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“... house’, Glas Allt Shiel, on the shores of Loch Muick, which Queen Victoria had built after Prince Albert’s premature death. I was so absorbed with winding the soil augur into the ground, I didn’t at first notice the vegetation moving in front of me. Then I did, and the shock was like stepping on an adder. A clump of heather rose up and stood full ...”

“... deal of stupefyingly eventless cricket. I had to kiss a lot of frogs before one turned into a prince. I’ve kissed a lot subsequently too. Why is this embarrassing to admit? I suppose because there were so many better things I could have done with the time, but also because there’s something slightly shameful about a compulsion you can’t control and ...”

“... that she was her father’s commodity, Georgina married an impecunious officer of hussars, Harry Weldon, son of a coal merchant, and could hardly have been surprised when her father, who had now changed his name to Treherne, cut her off penniless. Weldon turned out to have a happy knack for attracting legacies, one of which included a parcel of ...”

“... I knew who Harry Kessler was of course, ‘the red count’, the Junker aristocrat who supported the Weimar Republic, and wrote a diary which I used in my seminars. Well, it turns out he wasn’t a Junker; indeed, it’s hard to say what he actually was. Imagine somebody who was at once an English public school boy, a French-born art critic and a Prussian guards officer ...”

“... the books as a little thin, a little cheap (this would be a mistake). It is possible too that the Harry Potter films, as they grew larger, made the books smaller. The eight movies based on the seven books grossed $7.7 billion; and with that came the merchandise, and the use of Harry’s face to launch a thousand ...”

“... and Major Biography, getting together yet again on the subject. Carolly Erickson’s study Great Harry does not therefore have to justify its existence. In her Preface, Dr Erickson carefully lays down both her aims and her methods. Her principal aim is ‘the retelling of Henry’s personal story ... a life of a man rather than a life of a King’. Her ...”

“... a couple of famous humans, and probably one was really a frog condemned to live in the body of a prince, while the other was just a happy-go-lucky hand-operated puppet that became a celebrity by hanging out with the top frogs in the entertainment industry. But there’s no way of checking on that.) They may both be green and imaginary, but apart from that ...”

“... something individuals feel they can contribute to slowing down global warming: ‘Two, maximum!’ Prince Harry promised the primatologist Jane Goodall in the issue of Vogue last year that was edited by his wife. But it’s not just Harry who’s been adding climate fears to dreams of parenthood and coming up with ...”

“... companies such as Gimlet and the Ringer, striking deals to produce shows with the Obamas and Prince Harry and Meghan, and paying more than $200 million for the exclusive rights to the Joe Rogan Experience, sometimes described as the most popular podcast in the world. (It’s almost certainly the most controversial: Neil Young and Joni Mitchell have ...”

“... mistaken as the war in Iraq, has somehow become the acceptable face of war. It’s maybe because Prince Harry was there (of which there’s some discussion with the Prince of Wales). But I suspect it’s more because we don’t hear much of the civilian population of Afghanistan and that ‘Johnny Taliban’ (in ...”

“... officer and not a few literate private soldiers. Some famous chestnuts are here. Brummell begs the Prince Regent, his commanding officer, to be allowed to resign his commission in the 10th Light Dragoons because the regiment has been ordered to Manchester: ‘Think, Your Royal Highness – Manchester!’ Compare and contrast, as they say, with the story of the ...”

“... Harry Widener went down on the Titanic at the age of 27. He was the scion of a wealthy Philadelphia family whose patriarch began life as a street vendor and ended it as one of the richest men in America; one of his early coups was a contract to supply the Union army with meat. Harry grew up amid priceless collections of pictures, coins, and especially books ...”

“... who did all he could to recruit aristocrats and muscular Christians. Among his prize captures were Prince Chichibu of Japan and later the Prince of Wales (known as ‘the Pragger Wagger’). Warren asked Chichibu what his name meant and when told it meant ‘the son of god’ replied: ‘We are accustomed to receiving the ...”

“... By Bertie’s feeble standards, this was a flash of insight. For the 59 years that he was prince of Wales, his mother despaired of him. In 1863, she wailed in a letter to her daughter Alice that Bertie – now 21 – ‘shows more and more how totally, totally unfit he is for ever becoming King!’ Neither Victoria nor the constitution could prevent ...”

“... and a vicarious stay at one of his most cherished hotels – the Grand Hotel Oloffson in Port au Prince, Haiti. Since he has been so generous and direct with us, he might at least have let us in on a further secret – one of the tricks of the trade, so to speak. He might have explained to us, confidentially, that fiction is a machine for taking away ...”