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Dearest Gentle Reader,
This Author confesses that a Sunday of such remarkable turbulence quite defies the season’s mild temper. Spring has arrived with all its false promise of renewal, and yet the affairs of the great and the wicked conspire to remind us that human nature, at least, remains stubbornly unimproved.
We begin, as we must, with the ongoing calamity surrounding Lord Mandelson and his rather eventful passage to the ambassadorial chair in the American Colonies. It has now emerged – to absolutely no one’s great surprise, this Author suspects – that Lord Starmer was informed of Lord Mandelson‘s failure to clear security vetting only this past Tuesday, yet somehow neglected to update the Grand Assembly on the matter. Ministers have rushed to assure a sceptical public that Lord Starmer would never, not ever, have made the appointment had he known. One appreciates the loyalty, truly, but one does wonder: if the defence of a prime minister requires this many ministers speaking simultaneously at this volume, perhaps the silence itself was rather deafening. The Foreign Office’s most senior civil servant has since departed the scene, and Lord Starmer is set to face Parliament on Monday. One shall have one’s smelling salts at the ready.
On a matter demanding not wit but gravity, this Author sets down her pen a moment before continuing. A synagogue in Kenton, Harrow, was subjected to an attempted arson attack overnight – the third Jewish site targeted in the Capital in less than a week. Finchley on Wednesday, a former charity building in Hendon on Friday, and now Kenton on Saturday night. Counter-terrorism officers are investigating, armed patrols have been deployed, and stop and search powers have been extended across the borough of Barnet. The Chief Rabbi has stated plainly that attacks on the Jewish community are “gathering momentum”, and this Author urges every gentle reader to understand that a campaign of arson against places of worship and community is not a political curiosity – it is a profound threat to the civil fabric that protects us all. That no lives have yet been lost is cause not for complacency but for urgent resolution.
In considerably warmer news, this coming Tuesday would have been the one hundredth birthday of our late and beloved Queen Elizabeth II. The government has pledged £40 million to establish the Queen Elizabeth Trust, with His Majesty the King as its patron, dedicated to restoring shared spaces and community buildings across the Kingdom. The King and Queen Camilla will visit the British Museum to view plans for the national memorial in St James’s Park, designed by Sir Norman Foster – because when one wishes to honour a queen who gave ninety-six years to public life, one commissions a very large park structure and calls it done. This Author is genuinely moved. One hundred years. A century since the birth of a woman who made constancy look effortless. The least the nation can do is restore a few community gardens in her name.
Meanwhile, the Duke of Sussex and Duchess of Sussex have concluded their four-day visit to the east coast of Australia – a visit which had, one is told, all the hallmarks of a royal tour, except for the minor inconvenience that most Australians were either unaware of it or fundamentally unbothered. When last they visited in 2018, as working members of the Royal Family, tens of thousands turned out across nine days. This time, sources suggest the couple “spontaneously appeared” at various locations in what observers describe as a carefully choreographed series of surprises. There are also murmurs that Australian taxpayers may find themselves contributing to the security bill. One imagines the Australian public receiving that particular piece of intelligence with the same warm enthusiasm one reserves for an unexpected invoice.
And finally, the story that has sent the collecting classes into a frenzy: a life jacket worn by Titanic survivor Laura Mabel Francatelli – the only such item to come to auction in 114 years – has sold for a remarkable £670,000 at auction in Devizes, Wiltshire, far exceeding its estimate of £250,000 to £350,000. It was signed by fellow survivors, features twelve pockets, and one trusts was considerably more use to Miss Francatelli in April 1912 than it fetched at the time. A lifeboat seat cushion from the same auction sold for a further £390,000. This Author is forced to conclude that the Titanic represents not merely humanity’s most storied maritime disaster, but also, apparently, a rather reliable investment portfolio. One wonders what is still out there, quietly appreciating.
I am, as ever, your most devoted observer – Lady Whistledown.