Skip to content
Breakfast had barely been cleared when the Birthday Honours list landed, and This Author was obliged to read it twice, such was the density of its delights. His Majesty the King has been busy indeed, dispensing knighthoods and damehoods with the generosity of a host who has over-catered and refuses to see anything go to waste.
Foremost among the honoured is Sir Kevin Sinfield – rugby league’s own Sir Kevin Sinfield – knighted not merely for scoring more points in Super League history than any man before him, but for the rather more affecting business of raising millions for charities tackling motor neurone disease after his teammate Rob Burrow’s diagnosis. One could not begrudge him the honour if one tried. Children’s authors Dame Malorie and Dame Julia – she of Noughts and Crosses and she of the Gruffalo respectively – are made dames for services to literature, which is to say for ensuring that the nation’s children have, at the very least, met a monster in a wood before they encounter the Grand Assembly. Several Lionesses who won Euro 2025 are appointed MBEs, including the admirable Chloe Kelly, whose penalty proved decisive in the tournament. The founders of the studio behind Wallace and Gromit, Peter Lord and David Sproxton, are knighted, which seems only right for two gentlemen who gave the world a dog with more common sense than most peers of this Author’s acquaintance. Dame Helen Mirren and photojournalist Sir Don McCullin join the rarefied sixty-five Companions of Honour. Lord Starmer posted his congratulations upon Elon’s Lair, which is either touchingly modern or a sign of the times, depending upon one’s disposition.
To the corridors of power, where the departure of Lord Healey as Defence Secretary continues to reverberate most satisfyingly through the wainscoting. It is now reported that Lord Healey had been privately pressing for the Kingdom to join an international defence investment bank – the Defence, Security and Resilience Bank, no less – a scheme championed with great Canadianness by Lord Carney of Ottawa. The upfront investment required: a mere eight hundred and seventy million pounds. The Royal Exchequer‘s response to this figure: a silence so eloquent it could have filled the Upper Chamber twice over.
Lord Healey resigned on Wednesday, declaring the Government’s forthcoming Defence Investment Plan fell ‘well short’ of what the military required – some eighteen billion pounds short, if military chiefs are to be believed, which one hopes they are, given that they are the ones in charge of the cannon. Lord Starmer told the Broadcasting Society he had made ‘hard-edged choices.’ This Author would suggest that ‘hard-edged’ and ‘eighteen billion pounds short’ are phrases that do not comfortably share a sentence, but no one has yet solicited her advice upon matters of fiscal strategy.
North Britain, meanwhile, has collectively abandoned all pretence of composure. Scotland’s footballing men have not appeared at a World Cup in twenty-eight years, and the nation is behaving accordingly. Children are setting alarms for two in the morning to watch their team face Haiti in the opening group fixture. Fathers in Ayrshire report tearful household incidents dating back to last November’s qualifying victory over Denmark. A teacher in Glasgow confesses she will remain awake for every match, bleary-eyed before her pupils, Panini sticker books scattered across the department. This Author salutes the fervour, notes with some sympathy that Scotland’s final group match against Brazil kicks off at eleven in the evening, and wishes First Minister Swinney‘s subjects every satisfaction – they have waited, after all, since 1998. One does not begrudge a nation its weeping.
Now to a scene of such operatic absurdity that This Author was forced to set down her pen and simply appreciate it for a moment. England’s football squad arrived in Kansas City for the World Cup to discover that the vehicles transporting their equipment had been broken into – boots and balls among the items feared stolen. The national team, preparing to represent the Southern Kingdom before the watching world, had their kit pilfered from beneath their noses by persons unknown. Two arrests have since been made. The Football Association is ‘trying to ascertain what was stolen,’ which implies a degree of organisational uncertainty that might, in other circumstances, concern one. Thomas Tuchel’s squad will begin their first full training day on Sunday, presumably in whatever footwear they happen to have packed personally. England face Croatia on Wednesday. One trusts the boots will be replaced. One has slightly less confidence in the broader enterprise.
And finally, from the county of Merseyside, a tale of commercial philosophy that will long detain the legal scholars. One Eileen Fox, a shopworker of fifty-six years and evident spirit, observed a suspected regular shoplifter departing her store with packets of bacon. She intervened. The suspected thief collided with a metal stand and fled, uninjured, into the afternoon. Miss Fox was subsequently dismissed for putting ‘the business at risk.’ The business in question sells bacon. The bacon was stolen. This Author invites the Gentle Reader to sit with that contradiction at their leisure. Miss Fox is reported to find the dismissal ‘very harsh,’ a verdict that strikes This Author as generous. One Stop’s position is that colleagues should ‘never risk their own safety’ – a principle with which one can only agree, while quietly wondering whether the bacon might have warranted at least a strongly worded look.
I am, as ever, your most devoted observer – Lady Whistledown.