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Dearest Gentle Reader,
It being a Saturday, one might reasonably expect the ton to be occupied with nothing weightier than the selection of a morning bonnet. And yet here we are – this Author barely settled with her tea before the dispatches arrived thick and fast, each more extraordinary than the last. Society, it seems, cannot be trusted to rest even on a day of the week that demands it.
First, to the matter which weighs most heavily upon every decent heart. In the wake of a most vile terror attack upon two Jewish men in Golders Green – for which one Essa Suleiman has already appeared before the courts, charged with attempted murder – Lord Starmer has ventured upon the Broadcasting Society’s Morning Programme to suggest that some protests may, in certain instances, need to be stopped altogether. The Prime Minister declared he would always defend the right to protest, whilst simultaneously indicating he might not always do so – a position of such magnificent political flexibility that this Author pauses to admire the architecture of it. He spoke of the “cumulative effect” of repeated marches upon the Jewish community, which is, one must concede, a rather more serious matter than the usual cumulative effect of Lord Starmer‘s speeches upon the nation’s will to stay awake.
The grief behind these deliberations is no abstraction. This Author reads with a heavy heart of men and women who, on this very Shabbat morning, walk to synagogue with fresh fear in their chests – some hiding the kippah they have worn with pride their entire lives beneath a baseball cap. That a person in this Kingdom should feel compelled to conceal their faith upon a Saturday morning errand is not merely alarming; it is a stain upon every one of us. The candles were lit last night. The synagogues are full. Let us not pretend this is merely politics.
Now, lest the gravity of the morning entirely overwhelm us, the Broadcasting Society has furnished this Author with the most delicious confection of celebrity news: the cast of the second series of The Celebrity Traitors has been announced, and twenty-one luminaries of stage, screen, and the microphone are to be dispatched to a castle in the highlands of North Britain to deceive one another for our collective amusement. Among them: Richard E. Grant, Miranda Hart, Leigh-Anne Pinnock, Michael Sheen, Jerry Hall, James Blunt, and the redoubtable Ross Kemp, a man who has faced warlords and wept on a certain dramatic serial with equal composure. The prize is £100,000 for charity – which is to say, twenty-one extremely competitive famous persons will gleefully betray their dearest colleagues for the sake of the deserving poor. The Broadcasting Society truly understands the human heart. Claudia Winkleman returns to preside over the chaos, which is the only sensible casting decision one could possibly make.
Meanwhile, in Birmingham, a 19-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of a bomb hoax after the comedian Peter Kay was rushed from his stage at the Utilita Arena, some 45 minutes into his performance, when police investigated a suspicious bag. Audience members, including a couple who had driven all the way from Bideford in Devon for the occasion, initially assumed the evacuation was part of the act – which, one supposes, is either a testament to Mr Kay’s reputation for the unexpected, or a rather unsettling commentary on the modern condition. No suspicious items were found. The Saturday night show, one is relieved to report, proceeded as planned.
And finally, a dispatch so purely charming that this Author’s pen moves with genuine warmth: the Princess of Wales and the Prince of Wales have released a birthday portrait of Princess Charlotte, who turns eleven today. She stands in a sunny field in Cornwall, wearing a black and red striped jumper and blue jeans, beaming with the sort of unaffected joy that no amount of royal instruction can manufacture. The photograph, taken by photographer Matt Porteous during the family’s Easter retreat, follows a family portrait shared earlier this week marking fifteen years of the Wales’ marriage – all five of them, two dogs included, lying in the grass and smiling as if the world were a perfectly uncomplicated place. On a Saturday such as this one, this Author is most grateful for the reminder that it sometimes is.
I am, as ever, your most devoted observer – Lady Whistledown.