Gyles Brandreth says sympathy for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle appears to be ‘thinning out’
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Prince Philip’s close friend Gyles Brandreth warned today that sympathy towards Prince Harry and Meghan Markle appears to be ‘thinning out a little bit’.
The author, who was the Duke of Edinburgh’s biographer, said the Queen’s late husband had warned against Royal Family members ‘making themselves the story’.
Mr Brandreth spoke out as Harry and Meghan travelled from their Windsor home of Frogmore Cottage to Manchester for the One Young World summit today.
It comes as the Sussexes continue to hit out at royal life, including in recent weeks with Meghan’s interview to US magazine The Cut and her Spotify podcast.
Mr Brandreth told ITV: ‘The number of people being as sympathetic to them [the Sussexes] as they were initially does seem to be sort of thinning out a little bit.’
Meghan and Prince Harry at St Paul’s Cathedral in London on June 3 – their last visit to the UK
Prince Philip’s close friend Gyles Brandreth appears on ITV’s This Morning programme today
This Morning’s Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby with Mr Brandreth and Camilla Tominey
Meghan and Harry’s friend Omid Scobie appears on ABC’s Good Morning Britain today
Speaking on This Morning, he added that Sussexes were doing ‘good works’ with their visit to Manchester today, an Invictus Games Dusseldorf 2023 event in Germany tomorrow and then the WellChild Awards in London on Thursday.
Mr Brandreth continued: ‘It’s good stuff. And what they’re doing is they’re saying compassion in action, we’re trying to highlight these things.
‘And that’s what royals do, they turn up. Now the problem here is that instead of focusing on their good works – this what the Duke of Edinburgh warned about years ago – once you make yourself the story, then you become the story.
‘What should be the story is the good works you are doing. And so these two youth projects they’re involved in… that’s what we should be talking about. In fact we’re talking about the family rift.’
Camilla Tominey, associate editor at the Telegrpah, also appeared on the programme, during which she spoke about The Cut interview and attacks on the Royal Family by the Sussexes.
And presenter Phillip Schofield said: ‘There’s no dignity in that, though, is there?’ I mean, also, the Queen, 96 years old, dignified her entire life, having to cope with this.
‘There have been rumours that both she and the Prince of Wales are ‘bewildered’ by what they’re saying. You look at it and – we’ve been very sympathetic and then sometimes we’ve been critical – but you look at it and you think ‘oh why don’t you both just shut up?”
Separately today, Meghan and Harry’s friend and trusted media partner Omid Scobie said that the latest trip was ‘very much about the work’ for the couple.
He told ABC’s Good Morning America: ‘After Meghan’s recent revelations, the family and the institution itself will have no doubt been bracing themselves for this visit.
‘But for the Sussexes, this is very much about the work, these are the kind of trips they wanted to do ever since they stepped back, but the pandemic prevented them from doing so until now.’
Over on NBC this morning, royal commentator Daisy McAndrew told the Today programme that the Sussexes would not have as much media coverage as normal today due to the announcement of the new prime minister, Liz Truss.
Before the announcement, Ms McAndrew said: ‘All the tension will be on them [the next prime minister], one of those two shortlisted will be going up to Balmoral to visit the Queen tomorrow to do the kissing of hands and be appointed the next prime minister.
‘Harry and Meghan will get some coverage but not as much as they’re used to. They will be sharing the spotlight somewhat.’
Meghan told The Cut magazine in the US that it takes ‘a lot of effort’ to forgive and hinted that she can ‘say anything’, in what has been translated as a veiled threat to the Royal Family.
Kate, William, Harry and Meghan at Westminster Abbey in London on March 11, 2019
Gyles Brandreth was friends with the Duke of Edinburgh. They are pictured together in 1983
Spotify has so far released two episodes of Meghan’s Archetypes podcast, featuring conversations with veteran tennis player Serena Williams and singer Mariah Carey.
In the podcast with Williams, the Duchess took a veiled swipe at life in the Royal Family while recounting her horror at a time a small ‘fire’ broke out in son Archie’s room during a tour of South Africa.
Despite her upset, she said she was forced to continue with the couple’s official engagements, accusing those running the tour of concentrating on ‘how it looks, instead of how it feels’.
And in the show with Carey, Meghan said she was treated ‘like a black woman’ for the first time when she started dating Prince Harry.
She said she was previously treated ‘like a mixed woman’ and ‘things really shifted’ once she started her relationship with Harry.