There’s a sense of a new term at Buckingham Palace this week as members of the Royal Family return to public duties after their summer breaks.

As ever, they and their aides will be hoping to focus public attention on their official work but they face a potentially difficult task of competing with the drama and controversy surrounding the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s return to living in Britain.

There is a further distraction in Sarah Ferguson’s decision to return to the UK after months of living in hiding in Switzerland, raising the prospect of her revealing fresh details about her part in the Jeffrey Epstein scandal and the police taking a closer interest in what she knows.

In spite of all that, there will be days such as Wednesday when the King and Queen have been joined by France’s President Emmanuel Macron and his First Lady Brigitte at a first viewing of the Bayeux Tapestry at the British Museum and the royal couple have undertaken other engagements when the chances are fairly high that the official work will take precedence over the Sussexes story.

Even if it doesn’t, media attention is not the be all and end all of royal work. One only needs to talk to people who have hosted a royal visit to see the boost that these engagements can give to individuals and organisations doing good in our society.

But it promises to be a tricky few months for the monarchy with plenty to distract the public and press. On social media some “fans” – often people living in countries where Charles III is not head of state – are already blaming the media for not concentrating on the official activities of the working royals.

Yet a quick glance at their social media accounts shows that most of these people are absolutely obsessed by hating on the Sussexes, thus explaining why newspapers and broadcasters find it so hard to ignore Harry and Meghan. Many people have strong views about them and whether they are for or against or even profess to be indifferent, they are often more interested in reading about them than they are in finding out about the latest charities visited by the working royals.

There have been calls in some sections of the media for the Prince and Princess of Wales, who have refused to speak to the Sussexes for the past couple of years, to be bigger people and work towards a reconciliation.  It’s certainly something Harry seems keen on – I’ve certainly found no evidence to support claims that Harry is still angry with his family and demanding an apology from them - but there is no sign so far of any change in attitude from his brother and sister-in-law. It’s a different case when it comes to the King and Queen, who while wary of getting unwittingly sucked into assisting the Sussexes’ money-making plans, appear to be getting on better with them behind the scenes.

In public, they intend to make it clear that Harry and Meghan remain private individuals with no prospect of ever undertaking official royal duties while they undertake commercial work. The King and Queen have a busy programme of work ahead in the autumn, including a Caribbean tour culminating in the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Antigua and Barbuda in November.

William and Kate too have a busy schedule, I am told, but as I reported in The i Paper, https://inews.co.uk/news/how-william-plans-deal-harry-return-4729265, the return of Harry and Meghan has also prompted some commentators to suggest that they need to work harder to outshine the other couple.

How the Waleses react to the prospect of the Sussexes being out and about potentially a few miles down the road and visiting charities or doing something else that attracts public attention will be interesting to see over the next few months. As I also reported in The i Paper, William and Kate are planning to increase the number of public engagements they undertake but royal sources deny that is anything to do with the Sussexes.

It’s certainly likely that, although the Waleses arrange some duties at short notice, most of their autumn and winter engagements will have been planned before Harry and Meghan announced they were coming back. What’s also interesting is that  in the first six months of the year they did  considerably more than last year, according to analysis of the Court Circular by the Canadian royal commentator Patricia Treble. So they were already upping their game despite insisting that their focus will remain on work that has “impact”, quality over quantity.

Kensington Palace has declined to discuss the implications of having Harry and Meghan a few miles down the road. Perhaps it risks overshadowing some of their engagements but it’s also possible it will bring more attention to the valuable work that the Prince and Princess of Wales are undertaking.

Photos: Kensington Palace and from the German state visit

King Charles and Prince William’s decision to reveal the amount of tax they paid did not satisfy some critics but it went some way towards appeasing those calling for greater openness about the murky world of royal finances.

For journalists on the daily royal beat, it’s easy to get dragged into the minutiae of stories in the search for the “best line”, something I spent 20 years doing. But now I am liberated from that responsibility and working mainly for weekend newspapers, I wanted to give my perspective on the bigger picture when it comes to the royals.

The first thing to say after a torrid couple of years is that, in spite of a police investigation into Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and his part in the Epstein scandal and the ongoing family rift with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, the Royal Family is still in a relatively good place at the moment. The monarchy’s popularity has fluctuated over the decades but roughly 60 per cent of the British public still support it – figures that most presidents or politicians could only dream of achieving.

It’s a monarchy more focused on bringing about social change than in previous reigns but that seems to play well with the public. As I reported in The Observer last Sunday, however, the dwindling band of working royals have almost halved the number of official engagements that the family undertakes since the heady days of 2012, when Queen Elizabeth celebrated her Diamond Jubilee and three generations of royals were out and about undertaking duties. https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/royal-family-attending-half-the-events-it-used-to-as-state-funding-triples

 Since then the amount of taxpayers’ money paid to the King to support the family’s activities through the Sovereign Grant has more than tripled– not including the £369m allocated for refurbishing Buckingham Palace. I haven’t heard a convincing argument for that big uplift yet. A property maintenance backlog, cyber security, inflation, and an upsurge in the family’s activities were cited but that last one doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. The royals need to be out and about across the country if they are to retain the support of the public.

For the moment at least, though, they look to have weathered the storm. King Charles and his advisers have navigated the public uproar over the York family and their ties with Epstein by isolating Andrew and distancing the Firm from the scandal, although it is likely to keep coming back to hurt the institution. The royal rift with Harry and Meghan has also been damaging and is something they may need to resolve, as much as the majority of the British public’s sympathies lie with the King and the Waleses rather than the Sussexes.

But the King in particular has shown the value of monarchy in the past year, charming Donald Trump, for example, and smoothing over some rocky relations with the US administration.

When I first began reporting regularly on the royals around the end of 2003/ early 2004, the monarchy was still struggling with the fallout from the 1997 death of Diana, Princess of Wales . The Queen and Prince Philip had the respect of perhaps most Britons but they were tainted by the way Diana had been treated. Prince Charles was less than popular and his boys, one at university and the other on a gap year before preparing to apply for Army training at Sandhurst, were rarely seen in public.

In my first official week as a royal correspondent, I had lunch with Charles’s press secretary on the Tuesday and by Thursday I had a letter of complaint from him because my then paper, the Daily Express, had run a picture of him walking on a red carpet across a muddy farmer’s field. “Is this the most pampered man in Britain?” the headline asked.

Some years later, that press secretary and his colleagues were credited inside the Royal Household with turning around Charles’s image and allowing him to marry the love of his life, Camilla, despite the earlier opposition of the Express and some other sections of the media.

These days, it’s rare for news stories to criticise Charles, Camilla, or any of the working royals undertaking engagements in support of the monarch but it’s important to remember that the royals often suffered negative press coverage in the reign of Elizabeth II. Anne, Andrew, Edward, Sophie all had spells when they were in the firing line.

Indeed, Charles and Camilla were so unpopular after Diana’s death that the then Prince of Wales announced he had no intention of ever remarrying, even though it was made plain that his former mistress was a  non-negotiable part of his life. When that changed in the autumn of 2004 and they were subsequently married at a civil ceremony which the Queen did not attend in 2005, Charles’s office insisted that, out of respect for the memory of Diana, Camilla would never be Queen.

For 17 years, courtiers stuck to that line until Queen Elizabeth came to the rescue, using her personal capital to say it was her “sincere wish” that her daughter-in-law be Queen Consort – the title of any wife of a King – when Charles acceded to the throne. I was reflecting on that when the Royal Household announced last week that the King and Queen will not live at Buckingham Palace, something they had previously said they would do when household officials were lobbying government for the £369m needed for the reservicing of the palace. When reports first surfaced in 2017 that Charles and Camilla intended to stay at Clarence House and never move into Buckingham Palace, their office denied it and insisted they would live at Buckingham Palace as King and Queen.

It’s a reminder that we journalists have to take what we are told by the palace with a pinch of salt sometimes. Does it matter that Buckingham Palace’s days as the official royal residence have come to an end, with William and Kate signalling that they too have no desire to live there when they become King and Queen? I’m not sure it does, although it will take something away from the palace as a tourist attraction.

The increasingly long list of royal residences that no longer house senior members of the Royal Family threatens to become one of the big questions for the Windsors. Do they really still need Kensington Palace, for example, once the current working royal residents – the Duke of Kent, and the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, are no longer with us? Other royals, such as Prince and Princess Michael of Kent and Princess Eugenie also still have places there but it’s increasingly difficult to see the justification for that. Taxpayers spent £4.5 million refurbishing 21-room Apartment 1A at KP for William and Kate but they are rarely there and it’s become a white elephant. Perhaps the palace could be put to better use.

The glut of property may become an issue for the royals. We are seeing a slimmed-down monarchy but the cost of supporting the Royal Family is not diminishing with it.

By Richard Palmer

King Charles and Prince William have ushered in a new era of royal transparency by promising to reveal how much tax they pay.

Charles III, who will become the first British monarch to disclose the information, and William have responded to calls in Parliament and the press for greater openness about royal finances in the aftermath of the Epstein scandal. Their change in tack also follows a controversy over their two property empires, the Duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall, making money out of charities, government departments and other public bodies.

For 15 years Britain’s monarchy has been buffeted by revelations about the ties between the late paedophile and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and his branch of the family. In the past year that has reached a new peak. It’s likely that the scandal will continue to come back and bite the House of Windsor every few months for a long time to come but for the moment at least the monarchy is on the front foot.

There are likely to be more reforms announced when the annual royal financial reports are published this week and the fallout from Epstein has been seen in other ways, such as the absence of both Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie from all five days of the Royal Ascot race meeting last week.

In an era of increasingly slimmed-down monarchies in most of Europe, Britain’s Royal Family cannot afford to be open to the allegation that some of its members enjoy all sorts of privileges without doing anything for the country.

On GB News this morning I was asked why the King and William should need to make their tax bill public when most ordinary people are able to keep theirs secret. It’s really a response to criticism of the opaqueness of the Firm’s finances and allegations that some family members have been milking the system for all its worth. But it’s also part of a modern trend that prime ministers and presidents feel the need to declare their tax payments to counter public suspicion that they are all in it for themselves.

Some ultra-conservative monarchists may lament the development but many other supporters of the royals, as well as their critics, will welcome this greater accountability as an intelligent way of adapting to the 21st century amid so much confusion and misunderstanding about royal finances.

It’s still quite common, for example, to see media reports suggesting that the Crown Estate, an independent property empire that gives all of its profits to the government,  funds the monarchy, that its profits are “split” between the Treasury and the King, or that a percentage of its profits are “returned” to the palace via the Sovereign Grant.

All of these statements are factually incorrect. The annual Sovereign Grant, which funds the official duties of the monarch, comes from taxpayers and the only link is that instead of indexing it to the inflation rate, the grant is benchmarked to the equivalent of a percentage of the Crown Estate profits.

As Prince of Wales, Charles did publish his tax bill but he dropped the practice when he acceded to the throne in 2022, falling in line with the policy of Queen Elizabeth, who began paying income tax in 1993 but refused to disclose how much. William, always naturally more secretive than his father, was reluctant to publish his tax payments but has been forced to fall in line under pressure from Parliament and the press.

Elizabeth II, who began paying income tax “voluntarily” in response to public criticism about the cost of the monarchy after the 1992 Windsor Castle fire, was by no means the first monarch to do so.

George III paid income tax when it was first introduced in 1799 by William Pitt the Younger as a temporary measure to help pay for the Napoleonic Wars. And when it was reintroduced in 1842 by Sir Robert Peel’s Conservative government, Queen Victoria agreed to pay her share. Her successor, Edward VII, continued the practice.

It was George V in 1910, who was given exemption from paying income tax in return for agreeing to foot the bill for state visits. George VI negotiated further exemptions on his private income in 1937-8.

Now his grandson is taking us into a new era of royal openness. Monarchies must adapt or die.

Queen Elizabeth II died aged 96 in September 2022 after 70 years on the throne but had she lived to be 100 on April 21, 2026 then it is likely that there would have been major national celebrations to mark the landmark birthday of a much-loved sovereign.

Instead the British government and Royal Household have used the anniversary to unveil details of plans to honour the late Queen with a national memorial costing up to £46 million, a new charity armed with £40 million to upgrade community spaces across the UK in her memory, and a digital memorial including the public’s memories of her.

It is a symptom of our troubled modern world that, unfortunately, the events look likely to be overshadowed at home by Keir Starmer’s fight to save his job as Britain’s prime minister, and abroad by Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu’s war on Iran.

Charles, 77, has recorded a fulsome tribute to his late mother in a video message lin which he describes how the nation’s longest-reigning monarch “remained constant, steadfast and wholly devoted to the people she served”.

The King, who renewed his “own solemn pledge of duty and service to you all”, insisted his mother’s time on Earth should be celebrated as a “life well-lived”.

In his message, filmed in the library at Balmoral Castle in early April, he said: “Much about the times we now live in, I suspect, may have troubled her deeply, but I take heart from her belief that goodness will always prevail and that a brighter dawn is never far from the horizon”.

He added: “For, as a young Princess Elizabeth put it in her first ever public broadcast, aged just 14, we can each play our part ‘to make the world of tomorrow a better and happier place’.

“It is a belief which I share, with all my heart.”

He described how his mother helped shape the world around her and touched the lives of countless people across the world.

“Her near-century was one of remarkable change and yet, through each passing decade, through every transformation, she remained constant, steadfast and wholly devoted to the people she served,” he said.

“Millions will remember her for moments of national significance; many others for a fleeting personal encounter, a smile, a kind word that lifted spirits … or for that marvellous twinkle of the eye when sharing a marmalade sandwich with Paddington Bear in the final months of her life.”

He urged others to follow her lead, saying: “So, young or old, and whatever our differences, let us therefore seek to follow this example as we make today not the marking of a milestone felt by absence but the celebration of a life well-lived, and a legacy of hope, as we strive together towards a ‘better, happier tomorrow’ – one rooted in peace, justice, prosperity and security.”

Signing off, he said: “God bless you, darling Mama; you remain forever in our hearts and prayers.”

The Royal Family will mark the centenary today at a series of events including a Buckingham Palace reception with guests including Britons celebrating their 100th birthday on April 21.

The King and Queen, accompanied by other family members, will also visit the British Museum to see a scale model of the Queen Elizabeth Memorial, designed by the architect Lord Foster.

The centrepiece will be a bronze statue of the Queen in her twenties, wearing the robes of the Order of the Garter,  in St James’s Park overlooking The Mall.

In typical fashion, a few paces behind the Queen, there will be a smaller statue of her late husband Prince Philip, in his Naval uniform, looking up at her.

The 3 metres high statue of the Queen by the sculptor Martin Jennings uses the famous 1955 painting of her by the Italian artist Pietro Annigoni as an inspiration. It will be mounted on a 4.3 metre plinth, making it 7.3 metres high in total.

Philip’s statue will be smaller - 2.8 metres on a 1.5 metre plinth and stand 20 metres behind.

The permanent memorial will also feature: a new cast-glass bridge inspired by Queen Mary’s Fringe Tiara, which was worn by Queen Elizabeth on her wedding day; a bust of Her Majesty in her later years by sculptor Karen Newman; and The Commonwealth Wind Sculpture, a new abstract work by Yinka Shonibare. The design also includes gardens dedicated to the Commonwealth and to the nations of the United Kingdom, creating spaces for relaxation and reflection.

The memorial is likely to become a big tourist attraction in London but Elizabeth II’s legacy will be remembered in other ways too.

A new UK-wide independent charity, The Queen Elizabeth Trust, has been created to bring her values to life for future generations.

Inspired by her belief that “everyone is our neighbour” the trust will work with communities to provide funding and support to restore and sustain spaces that bring people together. They could be community centres, playing fields, theatres or other spaces.

The Trust’s Chair is Sir Damon Buffini, who currently serves as chair of the National Theatre and deputy chair of the BBC Board.

The idea is to emulate the 470 King George V Playing Fields opened across the UK and designated as recreation grounds in perpetuity following his death in 1936.

Lord Janvrin, the late Queen’s private secretary and chair of the memorial committee, said: “We hope the physical memorial will enhance a most beautiful space in the heart of our capital for people to meet, relax and reflect, whilst the new Queen Elizabeth Trust aims to benefit local communities in every part of the United Kingdom. The Digital Memorial will allow people across the country, the Commonwealth and beyond to share their memories of the late Queen to build a living archive of her reign for future generations.”   

Britain’s monarchy is going through a turbulent time along with its citizens but for much of this month we are being invited to escape to a golden age.

It will be 100 years since the birth of Queen Elizabeth II on April 21 and to mark the centenary of the UK’s longest-reigning monarch, there are numerous tributes planned in her memory.

There’s a national memorial in St James’s Park in central London costing up to £46 million of taxpayers’ money, a new garden in her memory in Regent’s Park, a plethora of biographies, and plans to create community spaces in her name in the same way that 470 King George V playing fields were opened in perpetuity in the years after his death in 1936.

Further details will be unveiled on the anniversary of her birthday but her former private secretary, Lord Janvrin, who chairs the Queen Elizabeth Memorial Committee – set up to advise the government and the Royal Household on how best to remember the late Queen – has given a hint of what lies ahead in a video for the Cabinet Office.

“One of the things that I remember from my time with the late Queen was the importance she attached to communities, to looking after your neighbour, to thinking about others around you,” he says. “When we were looking at how we could try to encapsulate some of the things that the late Queen believed in, we were drawn to this idea of strengthening communities by looking at green spaces, urban spaces, community spaces. It’s very much in the tradition of legacy programmes.

“You’ve only got to think of the Spirit of 2012 (a £47 million endowment fund created to provide social benefits from the legacy of the London Olympics of that year) and King George V playing fields, which have been serving the communities for almost a century now. Over 400 spaces up and down the country, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Wales as well as England, where people could come together, people could use these green spaces to relax, to walk the dog, to take the children out. That thought lies behind some of our thinking about how we in the memorial committee want to try to remember the late Queen.”

At the King’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace a new exhibition opens on Friday celebrating the late Queen’s fashion. It’s a blockbuster exhibition showcasing the largest treasure trove of items from her wardrobe to go on display – around 300 from 4,600 items stored by the Royal Collection Trust at Windsor since her death.

Already sold out for the first two weeks, the exhibition promises to be one of the biggest tourist attractions in London over the coming months. It’s an antidote for fans of the monarchy to the constant drip-feed of revelations about Andrew, Fergie and the Epstein scandal, tensions with Harry and Meghan, and criticism from the far right of the King over his support for religious tolerance and understanding.

It’s also an escape from the wider problems in the world – Donald Trump, Ukraine, Iran, the cost of living crisis and more.

The exhibition, Queen Elizabeth II: Her Life in Style, features her trademark headscarves, her see-through Fulton umbrellas, tweed suits for casual country wear and lavish dresses worn at state occasions. The christening gown worn by generations of royal babies, including Elizabeth, is on public display for the first time, and there is also the dress she wore for the opening of those 2012 London Olympics along with the copy and bloomers sported by her stunt double who parachuted into the opening ceremony from a helicopter after a skit featuring her with James Bond, played by the actor Daniel Craig, and her corgis at Buckingham Palace.

The two identical dresses apart from a zip at the back to accommodate a parachute for the stunt double were designed by Angela Kelly, the in-house dressmaker and milliner who served as personal assistant, curator, and senior dresser to the Queen from 1993 until her death in September 2022. Kelly, the Liverpool docker’s daughter who became a close confidante and gatekeeper to the monarch, is photographed for the exhibition but did not help curate it, having been forced out of the Royal Household soon after the change of reign.

“Any living designer that is still around has been kept informed about what is included in the exhibition but, as a former member of staff, obviously she hasn’t really been involved in the production of the exhibition,” says Caroline de Guitaut, the curator.

Ms de Guitaut, who spent 18 months rummaging through clothes, handbags, shoes, and jewellery stored in boxes or hanging space at Windsor to research the exhibition, hopes it pays tribute to the extraordinary influence the late Queen had on British fashion down the decades, telling the story of how she interacted with the great designers of her times to create a distinctive look.  “I think she had a definite sense of what suited her. She absolutely knew how she wanted to appear,” she says.

The exhibition, open from April 10 to October 18, charts her evolution from a young princess appearing in glamorous outfits at family weddings, to her championing of Christian Dior’s New Look in 1947 and support for London’s subsequent challenge to Paris’s fashion hegemony, as well as her later years wearing bright colours so she could be seen in crowds from half a mile away.

Some of the eight tons of luggage she took with her on her Commonwealth tour of 1953-54 is included, providing a glimpse of a bygone age, and exhibits such as the Norman Hartnell heavy evening dress in Pakistan’s national colours of green and white that she wore to a banquet in Karachi during a tour of the country in 1961 pay tribute to the role she played in developing fashion diplomacy.

There is her stunning Coronation dress and her silk wedding dress, restored after being damaged by the use in the manufacturing process of tin salts that rotted the silk, along with her off-duty wardrobe worn while horse riding or relaxing at Windsor and Balmoral.

It remains to be seen whether the exhibition and other efforts to provide a fitting celebration of her life will provide an effective distraction from some of the woes currently facing the Royal Family.

In her 70 years on the throne the fortunes of the monarchy ebbed and flowed. But some royal sources have blamed the late Queen for leaving her heir, King Charles, with such a mess to sort out over Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, who is currently facing police investigations into allegations of corruption and misconduct in public office as well as claims that he had sex with women trafficked to him by the late convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

The scandal and the accusation that she turned a blind eye to the foibles of her favourite son risk tarnishing her legacy, although her supporters will have none of it. The royal biographer Hugo Vickers, one of several authors to bring out new books about Elizabeth’s life, condemned the criticism on ITV’s Good Morning Britain earlier this week, accusing people of trying to make a name for themselves by having a pop at her. “I know what they are all up to and I have seen it, of course,” he said. “But I don’t think that you can possibly dent what she did, her legacy.”

Britain’s Royal Family needs a reset to counter the damage that the Epstein scandal is undoubtedly causing to the reputation of the monarchy.

It’s an institution that has survived for more than 1,000 years by adapting and reinventing itself. There have been highs and lows and there is certainly no reason to believe that this affair will be the final nail in its coffin.

But Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s misconduct may have to speed up the House of Windsor’s transformation to a more scaled-back, European-style bicycling monarchy even before Prince William becomes King.  

The lesson of the last 15 years is that this is a scandal that won’t go away. It may drop out of the headlines for a few weeks or months but then it comes back with a vengeance, dominating the news agenda for extended periods and eating away at the public’s trust in all sorts of institutions, from Parliament, to the police, major international banks, as well as the monarchy.

The UK is not alone. Look at Norway, for example, where a former prime minister has been charged with corruption and questions have been raised about whether Crown Princess Mette-Marit, the wife of the heir Crown Prince Haakon, can ever be Queen in the fallout from her close friendship with Epstein and separate rape and drugs charges facing her son, Marius Borg Hoiby, from an earlier relationship with a convicted cocaine dealer.

Epstein was at the centre of a network of powerful and wealthy people – dictators, spies, royals, oligarchs, politicians and international business leaders - who swapped contacts, information, and young women, it seems, in the pursuit of money and influence. Some of those relationships look on the face of it to be corrupt.

It’s a dream come true for some of the conspiracy theorists and political activists who see the World Economic Forum in Davos, for example, as a plot by “globalists” to enrich an elite at the expense of the rest of us.  Indeed the WEF has launched an investigation into its own chief executive, Borge Brende, over his contacts with Epstein.

We might well have heard far more about it from some on the MAGA populist right in the United States and their cheerleaders in Reform in Britain if Donald Trump and many in his inner circle did not themselves feature so prominently in the Epstein files released by the US Department of Justice.

To move forward now the British monarchy has to be proactive. Twice in 15 years it has got slightly ahead of the curve – when King Charles stripped Andrew of all royal titles and honours in late October and, arguably, a week ago when Buckingham Palace essentially invited the police to come in and begin a criminal investigation into Andrew. But for most of that time the Royal Household has been on the back foot, appearing to be more concerned about defending Andrew’s reputation initially and then the monarchy’s, rather than seeking to aid the cause of justice.

 Now there is talk that the King might broadcast to the nation and support legislation to remove Andrew from the line of succession and as a counsellor of state – he will never actually be asked to stand in for the monarch in practice now but he has not been removed from the list of official substitutes.

Royal sources have also suggested that, after previously arguing that the King thought it a waste of Parliament’s precious time, the sovereign might now be in favour of asking MPs and peers to legislate to formalise the removal of the Duke of York title he can no longer use.

But those measures alone will not resolve the crisis. For that to happen two things above all are needed to restore public confidence: Andrew must face a criminal trial if there is sufficient evidence so that the allegations against him can be tested in public; and, if a way can be found to avoid prejudicing a trial, Parliament must be allowed to investigate his 10-year role as a trade envoy, the UK’s Special Representative for International Trade and Investment.

That means opening up the palace and government records on who accompanied him on trips, detailing what was discussed, and bringing Andrew and his immediate family, as well as palace officials to Westminster to give evidence.

It means revealing what the family and household knew and when they knew it. It may also mean the record of Britain’s best loved monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, will need to be reassessed in a year in which the country is about to celebrate the centenary of her birth and commit up to £46 million of taxpayers’ money to creating a grand memorial to her in St James’s Park in central London. The late Queen is rightly venerated by many but nobody is perfect and her efforts to protect Andrew over many years have left her successor with a huge mess.

Many of the problems can be traced back to her desire to find a senior role for Andrew when he left the Royal Navy and her insistence on appointing him as a trade envoy, despite the objections of many politicians and diplomats. Similarly, it is possible to trace the roots of the crisis back to her and Prince Philip’s insistence in the early 2000s that Andrew and other members of the Royal Family should be able to engage in business ventures privately as long as it did not conflict with their official duties.

 That view was in sharp contrast to the Queen’s decision in 2020 to veto Harry and Meghan’s efforts to be half in and half out, although perhaps by then the late monarch had seen the problem with allowing members of the family to make money while representing her.

Andrew’s dubious financial dealings and the persistent refusal of successive governments to reveal details about his work as a trade envoy should also prompt a revamp of the Freedom of Information Act to bring the Royal Family within its scope. There should be a royal register of interests as there is for members of the two houses of Parliament and there should be greater transparency in general about royal finances, including those of the Duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall, which are effectively state trusts created to provide a “private” income for the monarch and his heir. Prince William in particular is far too secretive about how he spends the money we as a nation give him.

It is time for the Sovereign Grant Act to be repealed or changed dramatically to put funding for the monarchy in the same bracket as that for government departments. The monarchy, like our public services and armed forces, has to be funded properly. But there is no good reason why the King’s grant should be benchmarked to the  annual profits of the Crown Estate, an independent property company created to make money for the government.

By the time William becomes King, it is likely that the number of working royals will have slimmed down further, not least because some of the late Queen’s cousins are already well past statutory retirement age. In the meantime, there might also be a case for slimming down the number of royal residences. Does the family really need Buckingham Palace, Clarence House, St James’s Palace, and Kensington Palace in London, for example?

Grappling with these questions now will leave a leaner, fitter monarchy ready to tackle the challenges of the 21st century and to shed the shame of the Epstein scandal.

By Richard Palmer

Police are assessing whether there is evidence to warrant an investigation into Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor for breaches of the Official Secrets Act and misconduct in public office.

Thames Valley Police are looking into a complaint after the US Department of Justice released files showing that the disgraced former Duke of York shared sensitive official papers with the late paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein and friends offering them business opportunities.

Lord Mandelson, the former Labour cabinet minister who was sacked as ambassador to Washington after the depth of his friendship and business relationship with Epstein was revealed, has had two homes searched by police investigating similar allegations at the behest of the British government.

It was not the government or the Royal Household, however, that triggered today’s police announcement about Andrew. They have proved much more reticent in the case of Andrew than in that of Mandelson.

It was Graham Smith, the chief executive of the anti-monarchy group Republic who complained to Thames Valley Police. “I made the complaint because I couldn’t see any difference between what Andrew is accused of and what Mandelson is alleged to have done,” he said.

Andrew, 65, now faces two potential criminal investigations. Smith, who lives in Reading, complained last week to Thames Valley after a second woman came forward to allege that she, like the late Virginia Giuffre claimed, was trafficked to the UK by Epstein to have sex with the eighth in line to the throne formerly known as the Duke of York. Andrew, was stripped of his royal titles and honours in late October, has previously denied any wrongdoing.

It seems clear that this scandal is not going away. Previous experience over the past 15 years has shown that, even if it does drop out of the headlines for a few weeks, it comes back with a vengeance soon afterwards.

King Charles and his family still appear to be in damage limitation mode, as they have for most of the last 15 years, eager to isolate Andrew from the monarchy and its brand but unwilling to drain the swamp completely by opening up the records to show who knew what and when.

Earlier today Kensington Palace issued a brief statement on behalf of the Prince and Princess of Wales ahead of William’s arrival in Riyadh at the start of a diplomatically tricky three-day official visit to Saudi Arabia, undertaken at the request of the British government.

The couple’s spokesman said: “I can confirm that the Prince and Princess of Wales have been deeply concerned by the continued revelations. Their thoughts remain focused on the victims.”

It was designed to clear the decks and prevent William facing constant questioning from the media during his trip to Saudi Arabia.

There was no mention of Uncle Andrew or the rest of that branch of the family, Andrew’s ex-wife Sarah Ferguson and their daughters Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, who all appear to have kept in touch with Epstein and done his bidding after his conviction for sex offences involving a minor.

But it was at least an acknowledgement of Epstein’s victims, some of whom appeared in a video ad before last night’s Super Bowl in the United States, calling for the remaining three million Epstein documents held by the DoJ to be released.

Until now William and Kate and their office have declined to discuss the scandal, even though it has had far more repercussions on this side of the pond than it has in the United States, where a convicted felon and former friend of Epstein remains president.

It is an awkward situation for the royals. But, although the King has done more than most to tackle the problem, he and his family may be required to do more yet.

Britain’s Royal Family is not alone in feeling the heat from the ever-damaging fallout of the Epstein scandal but it seems strangely reluctant to react to public outrage.

Nobody should underestimate how difficult it is for a family to deal with a relative accused of crimes but the monarchy holds a special place in our constitution in the UK; the Windsors are expected to set an example.

King Charles III has been praised by many commentators for stripping his disgraced brother Andrew of his titles, honours, and lavish home last autumn. Some have even described it as the moment that Charles saved the monarchy.

But it was perhaps the only instance in more than 15 years of lurid headlines about Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and his family’s relationship with the late convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein that the Royal Household has been ahead of public opinion instead of hopelessly behind. Ever since, Buckingham Palace officials have tried to draw a line in the sand and insist that the House of Windsor has done everything it needed to do. That worked for a while but is it enough now?

Contrast, for example, the reaction of the King to that of Britain’s beleaguered prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, who is fighting to save his job in the aftermath of his disastrous decision to appoint Lord Mandelson as ambassador to Washington. He did that even though he knew the former Labour cabinet minister had remained friends with Epstein after the financier had served a jail sentence for child sex offences.

Starmer, who claims Mandelson lied over the extent of his relationship with Epstein, has agreed to open up official paperwork surrounding his vetting for the embassy appointment and asked the police to investigate the disgraced peer for the criminal offence of misconduct in public office after it emerged he had leaked highly sensitive government information to the paedophile financier.

Starmer has also suggested he will bring forward legislation to formally strip Mandelson of his peerage. The prime minister, a former Director of Public Prosecutions, has publicly urged the former Duke of York to testify to the US Congress House Oversight Committee, which is investigating the Epstein affair.

But in contrast, the King has made no such public statement urging his brother to testify, even though a second woman has now come forward alleging she, like Virginia Giuffre, was sent to Britain to have sex with Andrew.  Another woman has claimed Andrew and Epstein pressured her to engage in a threesome. A steady stream of revelations from the files released by the US Department of Justice have shown that Andrew lied about cutting off all contact with Epstein in December 2010. And the documents published in the latest tranche have provided further fuel to the argument that the eighth in line to the throne abused his position as a trade envoy to pass confidential information to Epstein and other business contacts to make money for himself and his friends.

Charles is not alone in his reluctance to discuss the affair. The Prince of Wales, who is still listed as an ambassador for a conservation charity, WildAid, that accepted $50,000 from Epstein and pursued him for more cash long after his conviction, is equally silent. Not that William js accused of doing anything wrong. He might have hoped that the charity and his staff would spot that Epstein donating money would be embarrassing. But the story, which I wrote for The i Paper this week, https://inews.co.uk/news/prince-william-backed-charity-accepted-epstein-donation-after-child-sex-conviction-4210750 is really more about what the Epstein files reveal about the world of the wealthy and powerful: Epstein used philanthropy to try to launder his reputation and many organisations, including one that counted William and David Beckham as ambassadors, were happy to take his money.

William will be in Saudi Arabia on an official visit for three days next week and reporters will have a chance to question him about what the Royal Family should do now about Andrew and the fallout from the Epstein scandal. But pressure from the palace to conform to the usual rules of engagement that prevent media from asking questions of royalty may make that difficult. Royal correspondents usually prefer general news reporters to shout out the awkward questions.

Unlike in Downing Street, there is a culture of omerta in the Royal Household that is usually supported by the government in the interests of preserving the dignity of the Crown.

The police appear more reluctant to investigate royalty than others. Efforts to obtain official records relating to Andrew’s activities have been routinely blocked by then government and other bodies.

In contrast to everything that has been said at Westminster about Mandelson, the King isn’t publicly urging the police to investigate Andrew for misconduct in public office. It’s an offence which lawyers think he could be charged with if there was sufficient evidence that he abused his position and gave sensitive information to Epstein and others during his 10 years as the UK special representative for international trade and investment.

Charles too has refused to comment, as hecklers and reporters have shouted out questions to him and Queen Camilla while they have been out on public engagements. Instead, he has left it to courtiers to say it is a matter for Andrew’s conscience.

The currrent line at the palace is that we should focus our attention on Epstein’s victims. It was Prince Edward, the Duke of Edinburgh’s response when he was asked about the scandal during a trip to Dubai earlier this week. Courtiers too have been pointing back to the statement that Buckingham Palace released at the end of October in which the King and Queen acknowledged the victims’ plight for the first time.

But if the Royal Family was really thinking about the victims, wouldn’t the King and his relatives be urging the police to investigate Andrew and offering up members of the family and their staff to tell investigators what they knew?

Clearly, the family and staff knew that Epstein was bad news by 2007 when he agreed under a plea deal to accept two charges, a prison term and to register as a sex offender. Even before he was formally convicted in June 2008 of soliciting prostitution and soliciting a minor for prostitution, some palace officials were urging colleagues to try to keep Andrew away from Epstein.

But the message was not heeded and in his further dealings with the paedophile, Andrew and his ex-wife Fergie involved his private secretary Amanda Thirsk and other aides, including David Stern, and the businessmen David Rowland –  the Duke’s “money man”-  as well as Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie, the DoJ files show.

At the same time, the palace was defending Andrew at every opportunity. Staff, who had grilled Andrew about the picture and been told he had no recollection of ever meeting Ms Giuffre, sought – mainly unsuccessfully - to pressure media to drop stories.  I can remember getting heat from the palace, for example, after asking whether it was appropriate for Andrew to become Chancellor of Huddersfield University and take on responsibility for all those young people. There was criticism when I asked on social media if there were any ex-service people out there who felt it was wrong that Andrew was taking the salute from 10,000 veterans at Horse Guards on Remembrance Sunday.

One of Stern’s emails suggests that after that infamous picture of Andrew with Virginia Giuffre was first published by a British newspaper in 2011, Queen Elizabeth II still gave her favourite son her “full support” even if she did think that his friendship with Epstein was “unwise”.  The late Queen, who is often said to have never put a foot wrong, is perhaps Britain’s most venerated monarch and the centenary of her birth will be celebrated at national events in April this year but will her misjudgment over Andrew dent her reputation and legacy?

For years the Queen dragged her feet while Charles and William privately urged tougher action against Andrew. It was only in October when an email emerged showing that Andrew had lied about cutting off contact with Epstein that Charles felt that gave him the ammunition to act decisively. His supporters now ask, what more can he do?

Some of the options are outlined above. Of course, they would bring many more unwelcome headlines and cause discomfort for the Royal Family and staff. But they would counter the criticism that at just about every stage, the palace’s priority has not been to think of the victims but to limit the reputational damage to the institution.

Might it be time to put justice for the victims ahead of PR?

By Richard Palmer

King Charles III vowed he would not be a “meddling” monarch when he was interviewed for his 70th birthday but in a new television documentary he has set out his green philosophy in the hope of influencing public opinion.

In the Prime Video documentary, Finding Harmony: A King’s Vision he says he "wasn't going to be diverted" from his environmental campaigning, in spite of all the criticism he has faced down the years.

His work over more than half a century in highlighting environmental problems and the solutions to them has made him one of the world’s most prominent green campaigners. He is the pre-eminent statesman in the field, a man whose record has been used by successive British governments and the 56-nation Commonwealth to attract international support for their initiatives.

But his outspoken views have also attracted his fair share of critics. Nigel Farage, whose populist right-wing Reform UK party is currently leading in the opinion polls, has for instance previously called him an “eco-loony”.

Farage, like the Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, and indeed the US president, Donald Trump, has essentially called for a slow-down in efforts to combat climate change amid fears they are slowing economic growth. It’s an argument that has been made, mainly by conservatives, for most of the 35 years since I was environment correspondent at The Sunday Times.

But in this new documentary, Charles, who tries to avoid party political disputes and criticism of individual politicians, expresses frustration at the glacial pace of change in tackling many of the great environmental challenges which threaten our way of life and our planet’s future.

“It's rapidly going backwards,” he says, warning we are destroying our means of survival. “I’ve  said that for the last 40 years but anyway, there we are. So, that's why I get a bit, anyway… I can only do what I can do, which is not very much. Aaah, anyway.

“People don't seem to understand it’s not just climate that's the problem it’s also biodiversity loss..

“So, we’re actually destroying our means of survival, all the time. To put that back together again is possible, but we should have been doing it long ago. We’ve got to do it as fast as we can now.”

The 90-minute film, made by Amazon MGM Studios in collaboration with the King’s Foundation and due to be released on the streaming giant on February 6, looks back at Charles's lifelong commitment to green issues and examines his central philosophy of needing to live in Harmony with nature - accepting that we are part of nature not apart from it.

He first set out the principles in his 2010 book Harmony: A New Way Of Looking At Our World. An updated version of the book will be republished by HarperCollins in March to mark the release of the documentary.

Using archive and current footage the film records his journey from young fogey and privileged hippie in the era of flower power to his current status as an ageing, if ultra-wealthy and posh hippie still pitching the same green message to the world. In one memorable scene he is seen collecting eggs from the chickens at his Highgrove home in Gloucestershire, dressed in Wellington boots but still sporting a dapper pocket handkerchief in his tailored jacket.

Highgrove has been his principal home since 1980 and in its gardens, grounds a surrounding farmland he first set out to show how his green beliefs could be put into practice.

But even here in his haven he has witnessed the detrimental effects of habitat loss and other environmental factors affecting wildlife.

“I mean, it’s extraordinary, when I first came 45 years ago, what there used to be and what there isn't now,” he says. “I mean, I used to hear cuckoos, which you never hear a single cuckoo. And it was all that sort of thing. And there used to be grasshoppers and, you know, the place used to hum.

“And that wonderful sound, you don't get much of that, even though I've done my utmost to, you know, make sure.”

These days he refrains from making the kind of controversial speeches he used to do, criticising for example the postwar design of Birmingham city centre or accusing climate change sceptics of being “headless chickens”.

But through the foundation and his other charities and this film he still tries to influence debate.

“It would be nice to try and see if we can get through to people, but who knows?” he says of the film.

Nicholas Brown, the director, asks him: “Are you worried about the state of the world?”

The King replies:  “Of course! That’s been my main motivation for a long, long time, and you can see what’s happening. But I mean the underlying principles behind what I call Harmony, I think we need to follow, if we're going to somehow ensure that this poor old planet can support so many. It’s unlikely there’s anywhere else.”

He adds: “It all boils down to the fact that we are actually nature ourselves, we are a part of it, not apart from it, which is really how things are being presented for so long.

“Maybe, by the time I shuffle off this mortal coal, there might be a little more awareness… of the need to bring things back together again.”

Donald Trump’s climbdown over Greenland has averted an immediate crisis but King Charles and Queen Camilla face growing calls to drop plans to go on a state visit to the United States this year.

Britain has long planned to send the 77-year-old monarch and his consort to the US to mark the 250th anniversary of the country’s declaration of independence but President Trump’s increasingly hostile, unpredictable and frankly unhinged words and behaviour towards the UK and its European neighbours over NATO, Ukraine, Greenland, trade tariffs and a host of other issues have cast serious doubts over whether the trip will happen.

Similarly, doubts have been raised about whether Prince William will travel to the States in the summer to see England play in the World Cup, the globe’s biggest sports event, in his role as patron of the Football Association.

This is a test for the soft power of the Royal Family. Until now, Trump’s Scottish heritage and fondness for the monarchy have been hailed as a huge asset for Britain. King Charles, who is also head of state of 14 other realms including Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, has been feted for his diplomatic skills in charming the president on a state visit to Windsor last year. In Canada it has been noted that Trump has largely dialled down the rhetoric against the nation since Charles went to Ottawa in May last year to open Parliament and gave a speech from the throne championing the True North as a strong and free nation.

But for how long? Trump’s talk of seizing Greenland from a fellow NATO member, Denmark, has emboldened those in his MAGA movement to once again raise the prospect of Canada becoming the 51st state and the president’s threat - dropped for now but who knows when it might return - to impose tariffs on the UK and other allies who refuse to support his ambitions has shaken Western faith in the US.

It has prompted European Union countries to contemplate retaliatory action and a growing number of British politicians to urge the UK government to focus more on Europe and less on Washington.

The US remains undoubtedly the world’s pre-eminent superpower, a position it inherited from the wreckage of the Second World War when Britain, which had ruled a quarter of the globe, and other European nations were left on the verge of bankruptcy after seven years of carnage.  Under Trump, however, the US is rapidly losing friends and influence. British jobs and security remain closely tied to the US, meaning no UK government will want to jeopardise the strategic relationship with Washington if it can avoid it.  The UK’s “independent” nuclear deterrent, for example, uses US parts and currently requires cooperation on maintenance.

But patience is wearing thin, not least after the latest outrage in which Trump falsely claimed NATO countries have never done anything to support the US. Tell that to Princes William and Harry, for example, who lost Army friends in Afghanistan when the UK and other NATO countries came to the aid of the US after 9/11. Tell it also to Charles and Camilla who visited Royal Wootton Bassett in 2010 to pay tribute to residents who had repeatedly lined the streets of the Wiltshire town to honour many of Britain’s 457 war dead whose bodies had been repatriated via the air base there.

The problem in short, according to his growing band of critics, is that Trump, 79, is trying to change the world order, dismantle international rules-based organisations such as the United Nations, and create a new system in which three great powers – the US, China, and Russia - divide up the planet and exploit it for their own benefit.

It’s not an outlook that chimes with that of Britain, whose prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, has begun to change tack by standing up to Trump and his MAGA outriders such as Elon Musk and distancing the UK from US policy after earlier trying to stay close to the president in the hope of influencing him. Starmer, along with other European leaders, has vowed to fight any US attempt to take over Greenland. He has also threatened to shut down Musk’s X or Twitter platform in Britain unless his Grok AI tool stopped allowing users to create undressed photographs of women, including the Princess of Wales. Musk, like Trump, climbed down. But where will it end?

The point of sending the King and Queen to the US was to emphasise the “special relationship” that has existed between the two nations for most of the 20th century and the early part of the 21st. But that special relationship now looks in deep trouble with Trump threatening former allies with all sorts of consequences. It’s got to the point where Canada has been wargaming a US invasion and factoring in British and French assistance that would still leave it fighting an Afghan-style guerrilla resistance campaigning against overwhelming US forces.

For many Europeans and Canadians, the US is no longer the good guy and no longer a reliable ally, especially amid Trump’s tacit support for Vladimir Putin which risks ending NATO, the world’s most successful military alliance.  A raft of polls, culminating in this one from YouGov on January 21 https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/53913-where-do-britons-stand-on-europes-relationship-with-the-usa have shown a steep decline in the public’s attitude towards the United States. Trump has always been unpopular but he is at a new low with Britons: only 16 per cent have a favourable view of the US president compared to 81 per cent with an unfavourable view.

For many Britons, the Americans who voted in Trump are no better than the Germans who helped elect Hitler in 1933. In their eyes, they bear a heavy responsibility.

Yet at the same time, our countries are so closely tied.  US culture from Hollywood to McDonald’s, the social media platforms we all write on and the smart phones we use to access them, are deeply ingrained in our society.  I am by no means alone in having family and friends who are US citizens. It would take some effort to remove the US from our lives, although of course Britain and Germany had many close ties before fighting each other in two world wars.

The King, whose family famously has German ancestry, has been a longstanding friend of Trump but his reputation for diplomatic skills may suffer if that friendship ultimately has no effect on the US president’s behaviour towards Britain and his other realms.

Palace officials say it will be up to the UK government to decide ultimately whether the King and Queen visit the US. As I write today, I’d say it looks as if it will go ahead but two days ago that looked less likely.

William’s mooted trip is more complicated but if there are further Trump outrages, it is possible that the government may instruct the Royal Family not to go to the US, as it did in the case of Russia when it hosted the World Cup in 2018.

King Charles is offering those with enough money an enhanced opportunity to have a royal wedding without needing to marry into the Windsor family.

He has approved plans for a £6.5 million ($8.77 million)extension to an 18th century Scottish mansion housing his main charitable foundation amid hopes it will turn into a big international wedding venue and make his charity less reliant on donations.

Five years after a cash-for-honours scandal involving a Saudi donor who was offered citizenship and a knighthood plunged The Prince’s Foundation – now The King’s Foundation – into crisis, the monarch has unveiled final plans for a new extension to Dumfries House in Cumnock, Ayrshire, designed to increase income from weddings and other events and reduce the charity’s dependence on philanthropy.

The single-storey extension to the Palladian mansion, which will open for business in July 2027, will be known as the King’s Hall after Charles and will aim to attract foreigners as well as locals looking for a luxury wedding venue for up to 200 guests at a royal residence in beautiful scenery.  A limited number of weddings already take place at Dumfries House, usually in the Tapestry Room but the hall will become the main venue and replace a temporary marquee known as the Pavilion that has been used for wedding receptions and other events for more than a decade, allowing the foundation to expand its share of a growing market for locations to host international events in Scotland.

The cost of hiring the King’s Hall for your wedding will start at £5,500 (US$ 7,423 for a midweek ceremony and £8,500 (US$ 11,472) at weekends plus catering costs.

In keeping with Dumfries House’s role as a showcase for the 77-year-old monarch’s philosophy on everything from sustainability to traditional skills and architecture the extension has been designed to blend in with the original Robert Adam design for the house, which was built for William Dalrymple, 5th Earl of Dumfries, between 1754 and 1759 and then enlarged through east and west wing extensions in 1890 by Robert Weir-Schultz.

Charles, who has had a history of using his influence to sabotage modernist buildings, was anxious to ensure that the extension met with the approval of Historic Environment Scotland as well as the local authority, East Ayrshire Council. In 1984 he famously described a proposed glass and steel extension to the National Gallery in London as a “monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend” in a controversial intervention that led to its cancellation to the fury of modernist architects and he has been embroiled in several other controversies since.

The King, who borrowed £20 million  (US $26.9 million) against his charity to broker a £45 million (US$60.74 million) deal to save the house and its priceless collection of Thomas Chippendale furniture for the nation in 2007, does not formally control the foundation but in his role as founding royal president keeps a close eye on its activities  and ensures it reflects his worldview.

Gordon Neil, the foundation’s executive director, said he had been closely involved in the plans, which were first announced in outline in 2024 but have since been passed by the planning authority.  “He’s quite excited about it, given the fact that we’ve got a marquee to the rear of the house, a temporary marquee, and it’s always been something that we all know as an organisation that hasn’t been particularly pleasing to the eye from the external side of things. So he was always keen to do something. We got this idea, we presented it to him and of course he was incredibly supportive of it,” Mr Neil said. “But yes, obviously, he has an involvement in terms of giving his ideas and his viewpoints on it.”

He added: “Upon completion of this sympathetic new extension, we can say that Dumfries House has been built by three major influences in British architectural history – Adam in the 18th Century, Weir-Schultz in the 19th Century, and King Charles III during his reign.”

The new building will use locally sourced materials including stone and traditional building methods where possible in keeping with Charles’s overriding views on harmony and sustainability.  A modern steel frame covered in timber with insulation and plaster board will be designed to blend in with the older parts of the house and there will be a nod to the Chippendale furniture in the designs of some of the internal timber and parts of the ceiling in the 4,600 square ft extension, which will include a 3,000 square ft public hall.

Charles risked his finances, his reputation and charitable legacy on what critics at one point said was a vanity project to save the property and its contents from being divided up and auctioned off in 2007.  His foundation, headquartered on the 2,000 acre estate, was engulfed in further controversy in 2021 when documents were produced suggesting that a Saudi billionaire, Mahfouz Marei Mubarak bin Mahfouz, had been promised UK citizenship and honours in return for donations.

Although a Metropolitan Police investigation was dropped, the Charity Commission and the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator produced critical reports in the aftermath.

The latest accounts, published in September 2025, showed that £11 million of the foundation’s total income of £29.7 million came from donations.  Mr Neil said: “Of course, we would like to rely less on philanthropy wherever possible and that is the plan for this.  Really it’s a continuation of the business that we have which operates out of the marquee, doing weddings and corporate events and charitable activities but it’s just going to give us a permanent space to do that and something that will be more attractive for people to come and view and book and utilise.”

Dumfries House has already attracted plenty of Americans and Europeans, particularly from France and Germany, to host weddings there with pictures often taken in the rose garden, one of the largest in Scotland now that many local councils have closed similar attractions because of the cost of maintaining them. But foundation officials expect to see a significant uptick once the new building is open, allowing five or six large-scale events per week instead of the current one or two.

They also hope the increased revenue will help fund training and education at Dumfries House, which offers vocational courses for 10,000 people per year in a variety of skills ranging from hospitality to building.

Evan Samson, the house’s general manager, said: “Our ambition is for the King’s Hall to become the go-to venue for high-end, luxury weddings and private events for a national and international market. The space will offer guests the opportunity to access the historic house, with the added benefit of revenue going to create employment for the local community and opportunities for thousands of people each year through The King’s Foundation’s education programmes.” 

By Richard Palmer

Prince William wants to bring change to the Royal Family but much of it is likely to be in the tradition of a monarchy that has survived for 1,000 years by adapting almost imperceptibly.

A case in point is a film released today (youtube.com/watch?v=8mRU8mADJfU) in which he suggests he wants to create protected status for up to 6,000 parks and green spaces in the UK amid concerns that many are disappearing under development.

William, 43, recorded the film with Jill Scott, the former England footballer and current president of Fields in Trust, the charity formerly known as the National Playing Fields Association, to mark the organisation’s centenary. The Prince of Wales is a former president and is now patron of the charity.

It’s a film that shows off the modern face of the monarchy: William hugs, Scott, 37, a former winner of the reality TV show I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! when the two meet and are recorded in conversation discussing the charity’s decision to mark its centenary  by launching a renewed mission to protect at least 75 per cent of green spaces in the UK to ensure that nobody is more than a 10-minute walks from a park.

Fields in Trust has warned that since the Covid-19 pandemic 226 parks or green spaces in the UK have been lost to urbanisation. Around 45 per cent of people live more than a 10-minute walk from a green space  and only around 6 per cent have legal protection, usually in the form of a deed or covenant.

In his typically informal style William discusses what must be an ambitious target. In its first 100 years the charity has managed to secure protection for just 3,000 green spaces but William, the royal who has vowed to do more to bring about positive change in our society, says: “I think we can double, treble that number.”

He and Scott are filmed at Windlesham Field of Remembrance Park in Surrey, coaching rival football teams featuring children from a nearby school. To Willliam’s chagrin, his team is beaten.

I must admit that when I heard that he had recorded this film I was slightly irked. I thought: why were the press not invited to cover this as an official engagement and scrutinise more closely the activities of the heir to the throne? There is a worrying trend for Kensington Palace to release pre-packaged publicity material that cuts out the media and leaves them simply regurgitating PR.

In fact, it works really well and is a useful way of telling the story of how our playing fields, parks, and green spaces are under threat despite being so important for our physical and mental health. From the palace’s point of view, a short film is a useful way of reaching the increasing number of people who don’t digest news from traditional media any longer either.

And, although William’s style is more modern and informal than that of earlier generations of royals, he is following in a family tradition.  “The family connection with Fields in Trust goes way back, 100 years,” he tells Scott. “The green space protection party is really important, because once a green space goes, it’s gone forever.”

It was his great-grandfather George VI, when he was Duke of York, who co-founded the National Playing Fields Association in 1925. William’s grandfather, Prince Philip, the late Duke of Edinburgh, was its president for 60 years and his grandmother Queen Elizabeth II was patron for 70 years.

 Helen Griffith, chief executive of Fields in Trust, says: “As we mark 100 years of Fields in Trust, this film beautifully captures why our mission still matters more than ever today. As people go for walks in parks, or children play on local pitches during the Christmas holidays, it’s easy to assume these spaces will always be there. But the reality is that without legal protection, they can disappear forever. It’s so important that every community has easy access to green spaces that are fundamental to our health, happiness and sense of belonging”.  

A quick look back through the archives shows that William is not the first member of his family to make a film to promote the charity either. Take a look at this from 1951, a truly revolutionary piece of royal film shown in cinemas and featuring Philip and some scruffy little urchins.

The new film is a lovely nod to the memory of his grandfather.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMsnix1GPI4

By Richard Palmer

Britain’s monarchy is under pressure in the fallout from the scandal surrounding the King’s disgraced brother Andrew but in the past few days the Windsors have shown their worth.

Amid the splendour of Windsor Castle, a royal fortress for almost 1,000 years, King Charles III and his family hosted Germany’s President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and his First Lady, Elke Budenbender, on a glittering state visit in the middle of the week.

For Britain’s national newspapers it was all about the Princess of Wales looking glamorous at a state banquet in a pale blue Jenny Packham dress and Queen Victoria’s Oriental Circlet tiara. It was the first time she had worn that particular headgear, designed on Prince Albert’s instructions for Victoria in 1853.

The tiara was a nice touch, celebrating the Royal Family’s German roots, and one of several. The German model Claudia Schiffer stole much of the attention among the non-royal guests at a glamorous banquet in St George’s Hall beneath a 25ft Christmas tree containing 3,000 lights. But the Duke of Wellington was there in a nod to the role his ancestor played in perhaps the greatest Anglo-German military victory in history.

The state visit was about cementing new closer diplomatic, security, and trade ties between the two countries. Britain is getting closer to Germany and France to try to repair some of the economic damage done by Brexit and to counter the growing military threat from Russia amid fears that the US under Donald Trump’s presidency is no longer a reliable partner and guarantor of European safety.

It’s common for the royals to be treated in media coverage as mere baubles on these state visits, there to provide a bit of eye candy to charm the visitors while the politicians do the serious work. But, while it is the politicians who make the decisions, we saw when Trump came to Windsor earlier this year that the royals are supreme diplomats.

We know that King Charles III and William pressed him on supporting Ukraine, combatting climate change, and the value of as much free trade as possible between the UK and the US. Kate spent much of that banquet talking to the president and, while we don’t know what was said, I’m pretty sure she would have been trying to get over Downing Street and the Foreign Office’s agenda.

On the home front, Kate, 43, showed the value of her soft power, bringing stars and 1,600 guests to Westminster Abbey on Friday afternoon for a celebration of love and community action during a magnificent Together at Christmas carol service.

She and William are working with the King and other members of the family to make the Firm a more socially activist monarchy. There are potentially dangerous political problems ahead, however.

Seven years ago to mark his 70th birthday Charles appeared in a television documentary in which he was asked about his “meddling” in politics as Prince of Wales. He said he would not speak out on controversial issues when he became King as the roles were constitutionally different. “I’m not that stupid,” he said.

It’s true he doesn’t make the same barnstorming speeches that he used to, accusing climate change sceptics of being “headless chickens” for example. But he is still finding ways to campaign on all the same issues.

Early in the new year he will set out his stall on the environment in a Prime documentary chronicling his lifelong campaign to persuade us to retune to living in harmony with nature.

But before that he will appear in an ITV documentary with the naturalist Steve Backshall, who recreated Charles’s journey to the Canadian Arctic 50 years ago. It shows how climate change and other environmental problems such as plastic pollution have taken their toll on this once pristine wilderness, what the programme makers call the canary in the coal mine for the rest of the world.

Charles does not mince his words in expressing his frustration with world leaders and others at the lack of urgency in their response to the crisis, encapsulated by melting glaciers and plastic fragments found in the guts of Arctic seabirds.

“Why is it taking so long? By which time it is almost too late to, to rectify,” he says, in conversation with Backshall.

"That's my great worry about it, because you get to a tipping point. Which is what all the scientists have been talking about.

"These things are rescuable, but it seems very peculiar to me that, you know, in other areas everybody takes what the scientists are saying as absolute vital truth, but in this case for some reason or other it is not so apparently simple."

Later in the programme he says he still hopes the planet can be saved from the worst effect of environmental catastrophe: "We have to believe that it is still possible. Because you have to have hope. But to provide that hope you have to take the action.

"I mean, I, all I can do is behind the scenes. But I mean, it, it can get very frustrating, to say the least."

Aides insist he leaves it up to the politicians to decide what policies are needed but his views on the priorities appear at odds with those of Britain’s official opposition party, the Conservatives, and the current most popular party in the polls, Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, which have both argued for Net Zero targets to be dropped in favour of lower energy bills and higher economic growth in the short term.

Charles, 77, will want to stay on the right side of history on these crucial challenges facing mankind but there may be tensions ahead if his next government does not share his enthusiasm for a green alternative.

His more immediate concern is dealing with the Andrew problem, which threatens to spread damage to the wider family after a decision by Parliament’s spending watchdog, the Commons Public Accounts

Committee, to launch an inquiry into Crown Estate properties occupied by several members of the Royal Family.

And then there is the rift with Harry and Meghan, which continues to be a festering sore damaging the idea of a family that is supposed to represent the best of British values, including tolerance and understanding.

At the start of the week I was reporting on Meghan’s Netflix Christmas show, With Love Meghan: Holiday Special. I may be in a minority of British royal reporters but I quite enjoyed it.

But the rift with the royals hangs over Harry and Meghan, as does their estrangement from her father, brother and sister and most other members of her family apart from her mother, Doria Ragland.

It was unfortunate and understandably upsetting for Meghan that her seasonal show coincided with news that her father, Thomas Markle, had been taken ill in the Philippines and, according to reports, had part of his leg amputated.

On Friday night it emerged that she had tried to make contact with her dad. Her spokesman said: “I can confirm she has reached out to her father.”

It’s not clear at this stage whether they have actually spoken and it appears she has previously tried to make contact but, it does not look as if she has had any success.

For her and Harry, whatever their frustrations, re-establishing relations with both sides of their family is a goal worth pursuing, I’d suggest.

Prince and Princess of Wales photo by Alex Bramall at Frogmore House.

King Charles III’s reign has brought a more muscular monarchy and with it a new Prince of Wales intent on achieving “impact” to change the world for the better.

Prince William, like his father, sees the monarchy as a force for positive change. As Prince of Wales, he has taken some stick for supporting England at football but today he will be pulling out all the stops to support the Welsh economy.

William, 43, will travel to Newport to attend the Wales Investment Summit during a day of engagements in which he hopes to celebrate Wales’s leading industries and help position it as a prime destination for national and international investors.

At the summit, hosted by the devolved Welsh government, he will make a speech championing the country’s economy.

“I believe that we have reached a significant moment for Welsh investment. An opportunity defined not by the challenges we collectively face, but by extraordinary possibility,” he will say.

“One of Wales’s greatest strengths is the way industry, academia, and government work together. Not in isolation, but as part of a single, connected community. It is collaboration at its very best. Practical, purposeful, and grounded in trust… Wales is a place where cutting edge technology, research, innovation and a skilled workforce come together in a single, coherent ecosystem across many different industries.”

The heir to the throne will add: “It is my honour to play my part in championing the dynamic nation Wales is today as we look to the future.”

When he was younger it was great fun covering William’s engagements because he and Kate would have a go at anything, particularly sports. He is still up for it occasionally but his duties have become more serious. He and the Princess of Wales are often no longer the light relief in the news mix but the couple saying serious things about our world.

William’s trip to South Wales comes after Kensington Palace revealed over the weekend that he had been to comfort seriously ill children from Gaza receiving National Health Service treatment in the UK.

The children are being treated as part of a UK government humanitarian mission to provide urgent medical care to patients suffering because of the collapsing healthcare system in Gaza.

A Kensington Palace spokesman said: “The Prince wished to offer a moment of comfort to these young people who have endured experiences no child should ever face. The Prince was also able to offer his heartfelt gratitude to the NHS teams providing exceptional care during such a profoundly difficult time.”

His meeting with the children reflects William’s continued emphasis on empathetic leadership, according to those close to him.

The Prince is a man who now strides the world stage and speaks with gravitas.

ENDS

The Princess of Wales has banned her children from using mobile phones but worries as much about Britain’s distracted parents damaging their offspring’s development.

Now, in a small step to rectify the problem,  she is offering researchers £100,000 for proposals to tackle “technoference” - the unwanted distractions caused by digital devices that can disrupt the vital relationship between parents and children in the first five years of their lives.

Her Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood will award the funds to a research body to support a new study which will explore ways to help families build stronger bonds in early childhood by helping parents glued to their phones or other devices find a healthier tech-life balance.

The successful applicant will work with families across the UK to understand when and why technoference occurs, and test practical ways to reduce its impact, according to the centre, which said the findings would help shape future resources for practitioners such as health visitors and early years teachers and nursery staff.

Previous studies have suggested strong links between distracted parents and children with behavioural problems that can go on to blight their adult lives.

Christian Guy, the centre’s executive director, said: “Nurturing relationships between babies, young children, and the adults in their lives are critical to the development of the core social and emotional life skills, which we know are the foundations of a healthy, happy and connected society in the future. 

“There have been numerous studies about how digital devices impact relationships, but there is currently a lack of evidence about what is causing people to turn to their digital devices at times when it is interrupting family life and, importantly, how to help people reduce this unwanted interference. The centre is seeking to address these gaps in research, so we find the solutions to make a real difference to families’ lives.”

In an essay, written jointly with Robert Waldinger, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, Kate, 43, warned last month that parents’ constant distraction by technology was destroying the undivided attention that children needed.

“While new technology has many benefits, we must also acknowledge that it plays a complex and often troubling role in this epidemic of disconnection. While digital devices promise to keep us connected, they frequently do the opposite,” she and the professor wrote.

“Our smartphones, tablets, and computers have become sources of constant distraction, fragmenting our focus and preventing us from giving others the undivided attention that relationships require. We sit together in the same room while our minds are scattered across dozens of apps, notifications, and feeds. We’re physically present but mentally absent, unable to fully engage with the people right in front of us.

“This technological interference strikes at something fundamental: our undivided attention is the most precious gift we can give another person. Yet, increasingly, it’s the most difficult gift to offer. When we check our phones during conversations, scroll through social media during family dinners, or respond to emails while playing with our children, we’re not just being distracted, we are withdrawing the basic form of love that human connection requires.”

She and Prince William ensure that their three children, Prince George, 12, Princess Charlotte, 10, and Prince Louis, 7, play mostly outside to reduce screen time and that they all eat together as a family. “To sit and chat is really important. None of our children have any phones, which we’re very strict about,” William told the Canadian actor Eugene Levy in a television interview screened last month.

But in an interview earlier this month in Brazil, the heir to the throne admitted it was becoming a source of tension with George. “I think when George moves on to secondary school, then maybe he might have a phone that has no internet access,” William said. “And to be honest, it’s getting to the point where it’s becoming a little bit of a tense issue.”

Mobile phones have allowed work to impinge on family life for many parents. Kate has highlighted the family-friendly policies of some employers but has remained tight-lipped about whether she and William regularly disturb their staff after normal work hours.

The Royal Household is not typically a Monday to Friday, 9-5 employer. The King is a workaholic and last year Alastair Martin, the outgoing secretary and keeper of the records at the Duchy of Cornwall, revealed that William regularly WhatsApped him over the weekend.

“There will be weekends when my WhatsApp messages will be in double figures, and I will be very responsive," Martin said. "If something has gone well or badly, I will want to tell my boss, and he’ll be straight back."

The centre cited new polling commissioned earlier this year that showed 62% of UK adults said they were sometimes, often or always distracted by phones and other digital devices when spending time with

family. 

Some 66% of all adults in the online poll of 2,105 by Savanta believed that more should be done to help families find a healthy balance of device use, and this figure rose to 83% of parents with of children aged 0-5.

The call for proposals is available on the Centre for Early Childhood’s website and they have to be submitted by 5pm on January 8, 2026.