The Prince and the Actress

Meghan and Harry arrived in Birmingham Airport today, some two hundred and ten years after the sad, lonely death in Saint Cloud,just outside Paris, of that great actor Dorothea Jordan,

and the day after we had all been so strangely shocked to hear of the death of Dolly Parton. Strangely, because, although it was known that this octogenarian genius was ill, we somehow believed she would be there forever. If only Meghan had some of Dolly’s OOMPH and self-deprecation, capacity for for self-mockery, all round niceness and decency. And,- don’t let’s be too unkind, - some of Dolly Parton’s talent.

Back in the days of the Regency,