After two weeks of radio silence since the Duke of Cambridge’s engagement in Amiens, Kensington Palace emerged from the depths of August to announce three new engagements for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. Summer is officially coming to an end as the Royal Family – sans the Queen – returns to a full work docket.
Harry and Meghan are due to attend a performance of Hamilton on behalf of Harry’s charity, Sentebale, on Wednesday, August 29. The following week, they will attend the Well Child awards on Tuesday, September 4, and then a charity concert commemorating the centenary of World War I to benefit veteran organizations on Thursday, September 6.
No similar announcement has been made for William or the Duchess of Cambridge, the latter of whom will be returning to the public eye from a five-month maternity leave. My guess is that similar scheduling news will come shortly, but that Kate may be waiting until Prince George and Princess Charlotte start the new school term. The Michaelmas term at Thomas’s Battersea doesn’t begin until Sept. 6, so it’s entirely possible that we won’t see Kate at an engagement until the week of Sept. 10.
So, where has everyone been? Rumors have been circulating that Meghan made a solo trip to Toronto or Los Angeles this month, but those have been squashed. The latter drove headlines that perhaps she would be privately seeing her father in order to reconcile, but more solid reporting indicates that she hasn’t left Europe since before her wedding. We last saw the couple on August 4 for a wedding in Surrey, but it’s emerged that the week before that, the couple spent time at the Castle of Mey in Scotland with the Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall.
The splashier news is that the two also apparently spent time on Lake Como with none other than George and Amal Clooney. The Clooneys were surprise wedding guests in May, but it appears that however the friendship came about, it’s a genuine one. The setting also makes sense in that the Clooneys clearly have privacy and security measures in place at their home there, thus ensuring Harry and Meghan could holiday in peace.
And beyond all of that, the couple reportedly did lease a house in the Cotswalds, allowing further time away from London.
As for the Cambridges, we know that they spent at least two weeks in Mustique in late July, and it appears that August was spent at Anmer Hall in Norfolk. That’s not surprising – we know that plenty of the family’s friends are Norfolk-based and it was their primary home until this time last year when they returned to London in time for George to begin school.
What isn’t in the mix here is time at Balmoral, where the Queen will be living until early October. Both couples (+ the Cambridge kids) are expected to make the trek right about now, so we may well get rogue photos of everyone arriving at church in the near future.
In the meantime, we know that the Duke of Edinburgh has finally made it out to Balmoral. Philip has been spending the majority of his time post-retirement at Sandringham, raising eyebrows given that the Queen still spends the week at Buckingham Palace. This awkwardness was only underlined when he didn’t immediately join her in Scotland, but the reasoning appears to have been that he was avoiding Sarah, Duchess of York, who accompanied her daughters ahead of Princess Eugenie’s wedding in October.
This past weekend, Philip was photographed attending church, as were the Princess Royal, Timothy Laurence (Anne’s husband), Mike and Zara Tindall, the Prince of Wales, the Duchess of Cornwall, the Earl and Countess of Wessex and Lady Louise (Edward and Sophie’s daughter). Presumably, the Wessexes’ son, the Viscount Severn, and the Tindall’s young daughters, Mia and Lena, were back at the castle.
And that’s a wrap – I’ll follow up if we learn anything new and otherwise look to fill in some more history before the end of the month.