Couple Move House

 Whatever else it is, Prince Harry's proposed return is a gripping story to tell around the smouldering national campfire. Animals live in the moment but human beings need narrative: gossip, myth, parable, legends. Stories can be inspiring or malicious, sacred or profane, downright dirty or innocently funny but we need them. The problem and pleasure lies in  embroidering: inflating villains, weeping for victims, adjusting the plot...

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Thomas Sword Good ( 1789-1872)
Photo Credit: Tate [CC BY-NC-ND]

So all weekend millions gasped at the suddenly reanimated tale of a discontented prince and his wife: as twisty as an 18th century picaresque only posher and unsettlingly subversive to a functioning monarchy. They fled, hurling resentment at fatherland and family, made big money and friends and lost some of both. They gathered sympathetic admirers, angry opponents and gleeful mockery. They waged legal battles and lost the biggest, narrated a new family story and served it on rainbow platters. But after a few years the story began to falter and repeat. Even mockers grew jaded...

The pair's supposed reasons for an abrupt return fed countless imaginations: it's taxes; no it's Trump! It's money getting tight or Montecito getting tedious. It's about English schools, or her film career or his charities. Or it's because he disliked California and feared a historic drug-use visa row with the Magasaurs. He missed his mates or she fell out with the neighbours.

Some prefer the sentimental simplicities like love for an ailing father, uncle and cousins; one letter-writer sternly says William must and will forgive because he has to be head of a Christian church one day...

(Libby Purves, The Times, 2026)

 

A couple move house. That's a gripping story? Humans may well need stories but this one is a non-starter, relying on gossip and speculation as to why they are returning to the UK. Millions gasped at the weekend? Did they? Their return "fed countless imaginations".Really? In the minds of the press perhaps. In the country at large I'm not so sure. Don't people just want the facts with a story like this. Couple move house - the end.