2026-09-03
6 分钟Hello, this is Rosie Bloor, co-host of The Intelligence, our daily news and current affairs podcast.
Welcome to Editor's Picks.
We've chosen an article from the latest edition of The Economist that we thought you might enjoy.
Please do have a listen.
The outrage was instant.
When the return of Harry and Meghan to Britain was announced on August 19th,
royal commentators had collective conniptions.
The Sussexes' return a week later, widely assumed to be caused by the cost of security abroad,
has been called selfish, foolish, and childish.
All sorts of ishes.
Front pages have been filled, hands have been wrung, everyone has, in short, been enjoying themselves tremendously.
And the monarchy has been doing its job perfectly.
Most people misunderstand the monarchy.
There is a widely held idea that it is a branch of government and should,
as Walter Badgett, a Victorian writer and editor of The Economist put it, be dignified bunker.
No British monarch has truly governed anything
since the 1689 Bill of Rights removed all real powers from the king and his evil counsellors.
Since then, the monarchy has become, as Hilary Mantel understood better, a branch of entertainment, not government.
Royals, Mantel wrote, are like pandas in a zoo.
Some like them, some pity them, everybody stares at them.