Meghan's Australia Tour Fails to Boost Her Website Traffic

29:20And according to this biography, the British forces killed about 1 ,000 Taliban fighters. So it will be an opportunity to kind of show, well, you know, it's not just words when people say that Britain pulled its weight in Afghanistan. Look at this example. These British forces were cut off. They were under repeated attack, wave after wave after wave, trying to survive. What is that if not frontline combat? So I don't think I actually have asked some contacts whether this was deliberate, whether it was intended as a clap back to Trump. And my information is that it wasn't necessarily deliberate, but there certainly seems to be a kind of doubling down on Harry's kind of standing with NATO allies, standing in defense of the wider NATO force in Afghanistan.

30:10And then the final aspect of it that I want to talk about is I kind of wonder whether we're seeing a new version of Harry where he's daring to pursue some of his own interests. I've talked a lot and will continue talking, I'm sure, about the fact that Harry appears to have very little interest in America anymore. You know, this is supposed to be his new life. It's supposed to be his life raft from the kind of the storm of everything that went wrong in the monarchy. America was supposed to have saved him from the conflict with his family. And yet it's kind of still feels a little bit now like Harry's heart is back in Britain.

30:45You know, his heart doesn't feel like it's in America anymore. And so he's trying to tell this story about military heroism in Britain, from Britain, that combats a narrative by the US president, but also it returns to a version of himself that predates his marriage to Meghan. Now, this is not me advancing a kind of secret divorce theory, but something a little softer than that, which is that it's back to that kind of traditional masculinity in terms of what people want to watch. Like, this whole project feels so much to me, like the kind of films that I watched when I was a teenager, like the Bravo 2-0 era.

31:25So for American viewers, Bravo 2-0 was a biography by a former SAS soldier called Andy McNabb. And he wrote this book about this kind of like he got caught behind enemy lines and taken prisoner. And then there was this like breakout. And then there was also Black Hawk Down was another one, which was an American story from the U.S. military where Black Hawk helicopter went down. I forget now actually which country it was in. And it's the like the rescue operation under fire, under siege. You know, these soldiers on the ground trying to, you know, fight off huge numbers of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of fighters.

32:00And it's, you know, very much like, obviously, if there are women out there who loved Bravo 2-0 and Black Hawk Down, crack on. Absolutely no objection. But obviously, it's kind of a quite a male focused project targeted at a male audience. And it's really interesting to me because when Harry first went out to America, he was getting a lot of criticism. for a lot of his speeches having this kind of slight California air to him. I think the kind of the moment that probably typifies this trend or effect was this speech he gave about trying to campaign on behalf of the environment and saying, I think this specific line that sent people crazy was like, what if every one of us was a raindrop to nourish the parched earth or something like that?

32:47And the Daily Mail lost their minds over it. And like, what if everyone was a raindrop? Like, what is he talking about? What does that even mean? and people started accusing Harry and Meghan of word salad. And a lot of people were kind of saying, like, who is this Harry? You know, Harry was always this guy who had this very kind of no-nonsense persona. He was like, you know, he provided the banter on royal engagements. He was very kind of lighthearted and no-nonsense. And then it seemed like this whole new Harry had emerged that was very California. And, you know, people use the word woke. I hate the word woke, but people love to use it.

33:20And so that was kind of like woke Harry came along. when they first moved out to America. And now it kind of feels like that version of Harry is slipping back into the past. And there's this kind of new version of Harry that's blossoming and coming out, which is going back to his roots. And it's kind of interesting to me because I think a lot, you know, I'm one year younger than Harry. And I think a lot of men of my generation and my era had this kind of rollercoaster ride where we grew up in the 90s and not, you know, and the 2000s. And we, you know, that era is now looked back on as being one defined by like toxic masculinity and all of this stuff.

34:00And then we were taken on this journey through the Me Too era and all the kind of backlash against these big like music and entertainment industry people, including some, you know, some music artists that we loved and who, you know, who were outed as being terrible, terrible people, quite rightly, you know, I'm not anti-Me Too, quite pro-Me Too, in fact. But also, I think during a lot of that era, some of us probably had it in the back of our minds that actually, like, we didn't hate everything about masculinity. And I actually thought some of it might even have been quite good. And it feels like Harry has gone on that journey too.

34:35And he went through a whole period where, like, being a man in the kind of post-Me Too era meant just constantly telling everybody how amazing your wife was. And that was, like, not very productive or helpful anyway. because that is not actually talking about your feelings, which I think I've talked about on this podcast before. If you want to actually talk about your feelings, you have to be able to talk about the bad stuff, the stuff that upsets you, annoys you. And we know that Harry and Meghan have both done things that must have driven each other up the wall on loads of occasions. And it feels like Harry's come back around now to having a more, like a version of himself and his identity that does actually feel a little more genuine to who he is.

35:13And he's maybe cut out some of that California way of phrasing things and some of the California focus to his projects, and he's being fully Harry now. And so, you know, it reminds me actually of a moment with Prince William not that long ago. Prince William, obviously president of BAFTA, the British Academy of Film and Television Awards. The BAFTA Awards are a huge moment in the entertainment calendar for William. And at the most recent BAFTAs, Hamnet was the big movie that everybody cared about, and William went up and just told them, you know, it was expected to win loads and loads of awards, and he told them point blank.

35:48He hadn't seen it. He didn't want to. It was too stressful after everything had been going through and then tried to sell them on the idea that they should have given the award to Top Gun 2, Top Gun Maverick, which absolutely cracked me up. But then, you know, it's just so funny to go to the kind of elite of the entertainment industry and say, actually, I think you're neglecting this fantastic action film sequel. But there's also a certain level on which I kind of agree with him. I haven't seen Hamlet. Don't particularly want to see it. I love Top Gun 2. I love Top Gun Maverick. I thought it was a great movie.

36:17And I love some of Tom Cruise's other films too, particularly the Mission Impossible movies. So I kind of agree with William, even though it's a crazy thing to say. And I kind of agree with Harry. I'm looking forward to seeing this film about this unit under fire in Musakala and Afghanistan and seeing old school, old fashioned, shooty action movie. I think it will be entertaining and engaging and I feel like maybe the same thing is happening to both William and Harry which is that they feel like they've actually we've all moved past the era that society was in when Harry and Meghan's relationship formed where it was all suddenly became much more female focused and now we're in a whole different era where actually there is space for Harry to say well I want to make an action movie I want to make a war film a dramatised war film about British soldiers being heroes by shooting people and I can get an audience for that and I think in Britain I could imagine it working and we'll have to wait and see and it is very very tough out there at the moment but yeah I watched stuff that was exactly like what Harry's making when I was a teenager does not mean he's guaranteed any success He might still have a real uphill battle, but he also has his network of other veterans, the military community serving soldiers now who may well want to know what, you know, want to engage with this story.

37:56And he will also have his kind of military community, other veterans from Afghanistan, but also serving soldiers now who may well be really interested in it. And also, I mean, I downloaded a Kindle version of the book and it's quite well written. You know, it's an engaging, readable story. So it's interesting. It covers Harry wanting to clap back at Donald Trump for being dismissive and kind of denigrating Britain's contribution to the Afghan war. It includes Harry returning to his kind of more macro masculine identity. and it's a new avenue where it's not requiring the viewer to be really kind of worthy and earnest and sincere, which is perhaps what held back some of Harry's other projects is like the Invictus film.

38:46There had been another one made really recently. And so you kind of feel like you're watching it almost out of obligation rather than joy. Live to Lead, which was about kind of world leaders, you know, doing good around the world. But again, it's like, well, people kind of hate politicians, actually. Does anybody really believe in that? No one really watched it. Polo was kind of a bit more fun, but it was just such an elitist sport that was kind of out of touch. And I do feel actually like there maybe is a space for an action movie now. And that is what Harry is trying to provide. But let's talk about a little bit about some of the actual specifics rather than just the overarching features.

39:24So like I said, the original memoir was called No Way Out, The Searing True Story of Men Under Siege. And it was by Major Adam Jowett. And it's about this battle in July 2006 in Helmand province in Musakala. So like I said, I did ask my source whether this was a deliberate reference to Trump. And they said maybe a bit of a stretch to say it was deliberate. The Duke obviously has a deep affinity and connection with all those NATO forces who served in Afghanistan, given his operational experience in that particular theatre. Just a refresher on what Trump actually said. So he was in Davos in Switzerland at the World Economic Forum and he did this interview with Fox Business and he said he was talking about whether NATO is worth the candle, basically whether it's a worthwhile venture for America to stay involved in.

40:13He said, we've never needed them. We have never really asked anything of them. You know, they'll say they sent some troops to Afghanistan or this or that And they did, they stayed a little back, a little off the front lines. And now that is very much obviously not the British position on that subject, nor the wider NATO position. In fact, the British perspective is that Article 5 is the means through which you kind of trigger the collective defence of a NATO member. It's only been triggered, it's only been invoked once by NATO, and that was after 9-11, after the September 11th terrorist attacks, which led to the war in Afghanistan, which Britain took part in, losing the best part of 500 soldiers in combat.

40:58So the story itself is about Easy Company, who was a mixture of paratroopers and Royal Irish Rangers, and they had to hold this district centre of Musacalla, a town in Helmand, and they came under kind of relentless attack over and over and over again. They were cut off. Their ammo was running out close to kind of caving, basically. No doubt they all thought they were done. And that was going to be their last experience of life on planet Earth. But then they turned it around and survived. Now, Harry actually talks. He references this battle. He didn't take part in it, but he references this battle in his own memoir, Spare.

41:36And this is what he says about it. Five miles away, Musaqala, a town that had once been a Taliban fortress. In 2006, we'd seized it after some of the worst fighting British soldiers had seen in half a century. More than a thousand Taliban had been subdued. After paying such a price, however, the town was quickly, carelessly lost again. Now we'd won it a second time and we aimed to keep it. And a nasty job it was. One of our lads had just been blown up by an IED. Plus, we were despised in and around the town. Locals who'd cooperated with us had been tortured, their heads put on spikes along the town walls.

42:11there would be no winning of either hearts or minds. So Harry actually did operate in this area at a later point after this particular July 2006 battle and he talks about actually taking some journalists around and I think that they came under fire and he had to get the journalists back in the truck. There was another time they had to kind of blow up this IUD. This is all during his first tour of Afghanistan. Harry did two tours of Afghanistan. The first one was September 2007 to January 2008. And it's that tour where he was operating around Musa Kala and did some patrols. Most of his time during that tour was as a forward air controller, I believe they're called a FAC.

42:54And he would basically direct airstrikes in on Taliban targets. But he did some going on patrol too. Harry's second tour of Afghanistan was when he was a co-pilot gunner on an Apache attack helicopter. that was 2012 to 2013 and it's that tour where harry has said he killed 25 taliban fighters basically in his book spare so let me read a little bit more of what from his book of what he says about operating in this area so he says i drove a convoy of scimitar tanks from fob that means forward operating base just a base basically from fob edinburgh through musikala and beyond the road took us down through a wadi in which we soon came upon an ied the first one i'd encountered It was my job to call in the bomb experts.

43:36And he talks about, you know, the guys come to destroy or deal with the IEDs. As a team quickly hopped out, approached the IED. Slow, painstaking work. It took them forever. Meanwhile, we were all totally exposed. We expected Taliban contact any second. Around us, we heard whizzing motorbikes, Taliban scouts, no doubt. And then, you know, a couple of days later, he has another experience embedded with his journalists. He says, you know, they leave the vehicle. moments later the guys ahead of us came under attack rounds went sizzling over our heads the journalist froze, looked at me helpless, don't just stand there get back in, I didn't want them there in the first place but I especially didn't want anything happening to them on my watch, I didn't want any journalist's life on my ledger I couldn't handle the irony so yeah look it might go the same way as every other Harry and Meghan Netflix project it is so hard to punch through with anything will a US audience be interested in a story of heroism by the British media, as well as by the British military?

44:39Maybe not. You know, maybe it's very, very difficult to sell the heroism of any other country to the US market. But there's a good chance he could get some audience in Britain. And like I said, Harry just doesn't seem to care about America anymore. So much of his heart is in Britain. And so I think it will be interesting to me anyway to see how it goes and to see whether this does help him rebuild his bond with a country that still doesn't really like him very much and where that goes, basically. I think that Harry's yearning to get back to this country and the only reason he hasn't already done it is because he hasn't got police protection.

45:18I don't think he's going to get police protection. I don't think anything's going to change there. Creating this kind of standoff where with every new thing he does, It just becomes increasingly clear that Britain is his focus. And maybe one day he just gets to a point where he is willing to just let the security, the police protection issue subside and just give it a whirl, spending a much longer period of time in Britain and just seeing where the problems arise or not. And maybe it's fine. Maybe he just does it anyway. I'm going to take one more quick break. But before I do, a reminder to follow me on X.

45:52I'm at Jack underscore Royston. You'll find all my latest stories for Newsweek. And when I'm back, Prince Harry dropped a highly politically sensitive op-ed about anti-Semitism immediately before King Charles' visit to Golders Green.

46:11Hello, listeners, and welcome back to the show. Now, Prince Harry wrote a big op-ed for a left-wing magazine in Britain called The New Statesman, in which he was actually quite a good piece, to be honest. It was fairly well balanced. He denounced kind of anti-Semitism, which has been on the rise in Britain. There have been these instances of Jewish people being attacked in public. But he also took time to basically say that the situation in the Middle East, Gaza in particular and Lebanon, he named both regions, is not good. And talking about the widespread casualties, civilian casualties, but also the decimation of communities.

46:48But he said that anger, basically, with Israel, he didn't name Israel by name, But he said anger with the Israeli state cannot be used as a justification for targeting Jewish people because the two are not the same. So he referred to a state. A state cannot be taken as synonymous with a religious community. And so he made it, you know, that makes it very, very clear. He's talking about Israel and therefore talking about Benjamin Netanyahu. But he named neither Israel nor Netanyahu. Now, one interesting thing about it, it was an interesting piece. I'm not diminishing the inherent interest in talking about this subject.

47:23But one interesting thing about the timing of it is that it was released in the New Statesman the morning before King Charles then was on the ground in Golders Green, which is a region of London with a very big Jewish community, but also more important, more significantly for our purposes here, is it was the scene of an alleged anti-Semitic attack. Now, a man has been arrested. It is down to the jury, a future jury that hasn't even been sworn in yet to decide whether or not he's guilty. But just a little bit of kind of information on that attack and then I'll leave it there because obviously ultimately it's for the courts to decide whether the guy is guilty or not.

48:01But Esther Suleiman, 45, is accused of stabbing Shlomrand and Moschein. Moschein is 76 years old, Shlomrand, 34, during an attack in Golders Green in North London on April the 29th. There is going to be a trial next year. and like I said it will be down to the jury. I think I read correctly that he has indicated he'll plead not guilty when the time comes so we're expecting that to go to trial and it'll be down to a future jury to decide innocence or guilt in that case. But from the king's point of view he went to Golders Green he met you know there was big turnout lots of people filled the streets and there was a lot of love for the king and a lot of appreciation for what the king was trying to do by turning up on the streets in Golders Green.

48:44He actually also met the two guys who were stabbed. And they, I think, were hugely grateful to have that support from the figurehead, from the head of state of Britain. But it's just, it's really, it cannot, it doesn't feel to me plausible that it can possibly have been accidental coincidental timing. Apart from anything else, Harry having worn in the past a Nazi uniform was perhaps the last person who, on paper, should have been tackling an issue like anti-Semitism. Now, he actually deals with that in his piece for The New Statesman, which I'm going to read extracts from in a minute, so I'll tell you all about what exactly he said about it.

49:24But needless to say, on paper, you would never advise Prince Harry to be the person to call for unity in this way, on an issue like antisemitism, having previously been photographed wearing a Nazi uniform to a costume party. so it's a very it was a very surprising thing for him to have done and like i said it was published on the morning before the king went to gorgeous green begging the question you know my first thought was is this um harry trying to kind of upstage the king or you know knock the king off the front pages and something about that just didn't really make sense to me because apart from anything else it was never in a million years going to happen harry is saying all of this from America.

50:03He's chosen a fairly niche left-wing magazine. The New Statesman doesn't have a huge readership. It's not a mass market publication. But it's also quite an interesting choice because it's left-leaning. And so I started chewing over this in the back of my mind and started wondering whether actually maybe... I started thinking also about Ukraine. Harry went to Ukraine right before the US state visit, right before the king went out to America. And Harry took a big risk in the sense that he told America from Ukraine that America had an obligation, a moral obligation, to support Ukraine in the war with Russia because of this agreement dating back to the 1990s requiring Ukraine to give up nuclear weapons it inherited after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

50:51And that seemed like it risked blowing up King Charles's massive state visit. That was so high stakes for the king, so high stakes for the monarchy, so high stakes for Britain. And it kind of struck me as odd at the time that there wasn't more pearl clutching about Harry in the British press, in the British media. And I couldn't quite get my head around it. And I thought about doing pieces saying, you know, Harry is trying to upstage the king, or Harry is trying to kick the king off the front pages or eclipse the king or make life a nightmare for the king. Then I was like, well, but I can't really, because we don't know whether that is actually what's happening here.

51:30And in the back of my mind, you know, because we're always very important, we always see it as very important at Newsweek to be fair to people and to be balanced. And the thing that stopped me from saying that was, well, how do we know that Harry didn't have the agreement and approval of the palace for doing this? Apart from anything else, he saw the foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, out in Ukraine. he saw Yvette Cooper on the ground and Yvette Cooper being Britain's foreign secretary would probably not have wanted anything to do with Harry if it carried the risk of blowing up the king's state visit to America so I kind of just shelved that and put that on the back burner in the back of my mind at the time that it happened and now when this happened with the Golders Green visit I pulled that file out of the back of my brain and asked myself well hold on a minute we have another instance of Harry doing something that on its face would be read as an attempt to upstage and outshine the king.

52:32Except that again, there wasn't the pearl clutching that you would expect from the British media, causing me to wonder whether actually, maybe it was all done with some cooperation. Now, I don't know whether that's true or not. It's not a situation where I have any certainty. But I cannot get it out of my head that it's the more logical explanation because if Harry, in both cases, was trying to outshine his father, that would go directly contrary to everything that Harry wants to achieve at the moment because let's go through it. Harry wants his police protection back. he tried to force the British state to give it back to him by suing at the high court and lost and then lost his appeal sued twice lost both times lost his appeal and is now in a position where he is trying to persuade his way back to getting his police security and if that is your strategy then and Harry's belief and I I'm not sure that I agree with him but Harry's belief is that the king was the obstacle to him getting his police team back and that's what he told the BBC in, I think it was May 2025.

53:45In fact, it was. And that's what he thinks. And I might disagree with him about that, but that's his perspective. And so it would work directly contrary to Harry's interests to try to, you know, basically upstage, blow up the king twice in quick succession on really high profile sensitive issues. So then I flipped it the other way around and I asked myself, is there an actual tangible benefit to the palace of working with Harry on a subject like this? So let's look at Ukraine first. Yes, because the argument that Harry put forward when he went to Ukraine, he spoke at the security conference and he said America has this obligation to support Ukraine in the war with Russia because of this nuclear arms deal, effectively was a portion of the difficult truth that King Charles told Congress and told Trump at the White House at the state banquet and in the speeches to Congress and so on, told J.D.

54:44Vance, who was sitting right behind him, is a big part of what Charles was saying. It's not the only thing he was saying, but it's part of it. So Harry's speech in Ukraine would have the possible benefits of the palace of being a dry run to test what the US reaction to King Charles' speech would go on to be. In other words, if Harry in Ukraine had said all that stuff, and then Trump had absolutely flown off the handle, torn into him, threatened to take away his visa and deport him, and got really angry about everything, then that would have been an indication to Charles that it might not be a terribly good idea to take this huge gamble and confront the American political elite and political system and business elite and Trump himself with the UK and European perspective on what is wrong with Trump's foreign policy.

55:38So yes, basically, there is potentially a tangible benefit to the palace of using Harry and to the British government of using Harry as a dry run to test America's reaction to being challenged on Ukraine. So then let's look at Gold is Green. Well, so Charles wanted to show love to the Jewish community and show the Jewish community that they matter and that the anti-Semitic attacks on Jewish people are wrong, are morally wrong, and that the monarchy and the crown and Charles himself wants to stand with Jewish people in the face of those anti-Semitic attacks. But it does carry with it a risk that some people will interpret that as being biased towards Israel in the war in Gaza and Lebanon.

56:23Now, under normal circumstances, if Charles was a politician, you might say, well, that's easy. just say yourself that that's not what's happening. Just say yourself that, you know, for echo British foreign policy, you know, the British foreign policy position on the humanitarian situation in Gaza is quite hostile to Israel's policies at the moment. And in fact, Israel doesn't like our prime minister very much. So there is latitude within the British foreign policy perspective to chime with and be in tune with British foreign policy and add that extra bit in about Israel. But the king is head of state now, and it's another huge gamble right after his last huge gamble, and everything that the British government has said and done in order to oppose and confront and push back on Israel has earned huge diplomatic punches from Netanyahu to Keir Starmer.

57:22The two countries have fallen out massively. So it would be a huge gamble. Clearly the palace do not want to bite off that particular problem right now. They don't want to. So there is a potential benefit to Prince Harry writing this op-ed in which he strikes a unifying tone. He doesn't kind of, you know, just simply pile in on Israel. He says a lot about challenging anti-Semitism. He talks about his own journey to realizing he was an idiot when he was younger, and he wore that Nazi uniform. And it lays the foundation for people to understand King Charles' visit to Golders Green, not as siding against the Palestinians, but as siding with Jewish people who do not deserve to be attacked because of the actions of a government that they cannot control anyway.

58:11And so I am not in a position where I have any certainty over whether there was cooperation between the two sides or not. I think I've been talking a lot on this podcast about the fact that something weird is going on. You can see in Harry's total disinterest in America, his overtures of love and friendship towards Britain and various other changes in the way that he's conducting himself in public life. that it really does feel like he wants to come back to Britain. And I'm not giving any kind of definitive verdict on what has actually gone on here. But I am adding this to my file. This is how I do things.

58:51For me, the only thing that matters is the long-term picture. Any kind of short-term argument can come and go, I don't care, right? I'm interested in long-term trends that change the future of the monarchy and the future of Britain. That's what interests me. And so I am adding this to my file, in the back of my mind, my little internal file that I have, which is titled, Something Weird is Going On With Harry. This is going in that file to monitor as we move forward and to see whether anything like this happens again. If there is now some cooperation between Harry and the palace, where Harry can be used as a kind of subtle tool in the palace toolbox to communicate messages that the king cannot say himself, then that does suggest that there could be some kind of avenue for Harry to return.

59:40But it might not be that. We do know that the one thing that's interesting about the king's visit to Golders Green is that it wasn't advertised publicly before. we knew in the media that it was coming because we were told in advance under embargo we were sent an operational note about it days before we you know i think maybe about a week before or something like that um and um so we knew it was coming but the public didn't know harry asten you know on the face of it would not have known except for the fact that we do know that there is some sharing of diaries between the two sides because we've known that this has been going on since about last summer when Harry's new UK-based spokesman met up with King Charles' spokesman at Private Members Club in London.

1:00:26They met, they chatted together, they had a meeting over tea, and we knew that one of the things that came out from that was greater cooperation over things like diaries. So it is totally possible that Harry did know it was coming. So it could have been an attempt by Harry to upstage the King or hijack that debate or whatever, or or amplify his own message off the back of it. But also, four days for a royal family member, I think it was a week to four days, and that is not a huge amount of time for someone in Harry's position to write up and get together a fairly well put together piece, balanced and timed with a publication, because sounding out publications for something like that isn't necessarily going to be straightforward for a royal family member.

1:01:11and they're not just going to ring news desks and start hawking Harry around because it's embarrassing for them if they start getting told no left, right and centre. So it's not a huge amount of time for him to get a piece like that together, get a publication willing to buy it and the New Statesman is a weekly magazine. So it feels to me like there is some justification for watching whether we see more examples of this and also watching what happens when Harry comes to Britain, which we're expecting this summer, because obviously he's going to be fighting the Invictus Games here. It's in Birmingham in 2027, so he'll probably be in Birmingham this summer.

1:01:52And it's fascinating to watch all of this play out. The guy is just exuding from every atom and molecule of his being that he wants to come back to Britain. He does not care about America anymore. Can you imagine? I'm trying to think of a way to explain this to Americans, what the New Statesman is. It's a really niche, left-wing publication that actually has had an anti-Semitism scandal in its own history, quite deep history, dating back probably, I would guess, 20 years. They did a front page that upset a lot of people. But it's niche. It's very left-wing. And that's why this feels to me like it might be in the palace's interest, because speaking to the left balances out.

1:02:34It's the left that is the core of concern about Gaza and opposition to Israel's policies and Israel's war in Gaza and Lebanon. And so it feels like it is the perfect way to try and speak to, you know, for the king to turn up to speak to one side in person, but then for Harry to speak to the other side and say this is a moment for unity, not partisanship, and for that to create one holistic message about unity rather than picking sides. So that is most of what I want to say about that. But I do just actually want to take you through some of the reaction to the king on the ground because he went down very well.

1:03:16He was overheard during the visit saying, you know, it's a dangerous world, isn't it? Which, fair play, I mean, it is a dangerous world. He met the chief rabbi, Sir Ephraim Mervis, who said the king was appreciated enormously and as quoted by the BBC, he said, our Jewish community is simply overwhelmed. It's an enormous privilege and everyone is saying exactly the same thing. What an amazing day, but what a sad day. So incredible that the king has made this gesture and so very sad that the reason for his coming is because of a terrorist action here on the streets of Golders Green. Now he also met, Shine is one of the two men who were stabbed.

1:03:52He's the older man, 76 year old, and he was stabbed in the neck in April. and so he said the king was inspiring and he said of Charles he was very concerned he didn't let go of my hand I mean it was amazing he is the king but I felt a genuine warmth and concern so you know this is something that actually the king does exude when he meets people people who meet Charles face to face do generally feel very touched by him because he has this kind of warmth he's got a kind of granddad aspect to him he kind of exudes genuine warmth and friendship with the people that he meets. And that's it for this episode of The Royal Report.

1:04:30Be sure to join me every week when I visit the latest royal headlines, embark on some royal deep dives and riff on all things royal. Until next time, I'm Jack Royston. Thank you for listening and a courtesy to you all.

1:04:44The Royal Report with Jack Royston is a member of The Trust Project.