Weekly Summary: Upsets, Enemies, False Friends, Private Jealousies Cheered On For Money, & Value Lost

w/c 2nd January 2023

Little late today, my apologies. And dear oh dear, what a couple of days it’s been newswise in the UK, with the drama and unintended hilarity of the leaking of Harry’s book. We expected a degree of drama and perhaps an overpaid damp squib situation, with complaints that we’d all heard before, but I don’t think anyone predicted it would be quite this level of international cringe, with even previously sympathetic areas of the US press raising eyebrows at, as Don Lemon said, the “gaucheness” of it all.

Did the cards I pulled quite capture the ghastliness of it? I’m not sure. Certainly some elements of surprise were predicted. In some ways, better news in the first instance for the Royals than they were hoping; they just have to stand back, say nothing and watch it all implode (see my previous Russian reading for them all which gave the advice of keeping things dull). In the long run, however, what this debacle says about the institution, the success of palace PR in hiding some of the idi…