Most-read 2024: Can Meghan and Harry stoop any lower?
There’s a whiff of Sunset Boulevard about the isolated pair as they flail around wondering where to go next
Queen elizabeth ii
Monday
Tuesday
A shortage of Nigels and other calamities: humorous stocking-fillers
This is the part of the run-up to Christmas I always look forward to most – the ‘silly’ books, loo books, even non-books produced by serious publishers who may resent the huge piles of money they make every year while delicate, thoughtful literary novels remain unbought and unread. As it happens, I have just finished a wholly unsatisfactory book of short stories – no names, no packdrill – so a few weeks of loo books have proved surprisingly refreshing, like a palate cleanser after a hideously over-thought restaurant meal. They are all recommended for grumpy old relatives, or even yourself. Ysenda Maxtone Graham’s Scream (Abacus, £14.99) comes in the familiar
Monday
Is King Charles’s honeymoon over?
Since he became monarch in September 2022, he has received reasonably warm treatment from the press
Thursday
What’s the right way to voyage?
My husband has ordered a copy of Craig Brown’s new book
Wednesday
Ian McKellen's comments about the Queen are a step too far
In a candid interview that he has given to the Times, the actor has labeled the late Queen both rude and borderline insane
Why we need an Elizabeth and Philip museum
Driving up Royal Deeside last weekend, I spotted a harvest under way on that magical Hobbit-esque green/gold/purple hillscape. It all came flooding back. One year on from the death of Elizabeth II, it’s the sight of the tractors lined up next to the A93 which remains among the most enduring images. It wasn’t just that they all had their shovels dipped in tribute, like the dockers’ cranes saluting the Havengore as it carried Churchill down the Thames in 1965. It was the fact that they were all spotless. At the busiest time of the year in this lush agricultural belt of Aberdeenshire, farmers had paused their harvesting, taken their machines
Tuesday
Trump was 'very rude', thought Queen
A few weeks after President Trump’s visit, she confided her views in one lunch guest
Thursday
King Charles’s deeply moving D-Day speeches
The monarch spoke, intelligently and affectingly, about how D-Day represented the finest hour that Churchill had promised his people
Wednesday
What’s really behind the Tories’ present woes?
Geoffrey Wheatcroft’s Bloody Panico! is an amusing, though somewhat rancorous book
Monday
The Princess of Wales' 'manipulated' photo is a disastrous own goal
She has since claimed that she herself edited the photo: ‘Like many amateur photographers, I do occasionally experiment with editing’
Wednesday
Will anything reconcile William and Harry?
There remains little chance that the brothers will patch up their relationship
Tuesday
King Charles's openness about his health marks a change for the Royals
Charles clearly hopes that his openness about his condition will encourage other people to come forward and seek early medical help
Thursday
Charles, Kate and the changing attitude to royal illness
What makes the events newsworthy beyond mere speculation are the differences — and similarities — in how the stories have made it into the public domain
Thursday
The Crown is going out in a blaze of camp glory
Purists and royal historians will carp at its tastelessness and excess
Friday
What could be more Shakespearean than a ghost?
She is, says Netflix’s advance publicity, going to tell her husband that he looked handsome
Monday
The Queen’s sole mistake
Sixty years ago, Elizabeth II erred in her appointment of a new prime minister
Friday
When will Elizabeth II get the memorial she deserves?
There will be no public event to remember her
Wednesday
Meghan's lecture on 'service' is hard to take
In New York, she aped the late Queen’s famous ‘service’ speech
Thursday
Prince Harry's 'Spare' is making the Royals nervous
But he shouldn’t delude himself about why people will be buying this book
Thursday
No one wants to be Meghan and Harry’s neighbours
A quiet California community is incensed over the Sussexes moving in