This gentleman is Sir Trevor McDonald, a respected British news presenter and documentarian. He was knighted in 1999 and he is a well-known figure in the British media. Well, McDonald wrote a column in Saga Magazine all about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. You see, five years after the Sussexit, McDonald is just now coming to terms with the fact that Prince Harry is gone for good. I keep saying this, but so much of the royal gossip/forecasting in the past five years was predicated on the belief that eventually, Harry would be brought to heel. That he would divorce Meghan, or they would run out of money, or that the British media’s hate campaign would ruin them, and magically, Harry would come crawling back. After five years, a lot of people are starting to realize that it’s not going to happen. So now Trevor McDonald is like… but the Sussexes should come back, the UK should give them another chance. Here’s his column, with some edits for space:
Hard to believe it’s been five years since Prince Harry and his wife Meghan left Britain to live in North America, first in Canada and then in Meghan’s home state of California. I hadn’t realised so much time had passed, mainly because I always felt the move was temporary and that they would return to live in Britain once again.
To my mind, it is a great shame Prince Harry is no longer part of the working monarchy. And not only because his presence would give them strength in numbers; the past year has exposed just how ‘slimmed down’ the monarchy has become, with both the King and the Princess of Wales taking time out for cancer treatment. I have always felt Harry brought something special to the role.
Watching him address a meeting of Commonwealth students, for example, I was impressed by his insistence that his was not a short-term presence; he wouldn’t make one speech and disappear. He would be there as long as they needed him. I was struck by the similarity to his mother, the late Princess Diana. It seemed to me he spoke from the heart, just as she did. In fact, there is much in his demeanour and approach to life that reminds people of his mother. To some extent he has followed along the paths she laid out – the socially progressive causes, the passion for the charities she championed and her unrivalled ability to connect with people.
Meghan, too, could have brought a new dimension to the monarchy. By having a different background, perhaps she could have changed how the Royal Family is perceived by those who had never before felt a strong connection. Yet it seems to me that precisely because of those differences, she never stood a chance of being accepted. To be blunt, she is a foreigner: an American, a divorcee, a former actress – and black. She was never given a chance to prove herself.
The less-than-kind way some newspapers reported the news of her new Netflix show With Love, Meghan (from 4 March) reminded me why the couple had run from their British home in the first place. Prince Harry’s own view is uncompromising. In his book, Spare, he outlines bluntly that once their fairy-tale wedding had ended they were subjected to waves of abuse, racism and lies, and had no choice but to flee the country.
One of the final meetings between Harry, his father the King, and his older brother William took place in Windsor. We have only Harry’s account of how that went. He says they were not on time, could hardly meet his eyes and never enquired in any serious way why he was thinking of going to America.
From where we are today, it looks almost impossible that someone could persuade Harry and his family to come back to Britain. But I sincerely hope it can be done one day; we cannot afford to lose someone so young, so full of energy and so imbued with the charitable instincts that are at the core of our Royal Family.
I agree that it’s a pity that Harry and Meghan are not in the UK, being rock stars on behalf of the monarchy and dragging the dead weight of their relatives into the 21st century. It’s a pity that no one in the monarchy understood how bad it looked and how severely they mistreated Harry and Meghan. It’s a pity that no one recognized what the Sussexes were bringing to the table and treated them accordingly. But here we are… five years later, against all of the British gamblers’ odds, the Sussexes are thriving away from that island. Which is why people like Trevor McDonald are writing pieces like this – “Oh, he’s really not coming back? Well, he should, someone should tell him to come back!”
Photos courtesy of Cover Images.
