The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are expected to bring their children to see King Charles for the first time in four years. And they may also make a poignant visit to pay tribute to their late grandmother when they travel to Britain from California next month.
I can disclose that Althorp, the stately home where Princess Diana grew up, is to be closed to the public for two days while Prince Harry and Meghan are in the country with Prince Archie, seven, and Princess Lilibet, five.
‘This is highly unusual,’ a source familiar with the Althorp estate tells me. ‘Once the house is open to visitors, it’s not usually closed.’
The Northamptonshire estate run by Diana’s brother, Earl Spencer, is open to the public for only two months of the year: July and August.
If the family do visit, it would give Diana’s grandchildren the opportunity to visit her grave for the first time. The princess is buried on an island in an ornamental lake in the gardens of Althorp.
Harry rowed Meghan in a boat to the island when they stayed at Althorp in 2022 on the 25th anniversary of his mother’s death in a car crash in Paris.
Princess Diana’s childhood home, Althorp (currently run by her brother Earl Spencer), is to be closed to the public for two days while Prince Harry and Meghan are in the UK
‘At long last I was bringing the girl of my dreams home to meet Mum,’ Harry wrote in his memoir, Spare, published the following year. After Harry placed flowers on her grave, he left his wife alone. ‘When I came back, Meg was kneeling, eyes shut, palms against the stone.’
Earl Spencer invited his sisters, Lady Sarah McCorquodale and Lady Jane Fellowes, to join them on that occasion so that the Sussexes could spend time with Harry’s aunts.
Harry and Meghan are coming to Britain to publicise the Invictus Games, which are due to take place in July 2027 in Birmingham, an hour’s drive from Althorp.
Dashing debut for Sophie’s boy
Already something of a heart-throb among teenage girls, the Earl of Wessex made his debut at Royal Ascot yesterday.
And James, 18, looked dashing in his morning coat and top hat.
The 18-year-old Earl of Wessex was pictured at Royal Ascot with his mother Sophie this week
Prince Edward’s son accompanied his mother, Sophie, to the Berkshire racecourse having completed his A-levels at £63,648-per-year Radley College in Oxfordshire.
Like Eton College, which Prince George will attend in September, Radley is a single-sex school.
Lady Marina’s glossy mag wedding deal
King Charles’s nephew Peter Phillips caused a furore when he sold the exclusive photographic rights to his first wedding to Hello! for a reported £500,000. His fellow minor royal Lady Marina Windsor is, though, undeterred.
The Duke of Kent’s granddaughter, 33, a charity events manager, is due to exchange vows with cyber security specialist Nico Macauley this afternoon and they’ve sold the pictures to the glossy magazine. ‘Marina won’t be receiving anything like the £500,000 Peter got in 2008,’ a source tells me. ‘Those days are long gone. The money should, though, pay for the costs of the wedding.’
The Duke of Kent’s 33-year-old granddaughter, Lady Marina Windsor, has sold the pictures of her wedding to Hello! magazine
Lady Marina was christened at the Chapel Royal at St James’s Palace. The funeral of her grandmother last September was attended by senior royals including the King and the Prince and Princess of Wales.
Has lord, 83, stumped tree vandals?
Wealthy landowner Lord Inchcape and his wife, Georgina, celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary last weekend with a lavish party for their friends at their home in Clyffe Pypard in Wiltshire.
I hear that it took place against the backdrop of a festering dispute with two men which has been the talk of the village.
Lord Inchcape, 83, has now taken out a court order against the men who claimed to have bought a field on the boundary of his estate and have been accused of cutting down trees in an adjoining wood that is a key part of his pheasant shoot.
‘Lord Inchcape’s taken out a court order against them and got estate workers to block the way to the field with tree stumps,’ a local tells me.
‘There’s a notice from him, pinned to one of the stumps, warning trespassers to leave.’
Kelly: My mental health has not been the best
Kelly Osbourne, whose dramatic weight loss worried friends last year, appears to be in better health.
The reality TV star, 41, lost her father, Black Sabbath star Ozzy Osbourne, almost a year ago, and she tells me: ‘I’m in therapy and have been for a while.’
Kelly Osbourne, who recently lost her father Ozzy, opened up about her mental health at an auction in London this week
Speaking at the LAX.BID Strength Isn’t Silence auction at the Brunswick Art Gallery in London, Kelly says: ‘As the world knows, my mental health has not been the best recently, but I’m getting a little better every day and just getting my strength back and working on me and doing what I need to do for myself right now.
‘I’ve silenced a lot of the noise.’
Kelly proved to be one of the event’s most enthusiastic bidders, successfully purchasing an 18-carat gold and diamond Rolex for £10,000 and an 1857 Queen Victoria gold sovereign for £1,200.
Steph McGovern’s Deadline won debut crime book of the year at the Fingerprint Awards in London this week, but the TV presenter may struggle to meet the deadline for her next novel. ‘I just left my laptop on a flight at Heathrow, it’s got my second book on it, which I haven’t backed up,’ she wails at the Capital Crime Festival.
‘I just finished the first draft, it’s 84,000 words.’
Talk about a cliffhanger…
Kanga’s girl lets her hair down in jungle ritual
She swapped aristocratic life for the jungle and Zoe Tryon is keen to embrace all the native practices.
Zoe Tryon had ash from an Amazonian tree poured over her during a cleaning ritual in Ecuador
The 51-year-old daughter of the late Lord Tryon had the ash of an Amazonian tree poured on her head in a traditional cleaning ritual in Ecuador.
Zoe – whose Australian mother was nicknamed ‘Kanga’ by King Charles in his bachelor days – married Richard Bostock in the rainforest last summer.
Bostock abandoned his post at accountancy giant PwC to become an instructor of the Wim Hof Method, which is known for its immersions in icy water.
More than 11 million fans registered online for a chance of grabbing a ticket for one of 30 Harry Styles concerts at Madison Square Garden later this year – just one leg of the pop superstar’s Together Together Tour.
Perhaps it’s with them in mind – especially those who end up ticketless – that Styles, 32, now discreetly engaged to American actress Zoe Kravitz, has snapped into action.
He’s just filed a trade mark application for ‘Harry Styles Treat People With Kindness’. With an estimated £235 million fortune, and with Together Together expected to generate gross revenues of $1 billion, how might Harry manifest ‘kindness’? A ticket price discount?
Butler ‘had to restrain’ loutish young prince
Let’s hope that Prince Harry has grown up by the time he arrives back in Britain next month.
The Duchess of Beaufort has recalled his yobbish and ungallant behaviour at her home, Badminton House, in Gloucestershire.
Speaking on the brand new episode of the Mail’s podcast Queens, Kings & Dastardly Things, the duchess, Georgia, recounts how Harry was invited to an 18th birthday party at Badminton.
‘Everyone got very over-excited, and he started throwing all the girls into the swimming pool,’ she explains.
The Duchess of Beaufort, pictured with husband Henry Somerset, Marquess of Worcester, said she was appalled by a young Prince Harry’s behaviour at their home
The story was revealed in her husband Harry’s memoir, The Unlikely Duke, in which he described the prince throwing women over his shoulder like ‘sacks of coal’.
Georgia is appalled. ‘They were all wearing their lovely party dresses. And he had to be stopped,’ she says. ‘The butler, Steve, had to restrain him.’
The duchess was speaking ahead of next month’s RHS Badminton Flower Show, Britain’s largest garden festival. Those with add-on tickets get to revisit the scene of the prince’s crime.
She battled tirelessly for the release of her late husband, Old Etonian former SAS officer Simon Mann following 2004’s ‘Wonga Coup’ against President Obiang of Equatorial Guinea – and Amanda Mann’s spirit remains undimmed, despite recent tribulations.
In 2024, Simon left the mother of four of his children for a woman 23 years his junior – only to succumb to a heart attack last year. But tonight she hosts the first of two musical evenings in the gardens of Kingfishers, the marital home on the Hampshire coast. ‘It’s for a charity, Hammersley Homes,’ she tells me.
During Simon’s imprisonment, Amanda acquired a T-shirt with the slogan: ‘A man is for Christmas. Not for life.’ Perhaps she’ll wear it this weekend?
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