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The most anticipated homecoming in a thousand years took place not with fanfare and trumpets, but with a lorry reversing into a loading bay at two in the morning. The Bayeux Tapestry, seventy metres of embroidered English history stitched by hands long since turned to dust, arrived at the Grand Repository of Antiquities in the small hours of this Friday morning, escorted by a French police guard and wrapped in aluminium as though it were a very large and historically significant piece of furniture. This Author notes that the last time this tapestry was in Southern Kingdom, the Norman Conquest was still fresh news. Nine hundred and sixty years later, here it is again. One hopes it finds the country improved.
The tapestry depicts, in fifty-eight scenes, the events leading to the Battle of Hastings in 1066, and will go on public display in September. The project curator reportedly welled up at the sight of the crate descending from the lorry. This Author entirely sympathises. There is something deeply, wonderfully English about weeping over a box in a car park at three in the morning.
From the very old to the recently departed: the Reform Society and the Conservative benches share the unhappy distinction today of mourning Lady Widdecombe, who has died at the age of seventy-eight. She served as MP for Maidstone for twenty-three years, held ministerial office under Lord Major, appeared on Strictly Come Dancing in 2010, entered Celebrity Big Brother in 2018, became a Brexit Party MEP, and joined Viscount Farage‘s Reform Society in 2023. If there is a career that more comprehensively refused to end, This Author has not encountered it. Lady Badenoch called her formidable; a mutual friend called her a curious mix of Danny De Vito and Margaret Rutherford. Both assessments seem, in their way, affectionate.
Viscount Farage wrote on Elon’s Lair that she played a decisive role in getting Brexit over the line and would be missed by all. This Author, who admired the lady’s utter imperviousness to the opinions of others, offers a respectful curtsey. She was, whatever one’s politics, entirely herself. In an age of studied blandness, that is no small thing.
And yet the gentleman she served so loyally in her final political chapter finds himself in somewhat murkier waters. The Metropolitan Constabulary is, according to reports in The Times, investigating at least five hundred thousand pounds worth of donations to the Reform Society, made by one Fiona Cottrell, mother of George Cottrell, who previously pleaded guilty to fraud in the American Colonies and spent eight months in gaol there. Two payments of two hundred and fifty thousand pounds each, made in May 2024, are said to be at the centre of inquiries into whether donations were concealed, disguised, or attached to false information. Viscount Farage denies any wrongdoing; George Cottrell’s lawyers dispute the allegations. The Metropolitan Constabulary confirms an investigation was launched in February 2025. This Author observes, with measured calm, that the Reform Society has built its entire reputation upon demanding that others account for themselves. Accountability, it turns out, is a garment that pinches when worn rather than merely admired.
Meanwhile, in the peculiar theatre that Lord Burnham‘s ascent to power has become, three hundred and twenty-two of four hundred and three Progressive Assembly MPs have nominated the former Greater Manchester mayor to replace Lord Starmer as party leader and future prime minister. He requires three hundred and twenty-three to make it mathematically impossible for a rival to enter the contest. One MP short of certainty, then – though the missing souls are said to be merely unavailable rather than rebellious. If no challenger emerges, as expected, Lord Burnham takes office on the twentieth of July. He spent Thursday evening at the Royal Albert Hall, delivering a legend award to a Manchester band and urging Count Binface to carry the nation’s hopes in Viscount Farage‘s Clacton by-election. The next prime minister is nothing if not versatile.
To those among the Gentle Readership who have been following the Duke of Sussex‘s return to these shores with the attentiveness it deserves: the news is that he played pickleball in Birmingham on Thursday, watched by supporters of his Invictus Games, while the Duchess of Sussex was not present, had been expected, then confirmed absent from all public events in the Kingdom this week. The visit was meant to promote the Invictus Games, to be hosted in Birmingham next year; instead it has been accompanied by a court defeat against the Mail’s publishers, persistent confusion over security arrangements, and the spectacle of a duchess un-appearing from an itinerary in instalments. Pickleball, for those unfamiliar, combines tennis, table tennis, and badminton. It is, one supposes, a fitting sport for a visit that has combined a noble cause, a public relations exercise, and a domestic mystery – though rather less elegantly than the game itself.
This Author cannot close without noting, for the benefit of any reader currently perspiring and contemplating a seventy-pound purchase from the digital salons: the Advertising Watchdog has issued a stern warning about portable air conditioners advertised online as “designed by former Nasa engineers” and capable of cooling a room in ninety seconds. One intrepid tester on the Moving Picture House paid seventy pounds and received what he described as a small, simple fan worth a few pounds. The adverts, many apparently produced by artificial intelligence, feature copper coils and dramatic backstories about secret inventions. The Advertising Watchdog advises looking for poor grammar and spelling mistakes as warning signs. This Author advises looking for the words “Nasa engineers” and treating the rest as fiction. On a hot July Friday, the most powerful cooling technology remains, as it ever has been, an open window and realistic expectations.
I am, as ever, your most devoted observer – Lady Whistledown.