Endgame, p.36
Endgame, page 36
It was all completely ridiculous. Not a week goes by when a royal press secretary doesn’t have to ask a member of the family whether something is true or not, or discuss a response to a story. The same goes for when a journalist calls Buckingham Palace for a “right of reply” on a big scoop they are about to break. If it’s of interest (or alarm), this usually spurs the Palace official to contact the relevant royal to discuss the matter (often unbeknownst to the reporter making the request). It’s standard operating procedure, and it certainly doesn’t mean the royal is in cahoots with that exact journalist. Of course, this is all information that Knauf omitted from his statement (and the British tabloid press would choose to ignore). Too much of the truth would have spoiled the narrative he was attempting to spin.
The Palace has always worked closely with the press, but this combined effort in the High Court was like nothing seen before. Meghan’s U.K. lawyer, Jenny Afia, points out that Knauf didn’t have to step forward if he didn’t want to—there was no official request for his evidence. “The witness statements had no legal significance on the case . . . [They were] filed because the impact on Meghan’s reputation was potentially damaging,” she said. Indeed, for the Mail, the Palace, and Knauf this was just a mission in optics. And for William, it was his opportunity to watch the institution strike back after Harry and Meghan went so public with private details about the Firm.
Still, regardless of the sideshow circus, it was clear from the beginning that the Mail broke copyright laws and unlawfully trampled on Meghan’s privacy by publishing her letter to her father. Their appeal was destined to flop from the get-go. Almost a year after the original decision, the judge awarded Meghan her second victory in December 2021 alongside a court-mandated front-page apology from the paper. The mea culpa in the Mail on Sunday stopped short of saying sorry, but it did acknowledge her legal victory.
Knauf continued to work in his role as chief executive of William and Kate’s foundation for a few more months before stepping down to join the board of the foundation for William’s Earthshot Prize. As a loyal aide, he stuck by William through it all, from helping brief the press long after his communications role ended, leading the bullying allegations against Meghan, and joining forces with the Mail in court. Unsurprisingly, a year later, King Charles included him on his list of those to receive the honorable title of lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order (RVO) for his “personal service to the monarchy.” Notably, this high honor is chosen by the royal family and not the government, and it was his pal the Prince of Wales who performed the investiture on May 10, 2023, at Windsor Castle. Knauf—a man who went above and beyond to protect the royal family’s relationship with a British tabloid—emerged from this fiasco as a titled hero, the personification of duty above all. His dangerous dalliance with the media in the courtroom is all part of a job description you won’t find on his LinkedIn profile and a soon-to-be forgotten footnote in a celebrated career.
No one really paid attention to the Mail’s public apology because their coverage at the time focused on the fact that Meghan received only £1 from the newspaper for her privacy invasion. The Mail conveniently failed to report that Meghan also received close to seven figures for her copyright win. So, in the end the paper came out unscathed. Emboldened by their tighter-than-ever relationship with the institution, King Charles took the relationship to another level by hiring longtime Daily Mail editor Tobyn Andreae as his communications secretary in July 2022—the invisible contract becoming increasingly visible. Though he had no PR or communications experience, the former Eton College student’s twenty-one years at the country’s most aggressive tabloid was most appealing to the monarch and his Queen. With her established ties to the paper, it was Camilla who put him forward for the role after Geordie Greig sang his praises on a number of occasions. Andreae is not the first person from the news media industry to lead the monarch’s press team, but Charles’s other hires, such as the capable former Newsnight editor Simon Enright, came from the proven BBC, not the arena of downmarket tabloids. If this was intended as a modernizing effort on the King’s part, it comes with more than a few questions as to why.
Buckingham Palace’s head of press is now a man whose stint at the Mail included being an editor overseeing pieces that called out Kate’s “alarming” weight loss, articles pushing the cruel “Waity Katie” nickname that followed her for years, and features mocking the princess’s “trashy” eyebrows and “disastrous” gray hairs. And Andreae’s two years as a deputy editor at the Mail on Sunday included the ugly week in which the paper viciously exposed Thomas Markle’s staged paparazzi photos, the ones that initiated a chain of events that brought the Sussexes’ royal wedding to its knees, destroying Meghan’s relationship with her father in the process. But as the royals and those who collaborate with them have repeatedly demonstrated, it’s all about keeping one’s enemies—and friends in the right places—very close. It’s easier to forgive previous attacks when those responsible for such cruelty are now on your side and at your disposal when enemies and obstacles get in the way.
* * *
Kensington Palace and Buckingham Palace have refused to comment on their media relationships or briefing history. Palace sources did, however, tell the Daily Mail in 2022 that it was “absolutely wrong” to suggest that people working at the Palace had secretly briefed damaging or confidential information about the Sussexes during their time as working royals. Sources making these claims to the same newspaper that published most of the offending articles is objectively absurd. Despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary, many royal reporters still claim no such invisible contract exists. But as the respected BBC journalist Andrew Marr said, “Either well-known journalists are making a lot of stuff up, just sitting at their laptops at the kitchen table inventing the detail of feuds and private confrontations, or a particularly confidence-rotting form of anonymous briefing has been taking place.” Jennie Bond, the BBC’s royal correspondent from 1989 to 2003, added, “Charles has always kept the tabloids on side, rather to my own annoyance and bemusement when I was working at the BBC . . . I was excluded from parties and events. I remember one big party at Buckingham Palace, I wasn’t invited as a [senior] royal correspondent but Piers Morgan was, as the editor of the Daily Mirror, David Yelland was, as the editor of The Sun. And I used to say to [the Palace], ‘Why do you give stories to the tabloids first? Why don’t you come to me, and I’ll broadcast it and they can follow me?’ But that was never the way the Palace worked; they liked to keep particularly the tabloids on side.”
But as the golden years of Fleet Street fade further into the past and the number of those who actually buy physical newspapers continues on a downward trajectory, Palace officials are making strides toward fostering stronger relationships with broadcast media. Both the Prince and Princess of Wales continue to nurture a beneficial relationship with ITV (yes, the very same broadcaster who protected William from my briefing claims), with Kate’s annual Christmas concert likely to enter its third run and the prince collaborating with the network for a fly-on-the-wall documentary about his work with a homeless charity. “You cannot say a critical word about [William and Kate], no matter what the story is. They are protecting that relationship fiercely,” a respected journalist at ITV told me.
And King Charles has now shifted some of his media efforts to strengthening bonds with the BBC, an expedient reversal from his previous position. Shortly after taking the throne, the King held at least two clandestine meetings with BBC executives. These discussions were part of the monarch’s efforts to ensure that the network properly covers his work as King in spite of all the drama surrounding the institution. The message: His Majesty will not be overshadowed any longer. And it proved a successful run of schmoozing. In the buildup to the May 2023 coronation, the BBC ran Palace-requested items across their platforms about his charitable efforts. “It’s become apparent to a number of journalists and producers that the Palace now has the BBC firmly under its control,” a senior figure at the network shared on the condition of anonymity. “To many, the BBC has become an extension of the press office of the palace.”
Joined at the hip, two troubled institutions now require each other for relevance in a culture that, to a large degree, is moving on without them. As a result, the relationship between the monarchy and the British media has changed. Where once the royal family needed the print press as a partner for advancing their agenda, it is now in such dire straits that the Palace has mutated into a feeder machine—there’s no clear mission, just a gasping effort to provide them enough grist to keep the relationship limping forward. With the option to tell their own stories on social platforms and through other progressive outlets, perhaps it’s time the Palace realizes it no longer needs to play the dirty game—that it also has the option of pulling the plug before a callous and reckless tabloid culture pulls the Firm down all the way to the bottom.
14
The Decay of Years
The Fading Glory of the Crown
Something as curious as the monarchy won’t survive unless you take account of people’s attitudes. After all, if people don’t want it, they won’t have it.
—Charles, the Prince of Wales, 1994, ITV interview
As yourselves your empires fall, and every kingdom hath a grave.
—William Habington, To Castara
May 3, 1951
A thin fog hunkered over the streets of London on an otherwise agreeable spring morning. Thousands gathered to cheer King George VI, Queen Elizabeth (later known as the Queen Mother), and Princess Margaret as they made their way from the gates of Buckingham Palace to St. Paul’s Cathedral to officially open the Festival of Britain. The decked-out and tasseled Household Calvary Mounted Regiment escorted the open-top carriage, stopping the horse-drawn escort only once along the way at the ceremonial entrance to the City of London. Here, at the Temple Bar Memorial, the Lord Mayor presented the King with the pearled sword, a bit of royal kabuki established in the Elizabethan era that is still performed every time the royal family makes a pilgrimage to the cathedral. From here the monarch’s escort continued the short distance to St. Paul’s, Sir Christopher Wren’s magnificently domed, Neoclassical-Baroque masterpiece. After a short dedication service, other members of the royal family, including a twenty-five-year-old Princess Elizabeth (who nine months later became Queen Elizabeth II), husband Prince Philip, and George VI’s mother, Queen Mary, joined Their Majesties and Margaret on the cathedral’s front steps for the King’s speech.
The 1951 Festival of Britain was a nationwide exhibition that emerged from the two great storm surges that altered the texture of British life: the fallout from World War II and the winding down of the British Empire. Although the fall of the empire was mostly gradual and undramatic, two particular events signaled its crumbling into the ocean of history—India’s independence in 1947 and the London Declaration of 1949. The latter established the Commonwealth of Nations, which at the time was really just Britain’s last-ditch effort to maintain ties and mutual interests with its former colonial strongholds and outposts. After the victory parades and end of World War II celebrations faded into memory, and Britons faced the grim economic realities of a once great nation in decline—work and food shortages being chief among them—the Festival was designed to showcase the United Kingdom’s past, present, and future contributions to Western civilization and to boost the country’s morale.
At the time, Britain looked and felt like a defeated nation. Lights in war-ravaged cities flickered off and on at night, food rationing lines formed in grimy streets, and heavy-headed souls trudged home after the factory whistles blew—now a haunting sound reminding the working men and women that many of their coworkers-turned-comrades never made it home from the front lines. These telltale signs of slow economic recovery and collective grief produced a dour national mood, one that tested the “Keep Calm and Carry On” resolve that carried the country through the war’s crouching hours, wailing sirens, and bombs.
Dreamed up by Herbert Morrison, a senior cabinet member of the Labour party and a forward-thinking politician, the Festival of Britain highlighted the country’s achievements in the arts, sciences, and industry as a means to celebrate the nation’s victories beyond the arenas of war—a reminder of Britain’s role in advancing civilization even while it was still recuperating from a full-on assault against it. The exhibitions were scattered across England and Scotland, but the Festival’s epicenter was on the South Bank of the River Thames in the nation’s capital. It featured pavilions, displays, retrospectives, and the Festival’s focal point: the futurist-looking Skylon, a “floating” three-hundred-foot-high cigar-shaped steel tower meant to symbolize the United Kingdom’s aspirational strides out of the rubble toward a better world. In a promotional reel, a jaunty yet instructional male voice distinctive of 1950s commercials and TV shows told viewers that the Festival was “devised halfway through this century as a milestone between past and future to enrich and enliven the present,” and stressed that Britain was now a “diverse place of serious fun and lighthearted solemnity reclaimed from the bomb rack and the decay of years.”
The Festival also marked the centenary of Prince Albert and Queen Victoria’s Great Exhibition. Held in the massive cast-iron-and-glass wonder of Crystal Palace, the 1851 Victorian-era exhibition celebrated modern industrial technology and culture from around the world. Prince Albert, who was known as an advocate for reform and social change (including campaigning against the slave trade and child labor), said that the motivations for the exhibition were “for Great Britain [to make] clear to the world its role as an industrial leader,” and to “increase the means of industrial education and extend the influence of science and art upon productive industry.” Absent from this grandstanding was any mention of how it also coupled the image of Queen Victoria and her consort as patrons of the arts and sciences with showcases highlighting the power and wealth of the British Empire. It was a clever public relations coup outdone only by the fact that the Festival also solidified the monarchy’s relationship with the middle class, the main audience for the exhibition. The industrial and technological achievements on display were important to this segment of Britain’s population, and so the Great Exhibition was another moment to bolster and advance national pride and unity—two survival elements for a lineal monarchy at odds with middle class aspirations.
Twenty years later, with the impatient urging of Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone, this same Victorian, PR-minded institution took it a step further—Palace officials reclaimed the old carriages and royal accoutrements that were collecting cobwebs in carriage houses and attics, and gave them a good polish to create the apparatus of pomp and pageantry that the royal family are known for today. The Victorian Firm was dealing with a public image crisis of their own—a small but intelligent republican movement was afoot and out to change some hearts and minds. After the Prince of Wales (later Edward II) “miraculously” recovered from typhoid in 1872, the monarchy leveraged the moment to make itself magical again. The Queen wanted a small, quiet thanksgiving service to mark her son’s recovery, but Gladstone convinced her to accept what the late political essayist Tom Nairn called “the new limelight” by turning the service into a national public holiday. Seventy-two years later, the same would happen again when Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced that King Charles III’s coronation would be a full-fat display of pomp and celebration, rather than the cost-of-living, crisis-minded proceedings that sources said the monarch had originally hoped for.
After Gladstone’s encouragement, they pulled out all the stops, creating a flashy display of regal power and tradition that also, by the way, featured a balcony moment similar to the ones we’re accustomed to now. Victoria and her son, the miraculous survivor, stepped out onto the Buckingham Palace balcony to wave to the public and bask in their cheering. In one auspicious and ostentatious display of ceremony, the royal family endeared themselves to the crowd, coiled their identity around the national one, and drowned out the emerging republican chorus.
Standing on the front steps of St. Paul’s decades later, King George VI would have been aware of all this as he waved to an adoring public before his Festival of Britain speech. By this point the royal apparatus the Victorians put in motion was a well-oiled machine, and the institution quickly engaged it for this hinge-moment in the nation’s history. Overcoming his stammer in the speech, the King wasted no time in likening the Festival of Britain to its Victorian predecessor: “One hundred years ago, Queen Victoria opened the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park . . . All of us can paint the contrast between the calm and security of the Victorian Age and the hard experience of our own. Yet this is no time for despondency. For I see this Festival as a symbol of Britain’s abiding courage and vitality.”
After declaring the Festival open, Their Majesties and Princess Margaret descended the cathedral stairs to applause and pealing bells before boarding their coach back to the Palace. Off in the distance a forty-one-gun salute fired from the Tower of London and Hyde Park capped off the theatrics with a dash of militaristic zeal. Just as Queen Victoria and Prince Albert had done in 1851, the postwar royal family of 1951 deftly entwined their brand with the occasion—using the moment to stage some tried-and-true royal pantomime.
The Festival of Britain was a success, and millions attended it during its five-month run. But shortly after it closed, Winston Churchill and a newly elected Conservative government completely dismantled it, erasing it from sight. They believed that the Festival was nothing more than a display of utopian delusions and propaganda for the Labour party’s vision of a Socialist Britain, and somehow the previous government had convinced the monarchy this was a good idea. Particularly that Skylon, which the era’s grumbling, traditional conservatives no doubt universally condemned as a futuristic eyesore.
