensher is professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University and the author of 11 novels including A Small Revolution in Germany.

[wannable]

Omid Scobie
@scobie
The Queen has earned every right to conserve her energy for celebratory moments that the nation can enjoy alongside her. Now is the time for Prince Charles to do the heavy lifting.

Omid lives under a rock....Charles (and William) have been doing the heavy lifting for years already.  Each year more and more (new) duties are given to both son and grandson.