Mail on Sunday, front page, 26/02/2023

Camilla will become Queen

Following on from my Queen Consort versus Queen revelations, today’s Mail on Sunday is claiming an exclusive: Queen Consort Camilla will officially become Queen Camilla after Charles’ coronation in May. Citing earlier precedents such as King George VI’s wife being known as Queen Elizabeth, later to become the Queen Mother when he died in 1952 and his daughter became Queen Elizabeth II, and Edward VII’s wife becoming Queen Alexandra when he acceded the throne, and further supported by the fact that Camilla renamed her charity The Queen’s Reading Room (formerly The Duchess of Cornwall’s Reading Room) when her husband became king last year, Kate Mansey, the author of the Mail on Sunday article, asserts that Camilla will become Queen in May.

Mail on Sunday, Kate Mansey’s exclusive, 26/02/2023

So, we will soon have a new queen. I am constantly amazed at the machinations of our Royal Family and the agonising decisions they must go through about titles, ascendency, marital misbehaviour damage control, wayward offspring shenanigans, who attends what, who sits where, who wears what, who goes on the next overseas jolly, and all the other paraphernalia associated with our antiquated monarchy. I assume the next big Royal Family story will be about whether Harry, with or without Meghan, will attend his dad’s coronation in May. Has he been invited? Are conditions attached if he attends? Does he even want to attend? What about Meghan and the children? Speculation is already rife. Google ‘Is Harry coming to the coronation’ to find out.

Bond bowdlerised

The Sunday Telegraph, 26/02/2023

In the earlier blog, I added a footnote about the sanitisation of Roald Dahl’s books and speculated about whether this would start a trend. Well, the trend has started. James Bond is now being cleaned up. Some racist descriptions have been modified as have remarks about male reactions to a female striptease performer. So-called sensitivity-reader-approved versions of Ian Fleming’s books have been sanctioned by Ian Fleming Publications and will appear next month.

Who will be the next author to come under the scrutiny of the woke brigade? You are advised to rush out and buy up copies of novels written by Emmanuelle Arsan, William Burroughs, John Cleland, D H Lawrence, Colleen McCullough, Henry Miller, Catherine Millet, Anaïs Nin, J C Pascoe**, Samuel Pepys, Pauline Réage, James Salter, Sarah Waters, and a host of other authors including, possibly, Mark Twain and, of course, William Shakespeare. In years to come, the original unexpurgated versions of these books will become collectors’ items, valued for their racy or otherwise provocative content. It’s time to start your retirement fund investment, folks.

It’s a funny old world we live in.

** An author you may not have heard of who has written an amazing serious book whose contents are flavoured by under-the-bedcovers erotica, Conversations, details here. Buy a copy. In fact, buy two, one for your friend!

(^_^)