Royal Autumn Recap with HELLO!’s Emily Nash
Plus, details on the publisher’s new, must-read Substack.
As 2023 comes to a close, it is a bit staggering to think about this history-making year for the British Royal Family. This autumn has been a particularly busy sprint, with a flurry of significant engagements from the Windsors.
Today I wanted to take a step back and look at the last few months. What has this post-coronation time looked like for King Charles and Queen Camilla, and how was their state visit to Kenya received? What is behind the new public appearance cadence for the Prince and Princess of Wales, and how has William and Catherine’s workload changed?
To talk through these questions and more, I turned to Emily Nash, royal editor for Hello! magazine. She has been on the beat for a decade, covering engagements around the U.K. and traveling with the family overseas. I worked with the Hello! team at the coronation and appreciate both their access to the Firm and their approach to royal reporting.
Our chat also has Emily’s inside look at why the royal calendar of events is so crowded, the importance of convening power, and why Kate has moved on from her “pretty dress era.”
ICYMI: I also spoke with Emily ahead of the coronation, which you can read here.
HELLO! Joins the Royal Ranks on Substack
For up-to-the-minute coverage of the British Royal Family, check out the new
right here on Substack. I subscribed a few weeks ago and have been wildly impressed at how much they share.Royal editor
and the entire Hello! team are ON IT, covering the latest royal outings (have you followed Sophie’s trip to Colombia?), offering up explainers (like this primer on Princess Beatrice’s husband) and marking anniversaries (can you believe it has been 13 years since Will and Kate got engaged?). I love the creative ways they offer up insights, like the recent voice memo on the king’s 75th birthday portrait and a video from the front row during the official welcome for the South Korean state visit.“It’s like sending a WhatsApp to your friend about something and going, ‘What do you think about this?’ or ‘Guess what just happened!’” Nash told me. “Substack is much more of a direct relationship and, as writers, we’re able to express ourselves a bit more personally as well in a way that we don’t necessarily in the magazine or on the website. I think it’s very exciting.”
Click below for more on
and here to subscribe.
👑 ICYMI: SMT x The Crown
As we await the arrival of Part 2 of The Crown, I want to spend a moment more on the first four episodes. My latest Crown podcast is a conversation with Elizabeth Angell, who wrote this must-read piece on reporting from Paris in the summer of 1997. Now that she has watched, Elizabeth discussed what was missing from the Diana portrayal and what Peter Morgan could have shown in the tunnel.
You can find all of my Crown coverage here (bookmark this page!), including podcasts reflecting on, reacting to, and fact-checking each episode. There are also two discussion threads, one for Episodes 1 + 2 and another for Episodes 3 + 4.
Please share your thoughts and bring a friend. For every three you refer, you will earn a free month yourself.
Recapping a Busy Royal Autumn with HELLO!’s Emily Nash
Please note: We spoke last month, before the recent headlines around the new royal book, Endgame. This conversation has been edited and condensed.
It’s hard to believe the coronation was just a few months ago. So much has happened this year, and particularly this fall! Let’s start with King Charles and Queen Camilla. How are they doing?
Emily Nash: I think that they have actually navigated the year pretty well. You had the — I’m not going to say chaos — but the stress leading up to the coronation that comes with this major event, all the organization, all the planning. That was a huge undertaking for them, and at the age they are at especially [EH note: Charles is 75, Camilla is 76]. They had already done their first state visit beforehand to Germany and subsequently to France and Kenya.
What I wasn’t surprised about — and yet I’m still slightly taken aback by, if that makes sense? — is the king’s work ethic. Which has always been there. But I think we had grown used to our monarch being, obviously, much older but less frequently visible. I feel like the king has been hugely visible and he is really using that visibility to be more inclusive than we have seen in the past from the royal family.
What do you mean by more inclusive?
He is really taking opportunities to spotlight certain groups. On his birthday, for example, he had nurses and midwives [join the festivities at Buckingham Palace]. The NHS [National Health Service] is turning 75 as well. It was a big move to bring them to the palace on a day that he knew everyone was going to be watching him and say, “Look at these people who are doing brilliant work for us.” In particular, he’s highlighting immigrant nurses, which is a fantastic moment of recognition for them.
He is doing this without saying these things but by giving them a platform. He is reaching out to different faith groups. Again, something he has always done but perhaps didn’t get as much attention before. I also thought choosing the Big Issue for his birthday portrait was a fantastic move.
They are really mindful that he is not — and cannot be seen to be — an activist king or a political king in any way. And I think he is managing that quite well. We all know what his thoughts are on a lot of these issues.
That was such a big question going into his reign. Would his activism continue? During his speech at the State Opening of Parliament, reading remarks written for him at odds with his personal beliefs, I was curious what he was thinking.
It was written all over his face!
Fair! How do you think the king is handling the limitations of his new role?
[EH Note: My conversation with Emily happened before the king wore a Greek flag tie this week. ICYMI, there’s more on that here.]
He is not making speeches in the way that he used to, although he is still saying things. He is just sort of quietly putting a spotlight on things that he thinks are worthy of people’s attention. That’s a fantastic thing for head of state to do.
The other thing I’ve really appreciated from him is that he has been really tactile and warm. A lot of the time I have spent following him around on engagements involves speaking to people directly after he’s spoken to them. People are always touched by him and slightly taken aback by his sense of humor and his warmth. We’re seeing that on a bigger scale now.
How about Queen Camilla? How do you see her as settling into her new role?
I think she’s doing great. They really are a double act. It’s about her supporting him and she does it in a fairly understated way. She doesn’t have the same number of engagements — she has paced herself a bit more. But she is sticking to the things she’s always supported. She is talking about domestic violence, which is punchy for a queen. She is obviously a huge patron of the arts. They both are. She is doing a lot around her love of literature and the importance of literacy. It’s not new stuff, but I think it takes on a greater significance coming from the queen. The charities and organizations she is involved with really, really appreciate that.
Let’s talk about the state visit to Kenya. There were a lot of questions around that trip about how Charles and Camilla would be received.
I thought Kenya was a really interesting choice. It’s not an easy place for them to go to as their first commonwealth state visit because of the difficult history there around the British colonial rule.
What we saw from the king — and what we’ve already seen from him in recent years — was a willingness to go and listen and acknowledge the roles of the past. People are always going to say, “Well, look, he didn’t actually apologize.” It’s important to remember that any discussion around this would have to be signed off by the government. That is a conversation that is always going on behind the scenes.
I feel like there is a real willingness, though, on behalf of the king to acknowledge and to have conversations about these things. This is tricky for him as well because it happened on the late queen’s watch. It happened during her reign. What I thought was really striking was he went and spoke about it publicly on the first day, but then privately he went and spent time with survivors and family members.
I think that says a lot about him as a character, that he’s willing to learn, that he’s willing to hear other sides of the story and wants to make things right.
He seems very willing to show up in these difficult situations, most recently traveling to Barbados in 2021 when it became a republic.
Pre-Covid, he went on a visit to Ghana. It’s not new, and I get the sense that it’s something he very much does want to show up for. He feels a responsibility to be there and to be part of these conversations. I think that’s good and I think it probably was appreciated, certainly by the people he spoke to.
Do you think we will see more of that in his reign?
The message I’m getting loud and clear is that he wants to listen and understand more. We heard similar words from William after the Caribbean trip, that they are not there to tell people how to do things, that they are there to listen, to understand, and to learn. I think it’s really valuable that they are coming at this from a more humble position, should we say, certainly than the royals historically have been.
I want to chat now about William and Catherine. They did not go on an overseas tour this year, which surprised me. Were you surprised by that?
Yeah, I was somewhat relieved, to be honest. [Laughs] It’s been a really busy year!
But what’s been going on behind the scenes: William suddenly became the duke of this vast swath of land, with all the management that entails, the livelihoods at stake. He’s having to manage a whole duchy. [EH note: You can read more about the Duchy of Cornwall here.] Kate is doing all her Early Years work, he has had Earthshot. They’ve obviously got the children — you know what it’s like to have three children. Yes, they have lots of help but I think it was probably the right decision not to head off at this point.
It was also right that the king should make the first bigger trips of the reign. I’m pretty sure that will be a different story next year.
How do you think Will and Kate are settling into their new, bigger roles as Prince and Princess of Wales?
We only have to look at Earthshot to see how much more confident William is, not just because he is now Prince of Wales, but that makes a huge difference in terms of his convening power.
Convening power is the ability to bring people together who can affect change. We are seeing it with the king’s Coronation Food Project. There are people who need food and there are people who have more food than they need and it’s going to go to waste. What you need is someone to bring these people around the table and go, “How are we going to make this work?”
What William is doing with the Earthshot winners and the philanthropists, the investors, the government specialists — they are able to unite people to make things work better. He is able to bring people around the table, like Mike Bloomberg and Bill Gates, who have the resources to help these brilliant projects. William’s determination, and the fact that he seems so assured in the way that he’s approaching his work, is quite exciting.
We actually have seen it from Kate as well. The Shaping Us National Symposium is the first time, really, she’s done global convening. She had professors from Harvard at the symposium, former Prime Minister Tony Blair, and Lord Hague, who is part of the Royal Foundation and a very well-known political figure in this country. Having people with that kind of gravitas join your cause does so much for it, not just in this country but overseas.
That’s what the royals can do best. What they’ve all done really well this year is to look outwards, to look for things that they can help with and looked at ways to bring people together to affect change. I feel like they are very active.
Have you noticed any change in their work?
What’s interesting is they’re looking at much bigger, meatier projects than they have done in the past. They have their causes now, and it’s about building momentum around these things rather than just cutting ribbon somewhere or unveiling a plaque. It feels like they’re way more invested in things than perhaps might be the case in the past.
With both Early Years and William’s Homewards project on homelessness, they have set themselves targets. So the Homewards project will be assessed in five years time and they are going to measure it to see what difference it has made. That’s quite a challenge. That’s another thing we’ve seen from William. He is an optimist and the amount of belief behind what he is doing will surely drive some success. You kind of end up believing in it, too.
I’m sure that everything that he and Kate do has to be with their legacy in mind. They are never going to do something for a quick headline this week or next week or next month. Everything they do has got a really long-term approach to it.
I want to ask you about their work cadence this year, with a flurry of engagements while their children are in school and long absences during school breaks. What do you make of that?
My first gripe with it is that I don’t get the extended holiday that they get! [Laughs]
It’s difficult, isn’t it? I think that it’s absolutely right that they want to spend the time they can with their children while the children are on holiday. They are at schools where they’re fortunate enough to have a month off for Easter or for Christmas.
It does make it different, from our perspective, in terms of the flow of royal engagements. But I don’t think you can really begrudge them that. When they are working, they are absolutely on display. And they are doing so much behind the scenes to prepare for all of these engagements. I think you’re probably going to need a fair bit of downtime and time away from the spotlight to recover.
The royal calendar is packed these days, with major events overlapping. I feel like there used to be a bit more of an effort to not step on toes quite so much? A bit of calendar alignment?
I think you’re right. There is a bit of a perception that there’s more happening, but I think that’s also because they are busy with slightly more complex engagements. It’s not just turning up and opening a new hospital wing — and that’s not to denigrate that kind of job at all, because that means a great deal to the people who they are visiting.
But having to bring together, for example at the “Shaping Us” symposium, global experts in the field, a former prime minister, the various bodies involved, that takes so much planning. If the date that you can make it work is the date that you can make it work, then unfortunately it may clash with something somebody else is doing.
There are other dates like the king’s birthday, which was set in stone — that wasn’t ever going to change. But there have been a lot of things coming up and it is challenging because everyone wants their visits covered. So for journalists, it’s a lot to take on.
When the late queen was alive — and going back quite a few years now, when I first started doing the royal beats — we would get a six-month preview of her diary. It was in general terms, we weren’t given specifics, but we had ideas about away days or when this might happen, when that might happen. We are living in a different age now. There are so many other factors involved in royal engagements.
I have to ask you about royal fashion and all of Kate’s suits. It’s the most specific style stretch we have seen from her. What do you make of it?
I think it’s a good move, actually. It’s not like she hasn’t worn them in the past, but she definitely moved on from her pretty dress era. It’s a simple, business-like approach. That’s how I would sum up both her and William’s work in the last few months. They are positioning themselves more and more as leaders.
Certainly for the princess, I think there has probably been a degree of frustration with interest in her fashion sometimes overshadowing what she is actually doing. Look, we’re all guilty of that, right? But whether it’s the Steve Jobs approach of the wearing the same uniform every day it takes the attention a little bit off of those decisions. Maybe it’s a bit of that?
She looks great either way and it’s in fashion at the moment. I would fully expect, were we to switch back to the floral midi dresses again in six months time, she would be all over that as well.
She has also worn a lot of repeats, which does seem to take fashion out of the equation.
That might be deliberate. And I think: Good on her. Even if it’s just for a brief period of time — and there has been this transition. Maybe it is her way of making a break from being the Duchess of Cambridge.
And finally, as someone who has followed this family for a long time, how has it felt to watch a new king versus the long-reigning queen?
From the point of view of the British citizen, it’s just very bizarre to not have her around anymore. That being said, I don’t think the transition has been as difficult as many people expected in terms of things just moving on. It has all gone a lot more smoothly than I was expecting.
We do miss her, absolutely. There was a sort of endearing quality to people from that generation — that stoicism, having lived through the war years. That is gone now, which is very sad.
But the king has done a good job moving forward. He’s doing his best to try and make the monarchy relevant, to make it more relatable, which I think is extremely important. That’s really important at a time when society is so polarized. There is so much division in the world. I genuinely think that he can lead by example when it comes to things like that.
Any predictions for what we will see from the Windsors in 2024?
A lot of travel. There is going to be a Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Samoa in the later half of next year, and that is a long way to go. You would imagine there will be factoring in a few stops on the way and whether Will and Kate will be a part of that as well? I would expect there to be quite a few big overseas trips.
My thanks to Emily! And don’t forget to check out
here on Substack.
I loved hearing her insights especially since she reports so closely on the Royal family. This has me eager to see what will happen in 2024.