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Dearest Gentle Reader,
This Author had fully intended to open today’s edition with something light – the approaching weekend, perhaps, or a meditation on the seasonal chill. Then the news arrived, and lightness retreated at speed.
The Duchess of Sussex has issued a statement of such careful, controlled distress that one can practically hear the lawyers’ fingerprints upon every syllable. She tells us she was informed in 2018 of “disturbing allegations” against her estranged father, Thomas Markle – allegations contained in a letter sent to the Metropolitan Constabulary and subsequently shared with her. The allegations concern images of child sexual abuse reportedly found at his former home in the Philippines. Mr Markle, for his part, has told the Daily Mail these are “sick lies”. The Duchess says she kept her distance from her father to protect her children, and that she had “trusted that the authorities were doing the same for other families.” This Author will say only this: whatever one’s views of the Sussex household’s many dramas, the protection of children admits of no such drama at all. The matter is grave, and the Duchess’s distress, on this occasion, appears entirely earned.
From one institution that has comprehensively failed its women, to another. Detective Constable Linda Williams was attacked by fellow officer PC David Carrick in 2004. Carrick was jailed for life in 2023 for offences against her and eleven other women. What followed for DC Williams was not justice – it was a civil case so protracted and bruising that she describes it as feeling “like being raped all over again.” The nadir, she says, came when lawyers acting for Metropolitan Constabulary Commissioner Sir Rowley challenged the severity of her post-traumatic stress disorder on the basis that she had been attacked only once. One pauses. One breathes. One resists the temptation to say something unladylike. DC Williams has since settled her case, received compensation, and is now doing something quite without precedent – calling publicly, as a serving officer, for Sir Rowley to resign. The Metropolitan Constabulary says it has “aimed to deal with her claims as quickly and compassionately as possible.” DC Williams, one gathers, would dispute the adverbs.
Now, Gentle Reader, permit This Author a moment of genuine wonder. A personalised cancer vaccine – Intismeran, if you wish to impress at dinner – has, in a major clinical trial of 1,137 patients, cut the risk of melanoma returning or causing death by 42%, and reduced the risk of it spreading by 38%, when given alongside the immunotherapy drug Keytruda. The vaccine uses the same mRNA technology as certain Covid jabs, and is personalised to each patient using their own tumour’s information – essentially training one’s immune system to recognise and destroy any returning cancer cells. The trial covered patients who had already had tumours removed by surgery. Experts call the results impressive whilst sensibly noting that longer-term studies remain necessary. This Author, who is not in the habit of uncomplicated optimism, finds herself perilously close to it this Friday. Science, when it is minded to, can be quite magnificent.
On altogether lighter matters: the Kingdom’s electricity grid operator wishes the nation to know that the lights will stay on this winter. How reassuring. How very specific a thing to need reassuring about. The National Energy System Operator has published its winter outlook, insisting supplies remain “secure, reliable, and among the most resilient in the world” – though it does acknowledge the possibility of “tight days”, on which power producers may receive notices that additional generation is required. Not a warning of power cuts, the operator hastens to add. Merely a nudge. A polite note. A gentle prod to the turbines. All of this follows an independent investigation finding that engineers had “high levels of stress and concern” about their ability to keep the Kingdom lit. One rather suspects the engineers’ stress levels have not been materially reduced by a press release telling them everything is fine.
Finally, to the great question gripping every drawing room in the Kingdom: who shall be the next James Bond? Reports suggest screen tests are taking place this very weekend – possibly as early as this Friday – with three to five actors understood to be in the final reckoning. Named in dispatches from the Hollywood Reporter and its confederates are Callum Turner, Jack Lowden, and Josh O’Connor, the last of whom is best known for portraying a certain Prince of Wales in a certain dramatisation of royal life. The auditions consist, we are told, of three components: stunts, camera presence, and dialogue – which is, now that one considers it, precisely the same criteria by which half the members of the Upper Chamber were appointed to their positions. Variety suggests Lowden may be edging ahead. Some enthusiasts propose that Turner’s wife, the estimable Dua Lipa, might sing the theme song should he prevail. This Author takes no position on the casting, but notes with amusement that the search for Britain’s most famous fictional spy is being conducted with considerably less secrecy than the spy himself would recommend.
I am, as ever, your most devoted observer – Lady Whistledown.