May 14, 2021 - 11:50am
Vladimir Nabokov claimed that his inspiration for Lolita came from a newspaper story. It was late in 1939, or 1940, when he opened up his paper and came across an account of an ape in the Jardin des Plantes. This ape, after months of coaxing and teasing by scientists, produced the first ever charcoals drawn by an animal.
The sketch showed the bars of the poor creature’s cage.
I have no idea whether our renegade Prince Harry can sketch, but he can certainly talk, and he sounds rather like Nabokov’s ape. Yesterday in an interview on the (sigh) American Actor Dax Shepard’s podcast, he again described the monarchy as prison:
“I’ve seen behind the curtain, I’ve seen the business model, I know how this operation runs and how it works. I don’t want to be part of this. It’s a mix of being in The Truman Show and being in the zoo.”
Harry, of course, is completely right. The monarchy is our national zoo — and the animals on display are human beings. Like a zoo, it is both cruel and funny — there are many times when the squabbling monkeys within Regent’s Park have made me laugh, just as Prince Charles dressing up as a Sikh, or yakking with his plants, is comedic dynamite.
What Harry misses is the rest. The magic of monarchy — and it is magic, not logic, or duty that powers the institution — is that all this indignity is transformed, on occasions like Prince Philip’s funeral, into majesty.
So Harry has escaped. In The Truman Show, a 1999 satire starring Jim Carrey, the main character finds out that he has been secretly filmed from birth as part of a reality television show. (Now people do this to themselves for free on Instagram). As the film ends, Carrey charges up a flight of stairs, leaving his fake past behind him, running into the light.
Tellingly, the viewer never finds out what happens next. If we saw all the messy fallout, we would likely be disappointed. Truman’s dream of escape would be temporary; it would create a new set of painful problems to solve.
This is what is happening to Harry. We already know too much about his post-Royal life, and there is only more to come. He has not chosen to fade away. To enjoy privacy or enter seclusion. He has somersaulted from one zoo, the British monarchy, into another — Hollywood.
Imagine if Harry and Meghan had stayed in British Columbia. At this moment, Harry stalks along an old wooden pier to gaze out over a vast crystal lake. Meghan, splendidly housed in an enormous yurt, is feeding the very best maple syrup to Archie. A powerful eagle screeches overhead. The Prince who chose anonymity, who judged the world with silence, not words. They’d be writing fairy tales about the pair of them for centuries to come.
Instead, along with Harry’s interview, we learn that Madame Tussauds has moved its waxworks of the couple. They have left the ‘House of Windsor Zone’ and entered the ‘Hollywood Zone’. One set of bars exchanged for another.
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SubscribePicture the scene – the D&D of S, on their much publicised tour of Africa, were in Malawi – one of the very poorest countries in the world. For several days they’d been meeting people whose stories would make anyone with a scintilla of perspective count their blessings and realise just how lucky they are. Children who’d lost limbs from land-mines, lost relatives from starvation or internecine warfare – and what was their reaction? They decided that was the appropriate moment to announce to the world, via their friendly stooge Tom Bradby, that their life as members of the Royal Family wasn’t easy. It beggared belief. Meghan thought we all needed to know it’s really, really hard being Royal whilst being a new mother – presumably we can all sympathise that the vast retinue of domestic servants doesn’t ease the pressure, even just a little bit – and, as if that wasn’t enough of a burden, poor Meghan complained that no one had thought to ask if she was okay.
The mind boggles. Truly, it takes superhuman levels of self-absorption to spend time with children who’ve lost their limbs and their families to a war and then turn to the camera and whine, “Yeah, but what about meeeee?”
I didn’t watch the Oprah interview, although I’ve probably seen all the lowlights of that grim encounter since. It seemed perfectly obvious (to me and many others) that the entire interview was a tightly scripted, rehearsed and choreographed performance – with one aim. For Oprah, Queen of US Broadcasting, to anoint Meghan, the Little Mermaid of Woke, by allowing her and her dim hostage of a husband to make unfounded accusations about the Royal family without any challenge to their narrative whatsoever. Each question teeing up a rehearsed answer, each answer eliciting a rehearsed reaction and so on.
Having somehow contrived a victim narrative, any challenge to their version of events is tantamount to an admission of uncaring racism. It was one of the most cynical performances I’ve ever seen. The only flicker of sincerity came from Harry – but only because he is too dopey to see what was happening, and just kept repeating “his truths” like the programmed cult member he appears to have become. The Meghanchurian candidate.
To say you don’t believe Meghan’s claims is not to belittle mental health issues. It is merely to suggest she is not credible – an actress she may be, but not a good enough one to make her performance believable.
They’ve lectured us on climate change – castigating people who most likely take one flight a year for their holidays – before they themselves hop into the sybaritic comforts of a private jet, that will take them off for another much-needed break from the pressures of their opulent life. Not to mention that, to ensure their tour of Africa was at the right level of comfort, special cars were shipped out to waft them from one photo-op to the next. Their carbon footprint must be absolutely staggering – but God forbid a newspaper might question the Sussexes’ claim to be “committed environmentalists”. Any criticism is obviously proof of racism.
The suggestion that any criticism aimed at the Duchess of Sussex must be rooted in racism is completely unsupported by any evidence or even common sense. During their engagement and for the wedding itself, the coverage was universally positive and everyone seemed perfectly happy with the idea of her bringing a fresh and different outlook to the hide-bound monarchy. The matter of her heritage was seen as a positive.
It was only when the two of them started on this ghastly “celebrity” path, constantly virtue signalling and associating themselves with “woke” totems that the tenor of the coverage changed. Surely, that would be more down to their perceived insincerity and hypocrisy than any evidence of racism towards her?
Just imagine the messages that will pour forth from their Netflix documentaries – Meghan reinventing herself as Feminist role model – though ‘Marry a Prince and give up your day job’ is a somewhat regressive feminist message in 2021, isn’t it? It could hardly be more hypocritical if Harry, as a member of the Royal family, criticised someone for nepotism.
LA is welcome to them. A city built on insincerity and the hollow adulation of fame. It’s a shame because Harry seemed as though he was a decent sort. He obviously enjoyed his time in the Army and seemed keen to dedicate himself to the Invictus games, association with Military charities and general royal duties. He enjoyed enormous amounts of good will from the British people and seemed to be growing into his role. Any such good will has since evaporated.
When you live in a gilded cage it is never advisable to complain to those outside that your golden handcuffs chafe.
Thank you for expressing my own view so eloquently.
Every family has its Harry or Harriet. They use their superficial charm to get what they want from ( usually) mother or grandmother , as women seem to be very poor judge of character. They always have to have more than their other siblings and if they can’t they create a ‘fuss’ which in upsetting mother/grandmother upsets the other siblings as well, as they are into power games.
Meghan didn’t give up acting. She had already been written out of Suits ( a comedy so poor that it hasn’t been repeated even during the Lockdown famine of new material, and the notoririty of one of its minor characters).
Superb! Thanks
I don’t think I’ve ever come across anyone with as little self-awareness as H & M.
A remarkable achievement, isn’t it? Self-centred, self-absorbed, self-conscious, maybe even self-righteous. But at the same time, not self-aware.
But definitely self, self, self, self self….all the time: SELF and when we’re done with that, yet more lashings of SELF. The absolute opposite of the monarchy.
As I thought at the time of Princess Diana, the Me Generation versus the Stiff Upper Lip. Though I suppose Harry belongs to the Selfie Generation.
I think he probably belongs to all three. Brought up to be a stiff upper lip, but with that culture hitting the skids in the late 90s and being overtaken by the culture of emotional incontinence and over-sharing. Coming from the same generation, I can understand the confusion. But, you know what? “Never complain, never explain” should have a renaissance.
I think he ought to play himself in The Crown -a bearded Harry as baby Harry and so on until now when he broke free of the royal family by cashing in on them every minute of the day. I thought it was his wife’s influence , but now I think its him making these decisions.
And old enough to know better, too!
One thing that Harry might have a problem with is that next year he will be the same age as his mother was when she died-when a parent dies youngish its always a sword of damocles hanging over them until they ‘outlive’ their parent. Unfortunately the rich have many therapists , advisers etc who are only too happy to make money out of their benefactor’s problems by continuing them rather than help solve them
Cher said she could have ‘saved’ George Floyd. Given that she lives about thousand miles away and is not trained as first responder to a scene, it looks like H & M will fit in fine-they only claim they can save the world.
They also could have gone to live in Africa – for which they claim to ‘have a passion’ – and served Archewell’s goal, ‘to uplift and unite communities … one act of compassion at a time’. There would have been a flurry of photographers at first, but eventually they would have disappeared, and H and M could have had all the privacy they claim that they want. But maybe they don’t.
Please can I copy your comment for use elsewhere and everywhere?
“eventually they would have disappeared”
agreed
and soon a bill would arrive from their kidnappers telling the UK tax payer the cost of their release.
At which point any government worth anything would have refused to pay and released a one-line statement: “Why on earth would you think we want them back?”
Unfortunately Charles, the man Harry says doesn’t show him affection, would give his entire fortune to get them back.
You’re probably correct. The British monarchy is like the New York Times: all that’s left is the name plate. Back in the day, a British monarch would not give in. But that was then, and this is not then.
I sympathised with the couple wishing to leave the goldfish bowl of royal life. They could have faded away to a nice house in the country and popped up a couple of times a year to support Invictus and Setabale and everyone would have wished them well.
To exchange the royal family for Hollywood and call it service is beyond parody, and their “look at me but I want privacy” antics, money grabbing opportunism and constant attacks on Harry’s own family, when he knows they are unable to reply, means that any sympathy has now disappeared.
Can they please now shut up and go away.
This VERY well-traveled American would have no trouble providing ol’ Hankus with a list of 100 places to live a normal, private life in our country. Forgive me for souding jingoistic (which I am not), but I know and love my country at the cellular level, from Canada to Mexico, and sea to shining sea — including the flaws, tragedies, screwups, weirdness, and craziness too. And guns, especially my own.
We are chock full of both stunning beauty and fantastic people. (A tip to Brit travelers: If you have car trouble and have to depend on the kindness of strangers, there’s no better place to break down than Eastern Oregon. We’ve been “saved” a half-dozen times out there.) There’s a reason why people risk everything to be here. It would take me no more than 10 minutes to give Hank that list, and that long only because I’m not a fast typist.
Where did they choose to go? Yep, Neptune, a/k/a Hollyweird, which really and truly is NOT America. I’d been somewhat sympathetic to the guy until he pulled these stunts. Oh, and I don’t blame the D-lister. That’s a dodge. When she takes him to the California Cleaners (divorce court), and his pockets are thoroughly picked, he should file and and all complaints in front of the mirror.
I am a maximum believer in personal freedom, knowing that the flip side is personal responsibility. Hankus made his bed, and that’s where he will lie. The choices were his, and so too shall the consequences be his. No dodges, no excuses. Freedom’s a lot more of a challenge than Hankus realizes, but he will learn. Oh, will he ever.
The man has no integrity. If he relinquished the titles first, more people might have more time for the dirt-dishing.
Flit from castle to conference on private jet. Enter the room and watch heads turn. Men bow, women curtsy. Someone shows up with the preferred beverage. The horror of it all.
But the Royal Family is hardly a ‘prison.’
Instead, its members are the current custodians of our heritage, stretching back over the centuries.
Harry should be proud of that role, instead of swapping it for a media-centred life, apparently dedicated to externalising personal angst.
I agree that it is not a prison but neither is it a choice. You are born lumbered.
You don’t have to remain that way though. That’s his choice. Renounce the titles, the dukedom and the HRH. But he doesn’t do that, does he? Other than his father does anyone actually care if he leaves the UK and the monarchy?
The press in Britain know that they get the official ‘smiley’ photos and if they overstep the mark , no photos for them. The Queen even apparently, can be seen driving herself round Windsor , not bothered by anyone. Where would the person who wants to get away from it all be unlikely to choose to move? A place where you are on show 24/7? We only see the royal family occasionally, the rest of the time they just live their lives with family and friends, not a gill in sight.
I could very easily imagine and sympathize with the “prison” view. A cosseted jail for sure, but still jail. But an escape to … to … Hollywood? He just has to be on drugs. LOL
Harry hasn’t chosen anything. He has outsourced his choices to his wife. She has decided to leave what that poor fool described as ‘the family she never had’ , and then busily monetise her poor opinion of them.
however, Harry has embraced her choice with enthusiasm. That screeching is sound of choices coming home to roost.
The law of diminishing returns is starting to kick in. The Oprah interview was previewed for days, then written about for weeks after. Interest in this interview has come and gone in a couple of days. Pretty soon nobody will even notice when this whinger spouts his self-pitying drivel, and good thing too.
Can’t we just swap Ginge & Whinge for Shamima Begum? If anyone’s mad enough to take the deal.
attention seekers will find attention wherever they can.
They must be running out of offences now. They’ve done the racism, they’ve done the over- privileged upbringing and the maladjusted parents and grandparents. Even those who were fond of Diana ( like me) must be fed up with hearing about Harry’s bereavement issues… .what is left?
I wonder if anyone sexually abused Harry at Eton?
Harry seems to wish to retain a rather romantic view of his mother wheras in reality if she were still alive she would probably be onto her 6th marriage with a polo player half her age. She would have had more children & both they and the grandchildren would continue to find her capricious and enchanting in equal measure.
That’s a cheap shot. Not even funny.
It certainly wasn’t meant to be.Diana the person was obviously different from her public image-people who die tragically young become immortalized-Elton John compared her to Marilyn Monroe ( and she was no saint). The arranged marriage was a big mistake , but many marriages fail, including the previous one of Harry’s wife.
Who says the truth has to amuse you?
Harry so wanted to escape the prison that is the Royal Family that he relinquished his titles and his position in the line of succession.
Begrudgingly.
Every family has expectations-imagine being the only son in a farming or construction business who is raised to take over but actually wants to train as a dancer. I would dislike being surrounded by servants , staff and security-but the royals are used to this life. Harry now has to have more security as he has chosen a dangerous place to live & raise his family than either Britain or Canada. As the article says he has reinforced his goldfish bowl.
As he hasn’t done either, I assume you’re being sarcastic?
He did not willingly relinquish any titles but had most removed from him quite rightly. He has retained his position in the line of succession, unfortunately.
At that charity do his name was Prince Harry , Duke of Sussex and for her book she put Meghan , Duchess of Sussex,I thought they agreed not to use titles for their private enterprises?
Everything I’ve read about that “charity” tells me that it’s a complete scam. Is “scam” part of the British slang? Over here, a scam is a fraud.
Yes I think their motto is charity begins at home. I understand they have registered their charity in a state which allows them to keep quite a lot of the donations-allegedly.Raise £10 , expenses £9.90-charity gets 10p that sort of thing.
the comment piece from the spectator Australia today…
The Comment
Prince Harry – the sharpest serpent’s tooth
One good thing about the circus starring the Duke and Duchess of Sussex was that Sydney war widow Daphne Dunne died in 2019 and didn’t live to see it.
Mrs Dunne’s first husband was Second World War AIF lieutenant Albert Chowne, a brave solider whose ultimate sacrifice earned him the Victoria Cross. On Prince Harry’s three Australians visits between 2015 and 2018, Mrs Dunne was in the front row of crowds in Sydney, and Harry spotted her wearing her late husband’s VC, and sought her at each subsequent visit.
Or was it just an act that meant nothing to him?
The Prince Harry on display now is not the warm, heroic, orphaned young man who Mrs Dunne so fondly admired. Under the baleful influence of his wife, Meghan ‘the Duchess’ Markle, and the Californian psychobabble and woke causes to which she introduced him, he has emerged as a shallow, petulant, selfish, disloyal and an avaricious shadow of who he once seemed to be.
Walking out on his life’s vocation was disappointing and very Edward VIII, but a matter of personal choice.
But so was March’s Oprah interview, where the Duke and Duchess carpet-bombed the Royal Family with their self-pitying accusations of racism and family neglect, even as Harry’s grandfather, the Duke of Edinburgh, was living his final days.
Yet last week’s expletive-filled podcast with another C-grade Hollywood actor (how could anyone imagine Meghan Markle on the A-list were it not for her husband?), takes the cake. He blamed his father Prince Charles, and by extension the Queen and Prince Philip, for the ‘genetic pain’ of his upbringing and his life. He made it crystal clear he never wanted to be a Royal, and therefore that the work of Royalty – such as giving some meaning to Mrs Dunne’s life in its twilight – is pointless.
And the timing of this latest burst of offensiveness from the Sussexes, with the Queen still in mourning for her beloved husband, is callous and cruel, almost beyond relief.
The ironically privacy-loving Harry says he won’t pass his family ‘suffering’ to his own children. Yet how could they not suffer, once they are old enough to understand the toxic relationships on both sides of their family, what their father and mother have said to the entire world about their relatives, and effectively disowned them all?
The tragedy of Harry’s earlier life does not excuse his un-Royal conduct. It is conduct unbecoming of the princely privilege into which he was born, the military training that was supposed to make him resilient and self-reliant, and the noble titles that his loving grandmother conferred on him and his new wife on their wedding day.
Shakespeare’s King Lear famously said, ‘how sharper than a serpent’s tooth is an ungrateful child’. Prince Harry has turned out to be a very sharp serpent’s tooth indeed. Sharp and filled with venom.
But let down as she surely would have been by Harry’s behaviour, a soul as kind as Daphne Dunne would still have been sad for him. We should be too.
Comments and feedback: terry barnes
Sad? Maybe. But not sorry to see the back of him.
I write as someone who has:
I don’t blame ol’ Hank for wanting to escape his royal life. It’s not one I’d ever want, that’s for sure. What, a duke (or whatever) in a country the size of Oregon, constantly watched, with nothing of consequece to do? No thanks! But his terms — keep the titles and the money while biting and indeed stomping on the hand that feeds him — were outrageous. If I had a kid who tried a stunt like that, he’d learn right away what the word “shun” means.
What was especially laughable was his declaration that he and his D-list wife moved to Hollyweird to live a normal life. To those Brits here who don’t know America very well, this is a VAST country brimming with normal lives in normal places. Hollywood ain’t one of ’em, and in fact it’s debatable whether or not Hollywood — indeed, much of California — is accurately classified as part of America. It is probably the very LAST place in our outrageously beautiful and varied country where someone could ever live a “normal” life.
In any case, I will keep a watch out of the corner of my eye for the divorce. Once Hollyweird’s divorce lawyers get in there, ol’ Hank is going to learn about our litigious society up close ‘n personal. He thinks Liz ‘n Chuckles were mean? Oh, Hankus, just wait. You don’t know mean. The lawyers will eat you for lunch and, um, excrete you by dinnertime. Unless what’s left in Buckingham Palace rescues him, Hankus is going to learn about trailer park living.
Much hilarity awaits!
p.s.: Hank ‘n Mags are lucky that the British monarchy doesn’t have anything close to the power it once enjoyed. If nothing else, this latest round ‘n round illustrates what is blindingly obvious to all: The British monarchy is nothing more than a tourist attraction.
If Britain still had royalty that mattered, those two would still be famous, but dead. Does anyone know whether the heads and the bodies were buried together back in the day? One of those details that has escaped this inquisitive Yank, so I hope someone else here knows so I can share the news at the next cocktail party. Unmasked.
Ordinary Americans have said that Hollywood is as strange to them as it is to the rest of the world. One thing about all these celebrities including H & M who are into climate change , global warming etc is what are they doing living so near water? Should we start a go fund me to put their mansions on stilts-because according to them the sea levels will rise about 10 feet in the next 10 years. We don’t want Archie’s chickens to get waterlogged do we?
None of us can understand it, either. Harry is slagging of his grandfather when he hasn’t been in his grave for a month. His father just wrings his hands and tells people to plant a tree to honour the grandmother for whom his son shows no respect.
What it says to many people in England is that the the Prince of Wales is cursed with a demon of perversity : whatever the obvious and general opinion, he will takes the opposing stance. Harry doesn’t think much of the Royal Family. Okay, expel him.
It takes a lot for me to feel sympathy for the royal family, but lightning has struck. Ordinarily, I’d call Chuckles a wimp for not sending some verbal missiles in return, but the practicalities are against that. For the time being, anyway. To the extent that I care, which isn’t much, I hope Chuckles & Co. serve revenge cold, and at just the right moment.
Not that I’ll be holding my breath. When you’re a royal with the palaces and costumes that do nothing more than constantly remind you that you are mere decoration, and are forced to quite accurately defend the maintenace of all that as a tourist attraction, you pretty much have to sit there and take it. If Chuckles & Co. respond the way I would, they’d instantly be the villains. Life ain’t fair, Chapter 52,137.
Perhaps Prince Charles knows he should have insisted on marrying Camilla? They would have had children-but obviously not William or Harry. Lady Diana Spencer would have gone on to do her own thing. As this didn’t happen they just have to make the best of a bad job.Harry has been playing the sad tale of a child from a broken home( which he feels led to his mother’s death) for a long time now & presumably he will continue until someone tells him to shut up.
I can hardly wait until they wind up on trash cable. My travel experience outside of the U.S. has been for business and holidays, so there are plenty of aspects of daily life that I have missed — although by comparison to the usual dewey-eyed “progressives” over here who extol all things Euro, I am far ahead.
Still, I can’t say I am familiar with your TV constellation beyond having noticed a lot fewer channels than we get. Trust me, I am not swaggering in the least, given what’s on those channels: infomercials, scripted “reality” shows, and porn.
Harry and his D-lister will end up on a scripted reality show. I don’t see porn in their future, unless the payments on that mortgage become a burden. LOL
I’m a celebrity ( royal) get me out of here?
When it comes time to get out of Hollyweird, ol’ Hankus will pay the mother of all exit taxes in divorce court. The current drama is only the first inning. Just wait; by the time the game is over, that damaged kid won’t know what hit him. But we will, and there’ll be laughter from coast to coast. LOL
If only the couple had slipped away to live together with their family and live in relative obscurity, most people, me included, would have wished them all the best, but of course we live in a world where the female has become the dominant species.