The Thomas Markle Bombshell Meghan Can’t Escape

Prince William has spent six months working on his guest edit of Country Life, and this was supposed to be his week. Today the 300-page special issue finally goes on sale, with the Prince of Wales as its cover star, sharing his thoughts on the countryside, the people who look after it, and even his fondness for a pint of cider with ice down the pub. William to give insight into public and private life as he guest edits magazine Instead, the royal news agenda belongs to an 82-year-old man in Florida. Last Friday the FBI took Thomas Markle, Meghan’s estranged father, into custody, and he now faces a federal count of possessing child sexual abuse material. He has called the accusations false, and it is important to say that an arrest is not a conviction. But the story has swallowed everything else in the royal world whole. meghan markles father reportedly arrested on child sexual abuse material charges In this video, I look at how the Markle arrest has overshadowed William’s Country Life debut, and why a magazine issue that Kensington Palace would have expected to dominate the headlines for days has been pushed down the running order by a scandal that has nothing to do with him. William is following his father, Queen Camilla and Princess Anne into the guest editor’s chair. (Camilla’s issue is still the magazine’s best seller of all time.) For the heir to the throne, this was a chance to set out who he is and what he cares about: rural Britain, the environment, and the people working the land. I also look at what the arrest means for Meghan. She addressed the allegations against her father when they first emerged in October, though her representative would not comment on the arrest itself. And I ask the bigger question: more than six years after Harry and Meghan left royal life, why does the Sussex story still have the power to blow the Prince of Wales off the front pages? oxygen Let me know what you think in the comments. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode of The Royalist, Tom Sykes is joined by Paula Froelich ( @PaulaFroelich  , https://thescoopwithpaulafroelich.substack.com/) and Mark Dolan for a revealing look at the latest royal drama. From Prince Harry’s controversial Remembrance Sunday appearance and Prince Andrew’s life away from the royal spotlight to the explosive questions surrounding Meghan Markle and her father, Thomas Markle Sr., no stone is left unturned. Plus, Mark Dolan delivers his take on the Sussexes’ troubled UK return, the future of their royal brand, and why he believes Harry and Meghan could be heading back to California within a year. Is a royal escape plan taking shape? Tune in for sharp analysis, royal family news, behind-the-scenes insight and plenty of debate. Follow Tom Sykes on Substack: https://theroyalist.substack.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Seeing Prince Harry standing alone in Brackley, with no friends or neighbors around him, was a salutary reminder of just how much he has lost in his idiotic decision to go to war with the royal family. He cut a lonely figure for a man who was once so beloved, had so many friends and was so social. He is now cut off from almost all of them, especially the ones who can’t forgive how he treated William and Catherine (the couples shared many friends). I am now told he and Meghan have made no new friends since moving to the UK. “The only people they see regularly are Ellen and Portia,” my source says. They are completely isolated, totally paranoid about privacy and security, and battered by the news cycle about Meghan’s dad, Thomas. Meghan is not keen on shooting invitations, which are of course the social lifeblood of the region at this time of year. The one bright spot is the kids’ school, which feels “normal,” and the children are settling in well. The same cannot be said for the parents. School is often a way to meet new people, but I’m told they haven’t really bonded with the other parents, partly because of their habit of arriving in a convoy of two or even three Range Rovers, which has started to annoy the other parents, many of whom are also high profile and rich. Meghan is adrift socially, even though hustling like crazy for work is keeping her busy. Harry is traveling a lot (New York last week, Brussels this week), again trying to hustle for business as the two of them try to figure out how to create a sustainable life here. And the King still has not seen them in person, which is becoming a source of frustration. A friend of the King says he is not in a position to just wheel out social visits, and that Harry’s refusal to go through official channels to schedule an audience is making this difficult, as is his decision to appeal the Mail on Sunday judgment (very awkward for the King). Can Harry rebuild a life here, or is this it? Let me know what you think in the comments. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Harry promised he wouldn't pull focus. In the run-up to Remembrance Sunday, a friend told HELLO! that he would do nothing to distract from the Royal Family or the national commemorations at the Cenotaph. Then, at just before three o'clock this afternoon, there he was. He was standing beside The Crown Hotel in Brackley, a Northamptonshire market town he has no connection with whatsoever, with his medals on his chest and a poppy in his lapel, being filmed. There was no Meghan. By teatime, the pictures were everywhere, sitting right alongside the King at the Cenotaph. He couldn't resist. And I think it is desperately sad. In tonight's live, I go through why this matters. Harry has spent the best part of seven years taking the institution apart in public. There was Oprah, the Netflix series about his privacy, Spare, and the BBC interview in which he said he couldn't see a world in which he would bring his family back to the UK. Now he lives in the Cotswolds and wants to stand at a war memorial as the nation's solemn veteran. We look at the medals (one earned in Helmand, three jubilee medals from his grandmother). We look at the uncanny habit cameras have of finding the Sussexes at their most "private" moments. And we look at the timing, given that last year his people made a point of releasing his Remembrance essay on a Wednesday to avoid pulling focus. I also look at the Andrew comparison. Harry hates it, and on conduct he's right. But in the hunger to stand in the light of a royal occasion you've been shut out of, the two Dukes of Hazard are looking awfully alike. Above all, Brackley shows the profound difficulty Harry is going to have living in the UK while estranged from the royals but pretending to be a royal. If he were in, there would be no problem. He's not. So is this the model now? Christmas, Easter, Trooping the Colour, Diana's anniversary: will it be Harry in a crowd nearby, on camera, every time? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I’m taking a couple of days off the royal news to do something a little different and tell you about my own schooldays at Eton College, where Prince George has just started. I arrived in 1987, aged 13, as a new boy in Keate House. My father had been there before me (and was expelled, I hasten to add, as was I in the end). The only reason I got through the door at all was my brilliant mum, a children’s fashion designer, who tracked down the War Memorial Bursary that paid half my fees. In this first episode I talk about how the money was found, the family who went before me, being kitted out with my one new tailcoat on Eton High Street, and being handed a Coutts chequebook at 13 so I could pay for bacon rolls at Rowlands. It ends in the car on my first day, my stomach flipping like a pancake as the spires of Eton loomed up ahead. Part two is out tomorrow. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tom Sykes is joined by royal editor Robert Jobson to unpack the explosive Thomas Markle scandal and its implications for Meghan and Harry. Is Meghan using this disturbing family story to portray herself as the victim of a media campaign? Tom and Robert examine the mysterious letter, the disputed timeline, the Sussexes’ media strategy, and whether King Charles should finally make a definitive break with the couple. Plus, in Royal News Update, Tom looks at Prince Harry’s plans for Remembrance Sunday and whether he can avoid another royal PR storm. And in Tea with Tom, NewsNation’s Paula Froelich ( @PaulaFroelich  , https://thescoopwithpaulafroelich.substack.com/) joins Tom to dish on King Charles’ Caribbean tour, his dancing and rum-drinking, and the growing controversy over slavery reparations and the King's refusal to apologize. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When the news broke last week that Thomas Markle had been accused of hoarding a stash of child sex abuse material, a certain kind of comment piece went round the, ahem, progressive end of the media almost instantly. The headlines were all variations on the same theme: how long before Meghan’s father allegedly hoarding pedophile material turned out to be "Meghan’s fault?" Not long, was the implication, if the wicked tabloids had anything to do with it. A week on, there is an alternative spin on offer, and it is coming from the Sussexes’ new house magazine, The Telegraph, and what it looks very much like, to my eye, is Meghan’s side trying to lump at least some of the blame for what happened to that letter onto William and Catherine. The same double standard runs through everything. In February 2020 they announced that by giving up public funds they had removed the “supposed ‘public interest’ justification for media intrusion.” In September this year their office issued a media advisory headed “PRINCE HARRY, DUKE OF SUSSEX SEPTEMBER PUBLIC ENGAGEMENTS,” and their friends briefed that they are public figures, not private citizens. They are whichever suits the day. And so it is with the letter: private when it protects her, public when it convicts the press, and now, apparently, a matter for the wider royal household when the question turns to who sat on it. I find the choice of vehicle fascinating. This is The Telegraph that last week fired around 100 staff as its new owner, Axel Springer (which bought the paper in June for £575 million), announced its intention to turn it into a “global, AI-powered premium media and intelligence business.” I called that a Slopbait factory in a Substack Note last night, and I stand by the coinage (neologisms are what Substack is for). Any tidbit about Harry and Meghan drives traffic, and what we appear to be watching is a paper abandoning basic journalistic principles and taking what it is fed on trust from a team that has been shown, again and again, to be highly manipulative and to say things that are not true when it suits them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

First, the Metropolitan Police has referred itself to the police watchdog, the Independent Office for Police Conduct, over its handling of the January 2019 letter in which Thomas Markle’s first wife, Roslyn Loveless, accused him of child sex offenses. That is the Met admitting, in its own words, that it got this wrong. Not in a lost-the-paperwork way (although it did lose the paperwork, we’ll come to that). Wrong in two specific decisions that the watchdog is now going to investigate. Second, and this is the one that should be setting off alarms at Buckingham Palace: Richard Eden in the Daily Mail reports today that there is growing concern inside the Palace about what the Met’s review is going to uncover, and that a royal source has told him it is “unthinkable” the Royal Household was not told about that letter at the time. The source’s argument is simple. Harry and Meghan would not have been handed something like this on their own. The police had a duty to inform the Palace, and the source says they will have done so. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Either Meghan believed in 2019 that her father was a pedophile, in which case she lied to Oprah about what was really tormenting her, or she didn’t, in which case last week’s statement was pure opportunism. There is no third option. In this video I lay out why the Sussexes’ handling of the Thomas Markle allegations (which he denies, and which are a matter for the courts) has turned whatever sympathy initially flowed Meghan’s way into something close to disgust. The whole story hinges on a letter, allegedly sent to the Metropolitan Police in January 2019 by Thomas Markle’s first wife, Roslyn Loveless, accusing him of traveling to the Philippines for sex with children. A copy, we are told, reached Harry and Meghan via their bodyguards. Meghan now says that letter is the one reason she cut off her father and kept him away from Archie and Lili. Yet the police lost it, had to ask the Sussexes for a copy, and then dated it to 2019 rather than 2018, at which point Meghan’s much-vaunted record keeping fell apart and her spokesman had to correct her. So why did nobody follow up? Meghan had five police officers around her for another year. She allowed friends to tell People magazine, a month after the letter supposedly arrived, that she had written to her father: “I love you. I have one father. Please stop victimizing me through the media.” Harry praised Thomas in Spare. Her lawyers blamed the tabloids for the estrangement. Everybody’s actions suggest neither the Met nor Meghan found the letter credible. And if she did believe it? Then she sat opposite Oprah and blamed her suicidal ideation on racist press coverage and a heartless royal family (the bridesmaids’ dresses, the lip gloss, the sofa) while saying nothing about a father she was convinced was an abuser. That narrative built a global brand. A pedophile father would have destroyed it. Meanwhile Meghan has launched a $550 As Ever “Library basket,” signed up for MasterChef Australia, and let staff brief that she has fled the UK in tears. The public verdict is in, and it is grim. In Spare, Harry raged at William for urging him to take his time getting to know “this girl.” If only he had. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices