A busy week at Kensington Palace. First came the news that Kate is expecting her third child, while tomorrow Prince George arrives for his first day at his new £6,000-a-term primary school.
In fact, it’s been a hectic few months, what with Pippa’s ultra-glossy wedding and marathon honeymoon, William giving up his job as a helicopter pilot, the family moving to London, the anniversary of Princess Diana’s death and, of course, Harry’s blossoming romance with Meghan Markle.
Just in case you’d forgotten about that, up pops the Suits actress in the latest issue of Vanity Fair, posing barefoot in a black-and-white tulle ballgown, all golden limbs and tousled bed-head, gushing lyrical about her ‘boyfriend’.
William and Kate announced this week that Kate is expecting their third child. Their son, Prince George, arrives for his first day at his new £6,000-a-term primary school later this week
‘We’re a couple. We’re in love,’ she says, adding: ‘I’m sure there will be a time when we come forward and present ourselves, but for now this is our time, this is for us’.
No, I’ve no idea what she’s talking about either, but unless she’s gone entirely off the reservation it seems pretty clear that some kind of announcement is imminent.
It’s all so different from the highly-charged language Harry used last year when he complained of a ‘line crossed’ in relation to what he saw as intrusive media coverage of his romance with Markle, declaring ‘this is not a game’.
Perhaps, like Kim Kardashian and her rap-star husband Kanye West, the happy couple will soon be pictured embracing on the front cover of Vogue, she demure in white organza, his hands clasped protectively around her belly.
The way things have been going recently, it wouldn’t surprise me. Because there is something about the recent conduct of these young royals that smacks more of celebrity than royalty.
Meanwhile, Prince Harry’s blossoming romance with Meghan Markle has hit headlines again as the Suits actress opened up about her relationship to Vanity Fair this week
It’s almost as though they were intent on transforming the House of Windsor into a reality TV show: Keeping Up With The Kensingtons. Even the way they announced Kate’s pregnancy felt like some prime-time drama, complete with pictures of a concerned Mrs Middleton dashing to her daughter’s side.
Yesterday William was talking publicly about the ‘anxious’ start to his wife’s pregnancy and appeared to let slip that she’s 11 weeks gone.
Of course, in some ways all this feels inevitable. Times change, and touchy-feely over-sharing is the curse of our age. But the emotions that William and Harry seem intent on sharing are not only unprecedented, they are also taking the Royal Family into unchartered — and potentially, I suggest, dangerous — waters.
The boys don’t so much wear their hearts on their sleeves as emblazoned in 10ft-high neon lights.
And while I am more than sympathetic to their distress over the death of their mother, they’ve managed to out-Diana even Diana in their quest to re-cast her as some kind of latter-day saint.
There is something about the recent conduct of these young royals that smacks more of celebrity – and even Kardashian (Kim, Khloe and Kourtney pictured above) – than royalty, writes Sarah Vine
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with two young men honouring their mother. But in doing so they have unquestionably undermined the monarchy because, let’s face it, Charles’s side of the family has not exactly fared well in William and Harry’s account of events.
How Charles and Camilla feel about this — and their consequent plummeting popularity — is anyone’s guess. And that is precisely the point: the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall have behaved as members of the Royal Family should at times like these — and maintained a dignified silence.
Which is why I struggle to believe William when he says he just wants his family to have ‘as normal as life as possible’.
If he wanted that, he wouldn’t be sending his eldest across town to one of our pushiest primary schools — Thomas’s in Battersea — or creating an alternative court at Kensington Palace.
Yes, he is driven by a genuine desire to help people, but he also has a strong — and immature — need to be adored. But being a successful monarch is not just about winning the ‘People’s Prince’ competition. It’s also about tradition, history and, to an extent, mystery.
The Queen has always understood this, it’s what underpins her success. She has an authority, a wisdom, an air of mystique that elevates her above the everyday.
She is more than just a star turn; she is an icon, and that’s what makes her a Queen. It’s a lesson for anyone who would inherit her crown.
Speaking of William and Kate, only the very rich or those reliant on the taxpayer are lucky enough to be able to afford more than two children.
Happily for the Cambridges, they tick both of those boxes.
Amal Clooney’s lace-trimmed shorts peeked out from her Giambattista Valli dress in Venice last week
Not only is Amal Clooney impossibly elegant less than three months after giving birth to twins, she also seems to have discovered the Holy Grail of post-pregnancy shapewear: a pair of sexy lace-trimmed shorts.
Most of these sorts of garments make the wearer look like a stuffed sausage.
This pair, peeking out from under her spotted Giambattista Valli dress, look positively racy.
Either that or she’s wearing stockings in 40-degree heat in Venice, a commitment to fashion that surely not even she would undertake.
The kerfuffle over gender neutral children’s clothing at John Lewis made me realise I was an early pioneer in this field.
As a sturdy milk-fed English girl growing up alongside fine-boned Italians, I soon outgrew most children’s sizes.
My feet in particular were a problem: by the time I was 13 I was a size 7 — in the upper range for most Italian men.
My poor mother: how they pitied her as she dragged her Hobbit-like child around town on a futile quest for a simple pair of Mary-Janes.
Which is why I spent some of my formative years wearing men’s slip-ons, a humiliation from which I have still not quite recovered.
To this day, I can’t see a pair of Gucci loafers without coming over a little queer.
Politics is all about hard choices. Just ask Jeremy Corbyn. On one hand, you want to remind your core supporters you’re a cuddly, caring sort so you tell the world you are toying with ‘going vegan’.
On the other, you want to show solidarity with the workers, so you come out in support of the ‘brave’ McDonald’s strike. Never stopping, of course, to worry that serving meat patties may be at odds with vegan values.
But then such cynicism is becoming Corbyn’s defining feature as he attempts to be all things to all men.
Judi Dench, at 82, talks about shopping for naughty knickers to publicise her new film
Why is it that all female stars, regardless of age, feel duty-bound to harp on about how much sex they like to have?
The latest is Judi Dench, who at 82, talks about shopping for naughty knickers to publicise her new film.
I’m delighted Judi is so in touch with her libido.
But the reality for most post-menopausal women is that they’ve barely the strength to make a cup of tea, let alone swing from the chandeliers.
Isn’t this just yet another way of making older women feel inadequate?
Earlier this year, you may remember, nurses and doctors at the University Hospital of Wales were told by a court that they were liable for thousands of pounds worth of unpaid parking fines issued by the private operator Indigo.
I trust the law will be similarly unyielding towards the family of travellers whose four vans are parked up at Manchester Royal Infirmary — at the moment they’re being allowed to park for free while everyone else pays £15 a day.
As part of its commitment to chronicling the history of fashion, the V&A has acquired a Jeremy Corbyn T-shirt.
The museum’s new director is, of course, former Labour MP Tristram Hunt. Now there’s a coincidence.
The solution to the fall in people under the age of 25 voting Tory is simple: Jacob Rees-Mogg.
With six children and counting, he’s clearly taken it upon himself to personally breed the next generation of voters.
The vice-chancellor of Oxford University, Louise Richardson, defends her whopping £350,000-a- year salary (£410,000 when you include her pension) against ‘mendacious media and tawdry politicians’ and claims that her earnings are modest compared to those of bankers and footballers.
But they work in highly profitable sectors which generate huge revenues.
Education, by contrast, is funded by the taxpayer, and a career in academia is generally considered more of a calling than an opportunity to coin it in.
No matter: Ms Richardson has the approval of the UUK, the universities’ representative body, whose president Janet Beer agreed coverage of the issue was ‘hysterical’.
Professor Beer, 61, also happens to be vice-chancellor of Liverpool University. Salary: £340,000.
Oh, the irony.
Turns out that £40 million scheme by the Government to provide fruit for 2.3 million children under the age of six could be doing more harm than good because the fruit in question is covered in harmful pesticides, some of which have a proven negative impact on brain development.
Could it be that the Milky Bar Kid wasn’t such a villain after all?