British royal news
Monaco’s royal wedding approaches
- Interview with Albert & Charlene (video, in English)
- A sporting environmentalist: Prince Albert (video)
- Charlene Wittstock: Monaco’s future princess (video)
- Monaco brushes up for wedding (video)
- South African suburb remembers Charlene (video)
- Dream wedding for ‘prince and pauper’ (video)
- Wedding turns page in history: commentator (video)
- Monaco denies prince’s fiancée has cold feet
- A royal wedding for the people (video)
- Monaco’s wedding timetable unveiled (video)
Portrait of Charles II’s mistress comes to light
Note: This article is from The Guardian.
This article titled “Graphic portrait of Charles II’s mistress comes to light” was written by Dalya Alberge, for The Guardian on Tuesday 28th June 2011 22.15 UTCShe is one of history’s most famous mistresses, but few of the many paintings labelled as Charles II’s lover Nell Gwyn are actually of her. Now a saucy portrait with lewd and lurid symbolism that would have been instantly recognisable to 17th-century eyes has come to light for the first time.
The painting has never before been seen in public. It depicts Gwyn bare-breasted and stuffing sausages, a composition laden with titillating symbolism. She is dressed in white, a satirical pun on virginal purity, while a black manservant standing by her may allude to the black-haired king known as “the black man”.
Measuring only 9 by 7 inches, it depicts Gwyn, who was a leading comic actress and coquettish cockney and inspired the playwright Dryden to give her saucy parts and the diarist Samuel Pepys to describe her as “pretty witty Nell”.
She captivated the king, becoming his mistress for some 16 years until his death in 1685. Indeed, on his deathbed, he is said to have uttered: “Let not poor Nelly starve”. She had two sons by him, the elder of whom became the Duke of St Albans.
A nephew of the 12th Duke has decided to sell the portrait to Philip Mould, a leading specialist in British portraiture, to raise money for the family’s next generation.
Mould told The Guardian yesterday: “It’s come from her descendents. So it’s the Holy Grail Nell Gwyn. She’s not as commonly portrayed as a lot of other mistresses, for example the Duchess of Portsmouth … Every year we’re offered portraits of Nell Gwyn that actually aren’t her. Her identification gravitates towards any sexy-looking image from the 17th century.”
Mould, currently presenting a BBC series Fake or Fortune?, added: “It’s the most graphic contemporary portrayal of her sexual qualifications that we have found. What makes it so distinctive is that this is not a smutty doodle, but exquisitely-crafted. One can only assume that it may have had an intimate purpose in the court circle.”
The portrait is by an anonymous 17th-century hand, in a genre of Anglo-Dutch character portrayals of the time. Mould claims that Gwyn’s gently tilting head is linked to a lost miniature by Samuel Cooper, Charles II’s miniature painter.
Although the subject matter of such a private commission was too subversive to be recorded in official inventories, the composition is recorded in a contemporary engraving. The National Portrait Gallery is believed to be in discussion over the possibility of acquiring the picture.
Mould will this week show the Gwyn portrait at Masterpiece, an art fair at the Royal Chelsea hospital. Tradition has it that Gywn persuaded the king to set up the hospital, a reflection of her famed compassion for the common people.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010
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Prince Albert and Charlene Wittstock prepare for wedding
Note: This article is from The Guardian.
He is the prince who never grew up – a one-time playboy and son of the Hollywood star Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier of Monaco. She is a working-class South African 20 years his junior, a former Olympic swimmer and the daughter of a photocopier salesman.
When Prince Albert of Monaco and Charlene Wittstock marry this week in a two-day populist extravaganza in the wealthy Mediterranean enclave, tens of thousands of tourists are expected to flood in to witness the ultimate “prince and commoner” wedding.
The American rockers the Eagles will belt out Hotel California in a special gig for locals while synth-pop guru Jean-Michel Jarre performs a light show over the port. Albert II, head of the tiny principality since his father died in 2005, will flaunt his eco credentials by staging the procession of the newlyweds in an open-top electric Lexus.
But the wedding is more than just the latest soap opera instalment of the House of Grimaldi, a dynasty as famous for its heartache as its glamour. It is vital for the survival of the Mediterranean tax haven. Monaco, the world’s smallest state after the Vatican, has 360,000 registered bank accounts and a 35,000 population – the vast majority of whom are foreign expats, many British, paying no income or capital gains tax. If Somerset Maugham once famously called Monaco “a sunny place for shady people”, Prince Albert declared when he took over that “morality, honesty and ethics” would guide his rule. In 2009, Monaco was removed from the OECD blacklist of unco-operative tax havens, after promising to be more transparent with foreign authorities asking questions. But it continues to exempt its rich foreign residents from paying tax, and its own vast wealth depends on the international fortunes that take residency there.
The Grimaldis, who have run the enclave for seven centuries, are the protectors of Monaco’s special status. “It’s a question of life and death,” said Francois Caviglioli, who has covered the principality for decades for Nouvel Observateur. “If there was no prince, and therefore no heir, Monaco would return to France. The stability of the prince’s family is crucial for Monaco’s numerous banks and its financial sector which craves security, not social unrest. Then there’s the image factor and tourism: lots of Europeans deprived of their own monarchies descend on Monaco to see what it’s all about.”
Many hope the wedding will be a boost after Monaco’s gloomy start to the year. The enclave’s top football team, which depends on Grimaldi money, was last month humiliatingly relegated to France’s League 2; the financial crisis has sobered the mood and even the famous roulette and baccarat tables of the Casino Monte-Carlo fell silent over Easter as croupiers went on strike over pay.
Whether Wittstock can return Monaco to its golden era when the American star and Hitchcock muse Grace Kelly became crown princess remains to be seen. Prince Albert first spotted her when she was 22 and competing in a Monaco swimming competition. The prince, a former member of Monaco’s Olympic bobsleigh team, said they bonded over sport. When injury ended her swimming career she moved to Monaco five years ago. She is famously nervous about manners and how to dress and talk, and has been taking French lessons although she is not yet fluent. She has won a reputation as a fashion symbol.
The couple, aged 53 and 33, now face two challenges: producing an heir and avoiding the personal trauma and tragedy that has plagued the Grimaldis. Albert has acknowledged two illegitimate children: a daughter with an American tourist and a son with a Togolese flight attendant. A change in the constitution allows the ruling prince’s title to pass through the female line, but a male heir is still sought after in the deeply traditional, Catholic enclave. Albert has insisted he knows nothing of a supposed curse on family marriages, but Kelly died in 1982 in a car crash on one of Monaco’s hairpin bends, his sister Caroline lost her second husband in a speed-boat crash and his youngest sister, Stephanie, is famous for an anguished love life, marrying and divorcing her bodyguard before marrying and divorcing a trapeze artist.
Wittstock, with her trademark Grace Kelly-style blonde chignon, has rejected the obvious physical comparisons with her husband’s late mother. Alain Perceval, author of a new book on the Monaco couple, says she should not be compared to Kate Middleton either. “Charlene comes from a very humble background in South Africa, a bit rustic, she’s from an ordinary family and had a very humble life,” he said. “You simply can’t compare her to Kate Middleton, who went to prestigious schools and comes from what we would call the haute bourgeoisie.”
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010
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Prince Charles’s income up by £1m
Note: This article is from The Guardian.
Prince Charles’s income – including funding from the taxpayer for his official duties – rose by nearly £1m last year, according to figures published in the annual review of his activities. His aides insisted that the increases were either not rises at all, or reflected an increase in official visits undertaken at the government’s behest.
The most obvious saving highlighted by the report. It has shrunk from 56 pages of cheery photographs of the prince and his wife, the Duchess of Cornwall, going about their official duties, to 24, demonstrating the household’s mastery of new technology by placing many of the details on the web, including videos and details of gas emissions and energy usage. Sir Michael Peat, the prince’s soon-to-retire private secretary, insisted the move had the prince’s personal support as a saving in costs and paper.
Remarkably, although the review indicates the prince travelled 34,000 miles on royal duties in the past year, to the end of this March – 9,000 fewer than the previous year – and halved the amount of foreign travel he undertook, the cost rose by £388,000, to £1,080,000. On a simple cost basis that represents £31.50 a mile, compared with £16.13 the previous year.
Prince Charles’s income from grants-in-aid, to subsidise his royal duties, and from government departments, rose by £298,000 to £1.962m. His main income, which comes from the duchy of Cornwall – the ancestral estates of princes of Wales – was up by nearly 4% last year to £17,796,000, owing to profits from his bonds portfolio. Peat described the latter as “in the circumstances a very creditable performance”, though he added it was a fall in real terms.
The prince’s tax bill – paid on the duchy’s surpluses at 50% – plus VAT, national insurance contributions for his employees and council tax payments, increased by £900,000 to nearly £4.4m.
The size of the household – 132.8 members of staff compared with 124 the previous year – increased slightly because five new aides were taken on: three to work for princes William and Harry, one to assist with their father’s website and another as an agricultural worker for the Highgrove estate.
Peat said that expenditure had increased in three areas: “Overseas travel is nothing to do with us. The prince and duchess have no say in that. They go where the Foreign Office and the government chooses to send them. The prince’s tax is up by 26% and his own expenditure has increased almost entirely because His Royal Highness increased his personal donations to charity.”
As in previous years, the review stressed the prince’s charitable works, claiming that he had helped to raise £123m directly or indirectly for his 20 core charities, and also the household’s continuing commitment to the use of environmentally friendly energy sources. It claims that total carbon emissions fell by 22% and that nearly a third of the energy used comes from renewable sources. Solar photovoltaic panels have been installed on the roof of Clarence House in London and on barn roofs around the farms on the prince’s Gloucestershire estate at Highgrove.
An electrically powered Mini intended for use as a staff pool car in London, announced in last year’s review, was not, however, a success: it was too small. Peat said: “It was not particularly capacious. We are trying cars the whole time.”
One item of conspicuous expenditure not listed in this year’s review is the cost to the family of the royal wedding at the end of April and is unlikely to be detailed next year either. Peat said: “What really counted was the happiness of the occasion. I am not going to say how much money was spent. Obviously, the Prince of Wales spent the majority of the costs but I don’t think generally people say how much weddings cost do they?”
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010
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Will and Kate lead a royal comeback
Note: This article is from the Guardian.
Suddenly, every picture is beginning to tell the same buoyant royal story. Here are William and Kate smiling happily as they prepare for their first formal tour, to Canada and – probably less formally – Hollywood. Here are the princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, no funny hats but mum in tow, looking like a still from Bridesmaids (at an Elton John charity ball). Here are Zara Phillips and craggy Mike Tindall, all jeans and grassy banks, watching Prince Harry play polo at Beaufort. And here’s Harry himself, larking around with mates as usual.
How many love stories can one week’s worth of Windsor family snapping contrive? We’re almost into our third month of the Cambridge circus. Pass the baton to Zara and her one-time English rugby captain for their Edinburgh wedding next month. But don’t forget the two York girls waiting behind (and loving their mother meanwhile) or Harry himself. The boy’s got to settle down some time.
And this procession of images, swilling round Fleet Street in a single, now typical week, are also about more than real or pending romance. They tell you where the paparazzi market finds itself today: soft-edged, human, optimistic, affectionate. They also reveal a dramatic upturn in royal family fortunes.
Such moods, of course, swing both ways. They swung viciously downwards after the death of Diana – and the Queen’s annus horribilis. They have seen indulgent laughter become raised eyebrows over Sarah Ferguson’s idiocies. They currently run at rock bottom as far as Prince Andrew and his idiotic attacks on the British press are concerned. But, at stage centre, at the heart of royal longevity, the mood is overwhelmingly positive: so much so that even old hate figures (say, Princess Michael of Kent) are more forgotten than loathed this summer.
What’s happened? Where did all this adulation come from? The normal media thing is to take a spin doctor – in this case, Paddy Harverson, the ex-Man Utd PR based at Clarence House – and pavilion him in awed praise as a mastermind able to rescue the most hopeless cases from mass revulsion (or apathy). And Harverson, shrewd, relaxed and effacing, deserves his credit.
Image makers aren’t always the wonder workers of their own legend, though. They can help a client stuck in the mire. Simon Lewis and Simon Walker, two smooth operators, began the rescue job a decade ago as Buckingham Palace finally realised it needed co-ordination – and a policy. Harverson has built on those very professional foundations. But this is also silk-purse-and-sow’s-ear territory at its most demanding.
Remember the tabloids three years ago. Remember “Waity Katy”, doing too little for Fleet Street tastes (apart from appealing to the Press Complaints Commission to be left alone). Remember her ex-air stewardess mother and the “doors to manual” jibes. Remember, for that matter, William’s own anti-media sulks. The basic fact, in this great change of perception, isn’t manipulation, or even sound common sense.
The fact is that Catherine Middleton, having waited so long, turns out to be a pretty, sunny picture opportunity the photographers themselves admire. The fact is that William is easier and obviously cheerful when she’s around. The fact – dramatically demonstrated at their wedding – is that the Joe and Joanna Public love the Cambridges, so there’s no reason to be beastly to them.
Take simple ingredients: an economy enduring bad times, a coalition in the toils, a world full of problems. What do you need to help fill your pages? Young love; pageantry delivered punctiliously; and old love, too.
The Queen and Prince Philip aren’t peripheral to this love-in. They are central to it. See them outside No 10 for lunch last week and Samantha Cameron looks as if she’s welcoming the mother of the nation. Watch Philip (and it was his 90th birthday lunch) stepping to one side. Think of that Irish visit a few weeks ago. It’s too late for Fleet Street to start rocking this boat. We’re in Iconland, where even the Duke’s grossest jokes must be endured with a grin. They’re too old and too revered to attack any longer. So they have to be loved.
Such pervasive sweetness cannot last, of course. What goes up in media terms must also go down. One snarl from William, one laddered stocking from Kate, one stumble in Hollywood, and sugar could turn to lumps. Those who live by PR can also die by it.
But in terms of the next pictures in this album, there’s much more to look forward to: the first baby, the christening, umpteen royal weddings and a few funerals. The picture parade will never cease. Except, perhaps, in one respect strangely neglected amid last week’s revels. Harverson, first and foremost, is media guru to Charles and Camilla. So where were they when the shutters started clicking? Come to that, did you see much of them at the wedding?
There are, it appears, times to have your pictures in the paper, and times to lie low. Times to look happy – and times to make others happy, by not being there.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010
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