How Royal Women Are Turned Into Villains: Kate, Meghan, Diana & Anne Boleyn

[00:00:04]Hello and welcome to the latest episode of a right royal podcast with me, Andrea.

[00:00:08]>> And me, Emily.

[00:00:09]>> Our guest this week is author and journalist Catherine Mayer.

[00:00:13]>> We're so excited to get stuck into her latest book, Divide and Rule, Royal Women and Their Battles, which focuses on the engrossing stories of Britain's royal women behind the public facade.

[00:00:24]>> Shall we get started?

[00:00:25]>> Let's do it.

[00:00:26]>> Catherine, thank you so much for joining us. Congratulations on the book. Um you've done a lot of research, an awful lot of writing. Are there any women that you've written about that you changed your mind about over the course of this?

[00:00:40]>> I think in some ways uh and part of the reason for writing the book is I had a sense that these royal women who would surprise me and not one of them disappointed.

[00:00:53]>> Oh, really?

[00:00:53]>> Yeah, so I mean with the um historical sections of the book and particularly the early historical sections of the book, um I'm not a historian, so I was there's a lot of um research that I did just to make sure that I was kind of up to speed with what people thought before then taking apart in a way what what um all the narratives were telling us. So um there were many surprises there, but in a way I suppose I should have expected that just because my my knowledge base wasn't so high.

[00:01:31]With all of the royal women from Elizabeth the second onwards, I already had this sort of vast sea of knowledge or what I thought of as knowledge uh accumulated over many years as as somebody who observed the royals and interacted with them.

[00:01:52]And I just kept finding out stuff. You You I also I'm a veteran journalist and I thought I'd really might have said everything I ever wanted to say, particularly about Elizabeth II and Diana.

[00:02:06]>> Mhm.

[00:02:07]>> And oh my god, was I wrong.

[00:02:08]>> You're just scratching the surface.

[00:02:10]>> Yeah. Yeah, it's so I mean, for me that was a surprise of writing the book, a delight of writing the book, but also particularly with the Diana chapter, it was so interesting because um I worked for a very for you know, more than a decade for Time magazine and they were very interested in her and before that I was working for the German press and they were very interested in her.

[00:02:36]And I had written all these cover stories about her, which in the good old days of journalism would be 5,000 words long. So, it's like writing at least a book's worth already.

[00:02:48]And I thought, well, I'm never going to find anything out about her that I didn't know, but I'm also never going to find anybody who hasn't spoken about her. And not only did both of those things prove to be wrong, but I suddenly realized that in all the years of coverage I had maintained a kind of journalistic distance and I suddenly engaged with it in a new way and I became deeply emotionally involved while writing it and then had to to find that journalistic analytical aspect as well. And I don't know how it reads to to anyone, but in many ways that chapter is the one that surprised me the most because I just ended up um with such a clearer view of what the forces were that put her in the back of that speeding car and how very badly served she really was.

[00:03:45]>> Wow. I thought we could start from the beginning because you obviously start with Anne Boleyn.

[00:03:49]>> Yes.

[00:03:49]>> And you do you know, she was, according to you, the original divisive royal woman.

[00:03:55]>> Yeah, not the original. I mean, I think you find, you know, that phase "cherchez la femme" in in terms of crime, well, in terms of division and polarization, cherchez la femme, because women have been used to sow division and to attach to culture wars pretty much through history. Um but, well, I give you Eve. With Anne Boleyn, there was a very specific reason for that as a starting point. She is the not only the first queen or or very recently ex-queen to have been executed, she became queen at the point where uh the printing press was really taking off.

[00:04:36]So, she's a queen in in this new world of mass media.

[00:04:41]Um she's the first queen about whom dueling biographies are written um within living memory of her existence. And she's caught up in the culture biggest culture war of all time in some ways, the the Reformation. So, what we think we know about her is largely mediated through opposing sides in that culture war. So, I bet both of you have heard, you know, that she had a sixth finger or that, you know, she had various witchy sorts of attributes. Um that comes from her Catholic foes.

[00:05:20]On the other hand, you have um the sort of emerging, you know, the reformists who then become Protestantism and Anglicanism, you you have them adopting her as a kind of martyr and sanctifying her.

[00:05:33]Um and she, of course, also at various times becomes a femme fatale or a feminist hero. Um it depends whether you're, you know, that you're invited to like her or or Catherine of Aragon, but never both of them.

[00:05:47]>> Yeah.

[00:05:47]>> Um and what added to her mystique, but also her pliability to be used in this way, is that Henry the VIII tried to have destroyed every >> Yeah.

[00:05:59]>> record of her. So, there's a vacuum there. So, what I with that chapter, what I set out to do is to figure out what we really know about her as opposed to what we think we know. And then understand why we think what we do about her. And as with all these women, when you find out about them, they turn out to be much more impressive, quite apart from anything else. So, many views of women are reductive. And Anne Boleyn, you know, she was incredibly for the age, and given she was as she came she was she came from a highborn family, but she was nevertheless technically a commoner. She's really well educated.

[00:06:36]>> Mhm.

[00:06:36]>> You know, spoke all these languages, was was literate in an age where vanishingly few women were able to read. Um and uh you know, she was probably quite actively involved in the Reformation.

[00:06:54]>> What do you think Henry VIII would have made of the fact that despite his best efforts to sort of erase her from history, she's one of the the the wives that people remember the best?

[00:07:02]>> It's really funny cuz I I quote um the historian David Starkey in the book, who laments um that as he puts it, history has become feminized, by which he means there are these women historians writing about women. And and >> dare they?

[00:07:20]>> Yeah. Well, and what he's trying to say also is that it means that we're we're looking at the trivial characters and not the not the not the main event.

[00:07:31]Um I would argue that one of the distortions that my chapter uncovers is around Henry VIII is nearly all the portrayals of him um show a man who is operating with power.

[00:07:45]Um you know, he's either he's this young sort of god-like prince who then degenerates into a a sort of you know, festering mass of sores and and an angry and vindictive man. Yes, you get that, but it's always about his exercise of power. And what struck me really forcibly is that he operated out of weakness. He's the weakest of the kings at that point in this world of competing countries. And all of his sort of terrible history with wives is also related to his inability to get the the uh male heirs that he wants. He eventually gets one, of course, but but that wife, Jane Seymour, dies.

[00:08:30]Um but also his his constant need um you know, the territory that he possessed was much smaller than than his nearest rivals.

[00:08:42]And so he was always having to find alliances and compromise and um you know, it's a position of weakness. So, I think it's rather wonderful that there's this cosmic joke that Anne Anne Boleyn is is at least as famous as he is and definitely more popular.

[00:09:01]>> Now, the treatment that Anne Boleyn received back then, when you were researching it, does it remind you of anything that's happening in modern royal history?

[00:09:09]>> Mhm.

[00:09:09]>> [clears throat] >> Well, yes. Um it does uh in lots of ways. I mean, as I say, the dueling autobiographies.

[00:09:18]But um one of the things I had fun with is I did two descriptions of Anne Boleyn, one of which fits exactly in every detail Diana. Um including that the king uh in this case future king becomes interested at the point where he's actually in a relationship with the elder sister. Um, that's Diana.

[00:09:42]Um, and with Anne Berlin, you know, that there there was a an ambassador at the court who is responsible for a lot of the more reliable, um, in the sense of contemporaneous that he actually saw this, but also very biased, um, reporting because he was he was, uh, allied to, um, Catherine of Aragon's uh, family. Um, and he always talks about her as this sort of, as many people did, this sort of dark, difficult, you know, the word difficult does actually appear.

[00:10:18]Um, and it's very much like a description of Meghan, you know, and that's >> That's a difficult.

[00:10:23]>> Yeah. And also and also the outsider, you know, the commoner, because that's very unusual. If you look at the scan of royal marriages in Tudor times and also look at the number of men who tried to marry Elizabeth the first, the reason that they do that is because the only way that you can grow a monarchy uh, in in those days is through conquest or marriage. Um, and you know, the the marriage is is the cheaper option and sometimes actually brings a dowry.

[00:10:57]>> Well, of course, yeah. Because it I mean, as you said earlier, there were I mean, Henry was a bit of a coalition king, wasn't he? He was reliant on those alliances.

[00:11:05]>> These shifting alliances. I mean, that's also when you look at why Anne Berlin died, there are all sorts of different factors that play into it, but she was incredibly unlucky. You know, that's a period of time where you saw the King of France taken host taken hostage and then putting his sons in as hostages in his place. You see the Pope a virtual prisoner. That's the Pope who was supposed to be the one who was helping um to annul the marriage cuz of course divorce wasn't really a thing there but then but annulment was. Um yeah, she was very very unlucky in terms of where the power balance kept going.

[00:11:45]>> Mhm.

[00:11:46]Now, I want to bring it up to date a bit um because there are so many parallels, aren't there, with these historical figures. But what can you tell us about what you learned about Kate and Meghan in particular during your research? Um I'm thinking particularly let's start with Kate, you know, the period where she was called Waity Katie, uh being criticized for her, you know, not not having a full-time job, her fashion sense. Um what do you see parallels there as well?

[00:12:16]>> Well, you see parallels all the way through with how royal women are traduced. But in the case of both Kate and Meghan, there's several things I think that we should say right up front. One is they're both outsiders coming in. So, there's a you'll it's a very different thing when you're talking about these people who marry into the institution and those who are born into it and how they handle themselves. All of them have to navigate a system that I dubbed the patriarchy, but they um it people who are born to it understand it instinctively.

[00:12:54]Um outsiders have no chance at all of understanding it until, you know, I'm guessing that the two of you have seen it up close and personal enough to realize that, you know, I dubbed it Planet Windsor cuz it's a very strange place and it operates to different rules. And even all of us who've spent so much time around it, we'd still be taken by surprise by things. Um the the incomers have this very tall order. So, in that sense, Kate and Meghan both had this huge hurdle.

[00:13:25]Now, another thing about the two of them is I set out to write about them being very aware that they are so often bracketed together and pitted against each other that it distorts both of them. So, I really set out to pull that that coverage back apart and then only look at that relationship when I needed to, but not to see either one through the prism of the other because, you know, women, uh much though often described that way, we're not sort of cows at a at a state fair, you know, you don't go, "Well, that one's got the shinier pelt, um but this one's, you know, beefing up better."

[00:14:08]Um Kate uh is also probably the hardest of all the royals to cover um because she has done such a a very clever job of finding a way to adapt to the institution. Um that does not mean that I think she has it easy. I think the levels of pressure on her you can you can kind of see if you look at her, you can see it visibly.

[00:14:38]But she is she has worked out a way to do that job, which of course we call it a job, but it's not defined other than to support the monarch.

[00:14:52]Um to do it in a way that kind of fits within the existing system.

[00:14:59]Um she does it mostly by um symbolism, by being seen to do things, um very little speaking and almost no um confessional spilling of anything about who she is.

[00:15:16]>> She's quite enigmatic, isn't she?

[00:15:18]>> She She is and she's man She and William have chosen a group of friends who, as we know, do talk to media but only when um told to and not then on the record and otherwise they don't talk at all.

[00:15:32]So, um they they are they are carving out this very sort of private life in the public eye, which is an enormously difficult thing to do.

[00:15:44]Um yeah, I mean, I came I I also came away with the an understanding of how maybe that degree in that famous degree of art his in art history actually helped her to do that.

[00:15:58]>> Oh, really? Why do you think that is?

[00:15:59]>> It's so interesting because obviously there are all those stories about whether she only um she was uh that was the subject she was going to study anyway, but that she only ended up at St. Andrews because William was going there and, you know, um I met her very early after her marriage in the palace and I tried to talk to her about paintings and she absolutely, very politely, refused to engage. And at the time I thought, oh, maybe she's not really that interested at all. But then I saw the her own increasing mastery of imagery. So, it's not just that she's chosen things like, you know, being involved with the National Portrait Gallery uh or you know, her own photography um but that she is the one who has understood how they can use imagery to fulfill that royal role, you know, the the it's not clear whether Elizabeth II or Victoria said, I have to be seen to be believed. Um uh Elizabeth II said she thought it was probably Victoria who said that. Um but it's nevertheless a very good description of of a a core function of of the non-defined job is to be seen to be believed. And Kate has developed a way of doing it that doesn't actually involve her to be present at all and that showcases her family and herself in ways that when I first saw, for example, those videos she was putting out, um, I sort of thought, "But it looks so artificial. Why would you do that?" And then I realized, "No, this is for the kind of Instagram Tik Tok age. This is This is the content. She is finding a way to to meet those those mass audiences." And she also, um, is credited with the idea of giving out intimate family pictures as a way not of, um, infringing her own privacy, but protecting it because it stops paparazzi shots from having the same level of value.

[00:18:10]>> Well, I think it's also for the children, isn't it? So they're not confronted with rooms of cameras.

[00:18:14]>> Exactly.

[00:18:15]>> So it's quite it does very, very considered, though.

[00:18:17]>> Yeah. But it's But it's really clever.

[00:18:20]It's really It's really clever stuff.

[00:18:22]>> Yeah.

[00:18:23]>> So.

[00:18:23]>> Emily, you mentioned, you know, all the bad press that she got at the beginning of the relationship. What What do you think turned it around for her?

[00:18:32]>> Yeah. Well, so that is where I did have to look at the arrival of Meghan as well because it actually gets worse for Kate around the early days of Meghan.

[00:18:45]Um, but even before then, she was attracting coverage. Um, all of the the then young royals, though they're not really young anymore.

[00:18:55]>> None of us are, thankfully.

[00:18:58]>> Um, but all of them, uh, were attracting accusations of laziness, which ac- actually ignored the, um, understanding that there was at the time with uh, Elizabeth and Philip and the older royals that they were going to try and let them have as much leeway as possible to build their lives before they had to devote themselves to to um royal duty.

[00:19:27]Um but leaving that aside, they were always being criticized for it, you know, so Waity Katie became became lazy Katie, you know. And then you have her being dubbed the Duchess of Drab. Um and that was taken up by several >> [music] >> uh columnists and she was always sort of like being being you know, her eye bags being scrutinized, all the stuff that that horrible people do to women in the public eye. You know, like you can't look tired one day.

[00:20:00]Um but there was there was a sense of her being dull.

[00:20:04]>> Mhm.

[00:20:05]>> And so the first thing that turned it around was after Meghan arrived, there was this sort of ex you know, that that intensified because Meghan was the more obviously glamorous in in many ways.

[00:20:19]>> And she was a great public speaker.

[00:20:21]>> And she was and she yeah. And she was different.

[00:20:24]>> Yeah.

[00:20:24]>> And and the and sometimes sometimes we get excited by difference and sometimes we punish it and at the beginning she got both.

[00:20:32]>> Yeah.

[00:20:33]>> Um and you know, there was all the obvious racism of the coverage but there was also a lot of kind of you know, wow, look at this amazing woman.

[00:20:42]And in that phase um Kate actually was was slipping even more in terms of you know, the the supposed drabness. But one of the other things about Kate is she's very clever at understanding what she does is a long game. She's a player of the long game. So there weren't you know, there may have been background briefings and stuff there but there was no sort of >> Alarm bells.

[00:21:06]>> That no but was also no she didn't uh somebody who did not understand the long game might respond to that by trying to jazz up their own act.

[00:21:14]>> Yeah.

[00:21:15]>> She understood that that would not work.

[00:21:17]>> Mhm.

[00:21:17]>> Um and she has, if you look at her sort of fashion evolution, definitely figured out how to present herself. So, she in the those earlier days, she would do above the knee stuff, she'd do stuff that dated. Now, she's gone almost entirely into the sort of silver screen age for the for the dress the day dress lines of the kind of 1940s, which says to people kind of classic and elegant and whatever, but she never ever tries to go high fashion in a way that would be challenging.

[00:21:51]But she had to she just had to find a way to adapting to that. And where it turns around is of course at the moment where the public disenchantment with Meghan um led by very much led by the media um to begin with, but also then the reports of the rift within the household. And when I say led by the media, one of the other things about Kate and Meghan that is very similar to Anne Boleyn is their usage in culture wars. So, Kate becomes the kind of avatar for traditional values, for monarchy, for patriotism.

[00:22:31]And Meghan becomes the kind of um interloper who's there with dangerous progressive ideas and you know, she's and and that only is going to get that only gets worse. Um Yeah, so that's part of what turned things around for Kate. Um but her own management, her own absolute refusal to panic >> Mhm.

[00:22:55]>> and change things, you have to admire cuz >> She sort of stayed true to her The isn't she? well, >> could she couldn't she would never have been able to compete in different terms, but she she seems to know that and and also knows that this is the the way to win the long game, what she's done. And I say win, by the way, not as a battle against Kate, but I mean um against Meghan, but I mean as a way of prevailing in the public eye over a long period of time.

[00:23:23]>> Mhm.

[00:23:23]>> And then the cancer diagnosis, you know, that that um although that have been that created a whole series of other crises and of course there was very nasty stuff said about her as well as uh good stuff when when the news came out and and before the news came out, but then even once it came out.

[00:23:45]Um but it's it nevertheless helped to people to focus in on who she was and how effective she was and that she was really suddenly with the thinning ranks of the royals the only kind of major star in the ranks.

[00:24:05]>> Mhm.

[00:24:05]>> And someone who's very been relatable to people on the outside. I think you know, the fact that she came from from a you know, in inverted commas normal background.

[00:24:14]>> I say normal, but her dad was a pilot.

[00:24:16]>> Yeah, well, and and is even posher than that. So, one of the you know, when you ask you about things that that made me, you know, were surprising or whatever. I remembered some of this, but going back through the cuttings, they were so ridiculous some of them when she came on the scene. The Kate the coal miner's girl was was one of the more idiotic ones. Um you know, there's a grandfather who went down the mines, but that but on the other side it stretches all the way back to the provost of Eton during Henry VIII's time.

[00:24:47]Um this is this is >> a mixture.

[00:24:51]>> Yes, but also, you know, she went to to the very expensive private she had a very expensive private education and you know, they they and Carole Middleton, I mean, again, what a maligned um figure of a woman.

[00:25:04]>> Mhm.

[00:25:05]>> There she is doing her business um managing for many years to support the family in some style. Hardly ever speaks to the press at all and yet is accused of being somebody who's seeking the limelight and is more ambitious than she should be. All these tropes, they just repeat and repeat.

[00:25:25]>> And no one said it about Michael, have they?

[00:25:27]>> No. No no one No no one >> In the shadows.

[00:25:30]>> No, Pippa, of course, had a >> Yeah, she had a hard time as well.

[00:25:34]>> terrible time.

[00:25:35]>> Mhm.

[00:25:35]>> I mean, a good one at the beginning. To be, you know, complimented on your >> I don't know.

[00:25:40]>> derriere.

[00:25:41]>> [laughter] >> I mean, I agree it's better to be complimented on it than to be insulted for it.

[00:25:46]>> Yes. Yeah.

[00:25:46]>> But, I think there must be a you know, when when you're that young >> Oh, no. Yeah.

[00:25:51]>> um No, I know. I mean, it's it's a really it's a really tough one, but I think I'm only kind of pushing back on that a little bit because I think there is a way in which people who haven't seen what it's like for um women in the public eye think, oh, it's harmless.

[00:26:08]>> Yeah.

[00:26:09]>> I think it's harmless until you realize that you can't do anything. And one of the other thing that this book really rammed home for me is that um with with um I don't know what Kate's expectations were because she knew more about the what she was going into than Meghan did.

[00:26:29]Meghan clearly had no idea.

[00:26:31]>> Mhm.

[00:26:31]>> How old do you think that is?

[00:26:33]>> I will at my point about Planet Windsor, there's no way Meghan would have understood it. People say, oh, she could have Googled. You wouldn't get a sense of it. Harry was hardly the person who was going to be able cogently to tell her. It's something that you realize the more we know about what he was going through, you know, and how conflicted on so many levels he was. And I think that she thought that she was going to get a kind of fame that opened doors to her being able to do all sorts of stuff that, you know, do-good, do, you know, >> Angelina Jolie's.

[00:27:05]>> Yeah.

[00:27:06]And instead, what she got was a kind of fame that absolutely imprisons you. And that's what royal women all have. They they are absolutely, once you become a royal woman, you're never going to be anonymous again.

[00:27:19]>> We've talked about how Kate handled it.

[00:27:22]She just stayed quiet, didn't fight back. Obviously, Meghan did.

[00:27:27]>> Yeah.

[00:27:27]>> Is there a right and wrong?

[00:27:30]If she would have stayed quiet and just kind of let it go, would things be different? Is it Is it better to stay quiet?

[00:27:36]>> Well, one thing is they had different prospects within the institution.

[00:27:42]So, you know, Kate is you know, being prepared for queenship. And as I said, there's only one real set of jobs in the institution, and they are the the top job and and the consort, if you like. And [music] um and the consort is not, you know, is not that great a job or that defined a job either, but it is something. Um whereas uh being the wife of the spare would have always meant a secondary role in the eyes of the institution. And one of the early sources of, I think, confusion for Meghan was coming in, you know, having all this amazing the the positive press, the enthusiasm, and then being in an institution that kept trying to say no, stay in your lane, which they were doing because they see their job as as keeping the institution on an even keel, not on serving the individuals, but like the whole thing is about the institution.

[00:28:50]So, she had great people working for her.

[00:28:53]I don't think she necessarily understood how great those people working for her were, but I understand why she didn't understand what was going on, and I think that the expectation that she should have done is comes from people who don't know what it's like behind palace doors, and I just know enough to know that it would have completely wrong-footed me even after all these years. Someone like >> fancy it then, Catherine?

[00:29:19]>> Oof. Do you know, people have occasionally said, "Oh, they should hire you to advise them." It's like, yeah, that's going to happen in a million years, but um >> You might not last, but I don't know.

[00:29:29]You could be hired. We just don't know how long you'd >> I'd give excellent advice, but I don't know that any of it would be acted on.

[00:29:36]Um no, but seriously, I mean, one of the things, for example, I realized very clearly with this book, um I have been lucky enough to sort of see see the royals behind closed doors, but not in the inner inner sanctums, and I suddenly realized that even there, where I had imagined that they kind of kick off protocol along with their shoes, they're not doing that. They're they're still they're still, you know, I talked to one of >> still curtseys, and there were still >> I talked to one of Charles's old girlfriends, who um that was for the biography the biography I wrote of him.

[00:30:13]Um and she told me this really funny story about how they were all in this room waiting for him to come, and you know, they're all smoking out windows, and you know, being young people, and as soon as he arrived in the room, they all kind of went like that, and had to call him sir.

[00:30:28]And then, one she was supposed to curtsey to him and call him sir whenever she met him, even though she was like his girlfriend.

[00:30:36]>> And part of it >> Yeah. So, she goes to curtsey just as he leans forward to kiss him.

[00:30:41]Uh he leans forward to kiss her, and she gives him a Glasgow kiss.

[00:30:45]>> Oh my god.

[00:30:46]>> [laughter] >> Not the most romantic.

[00:30:49]>> No, not the most romantic. Also, it reminded me a bit about when Meghan had to be announced recently into a room.

[00:30:55]You know, you would think that no one does that, but actually the royals Oh, listen, I went with my husband, um, to state banquet, and we were just I mean, the whole the whole experience of being announced into the room is just such a funny thing. But I can see why, you know, again, it's what it's what they all they all >> They do it.

[00:31:16]>> I mean, obviously state banquet is a is a is a >> a formal >> a formal thing, but they do do it at other um, kinds of of formal receptions. They absolutely do.

[00:31:29]>> I can't imagine that you would find, going back to Meghan, that you would find out anything surprising about her, because we've kind of seen her come into the scene. We've I mean, we it's what we've been told really about her, and what she has later said.

[00:31:43]Is there anything that you've discovered writing this book that again surprised you or that >> I was >> changed something in you.

[00:31:52]>> Yeah, I mean, one of the things was I'm I'm a dual national, um, and so I've spent my whole life with this sort of dual awareness of how, um, the UK sees Americans and how Americans see the UK, which I think was very useful for that chapter.

[00:32:12]But one of the things I realized is that that sort of treating America as a as just one one country fails to understand the essential Californianness of Meghan. And that if you understand that Californianness, you not only understand the sort of more obvious things like the fact that she expects to be able to talk about emotion, and that she uses phrases that people here find, you know, grating and new-agey and all of this stuff. But, also that who she is, that kind of um reaction to her as a biracial woman that was so wide of the mark is because people don't realize how extraordinarily diverse California is and it's very long colonial history, which of course saw it at various times falling to the British and the Spaniards and, you know, having having all these different populations.

[00:33:10]And when um she was born, the uh her very existence was not, as people tended to see it, something unusual, but actually kind of very much in within the demographic trends. So, I think um there are things to do with her kind of expectation that she would not be um you know, to use to to use a word that may set teeth on edge, othered, um make a lot more sense if you understand that she came from a culture where she was like bang in the middle of all of those trends. Um and I think also, you know, understanding what the entertainment industry is like, understanding as we do the very different ways in which um the media in the states works. I mean, again, I worked for Time magazine for a long time, but I also um I know what I know the kind of levels of deference are entirely different. If you go to um you know, with the with the White House uh correspondents, I used to be uh part of the lobby here in Westminster. And, [music] you know, if you did some those joint presses with the Prime Minister and and a President, the American press would be so shocked at the direct questioning.

[00:34:36]You know, so I think it's less stuff that is you know, facts that we didn't know about her. Though I think you'll find I probably have um uncovered a few.

[00:34:49]Um no, more than a few. But it's but it's really to do with why people have allowed themselves to actually hate her as much as they have.

[00:34:59]Because what surprised me was not that people who are already engaged with these subjects have strong feelings. But when I was writing the book, I would ask friends who professed to have no interest in the Royals whatsoever, "What do you think about them?" And they'd go, "Oh, well, you know, I I can't stand that Meghan." And I'd go, "Why? You know, you tell me you don't ever read anything, you don't watch anything.

[00:35:25]Um what is it that you can't stand?" And it's like, "Oh, well, you know, she's she's just, you know, pushy and she's trying to do all this stuff. And her television program's terrible." they'd say. And I'd go, "Well, why did you watch it then?"

[00:35:40]"Oh, I didn't."

[00:35:41]>> There's a lot of fascination, isn't there? Regardless of where you sit on it.

[00:35:45]>> And I think attitudes are carried in way This is something else I tried to show in the book is that attitudes spread in really amazingly um powerful ways.

[00:35:59]So, nearly all of the women in the book, you could stop people on the street and they would have opinions about them.

[00:36:06]Even even though they'd probably have very, very little information.

[00:36:10]>> Do you think it's something people just absorb?

[00:36:12]>> Yeah. I mean, um my my good friend um Sandi Toksvig, the co-founder of the Women's Equality Party with me, talked about um when when we had the idea to do that and we both simultaneously had the idea. She talked about it it um being the you know, sort of like in the air that I now can't remember. She had a rather wonderful simile simile with birds and and milk bottle tops, but I've forgotten what that one was. But the point is it's just it's there. It's in the ether, and sometimes in a good way it it means that everybody moves in a good direction. But we're in this polarized angry age.

[00:36:53]>> Yeah.

[00:36:53]>> And people have allowed themselves to be persuaded to hate on a woman who you know, I go through the bullying allegations in the book. Um I'm not by any means saying anybody in the book is perfect, but what I am saying is to allow yourself to hate without understanding in that way, it not only affects the person in question, but it has wider effects on views of women and therefore on all of us.

[00:37:22]>> Yeah.

[00:37:23]I was going to ask about the bullying um allegations actually, cuz it we were talking about this just before you arrived. Um she's she's not been shy about seeking redress on commentary. Um well, both her and Harry have not been shy about going after the press if they feel that they've been wronged. But this is an occasion where she didn't. Do you think she drew the line in the way that, you know, you you said uh Kate did? That there comes a point where you know, you can't just keep if you keep challenging these things, it might work in the short term, but you have to sort of let things go.

[00:37:57]>> Uh I don't know that there was an any uh you know, one of the things that that seems to me very unfortunate about the whole way that the institution handled the bullying allegations. I mean, there were so many things that were wrong with the way that they did that.

[00:38:15]They they should have taken any allegations seriously and sort of dealt with them in real time. They're essentially medieval institution with kind of modern things like like HR departments grafted on, but the HR department doesn't deal with the principals.

[00:38:30]>> Mhm.

[00:38:30]>> Um so, quite how they would have dealt with that is is another matter. And what we know, you know, now all of these allegations have come out of, you know, around other members of the the royal family bullying and um there are there are many terrible allegations about what has gone on at other times. And I'm not saying that to minimize any of the allegations against Meghan. What I'm saying is it's an institution that doesn't have the structures in place to deal with any of this.

[00:39:00]It then for, you know, >> [music] >> as we know, the allegations emerged um in tandem with the uh Oprah Winfrey interview. And that immediately made it look like they were being used in order to um deflect and detract from anything that Meghan and Harry said, any criticisms that they uh were came out within that interview, which strikes me as incredibly unfair to the people who made the bullying allegations because it immediately sews this notion, "Oh, well, they can't be real because look at the timing here."

[00:39:42]Um by the time that it's had been it come public in that way and been used in that way, how on earth would they have then gone about doing that job? Because in this polarized atmosphere, I can't imagine that anybody who even wanted to make a public complaint would then feel that they could live their lives >> No.

[00:40:09]>> afterwards.

[00:40:10]>> No.

[00:40:11]>> You know, one of the things about dealing with these things where there issues where, you know, there's a he said, she said kind of aspect to it is you do want to do those things at a point where people where there's where there's a chance of A institutional learning, but B recompense of necessary and a correction of behavior, but you don't do it at a point where the people at the center of the of it and I'm not talking about Megan herself. I'm talking about the people making the allegations would themselves then become the story.

[00:40:45]>> Yeah.

[00:40:46]>> And you know, so it was left way too long and and surfaced at the wrong time.

[00:40:51]And I think um that in turn makes it kind of impossible for her.

[00:41:01]So, you know, it's it's it's a difficult one. I mean, I was here I was hearing the stories way before they you know, one of the reasons why I'm saying this.

[00:41:11]Um when when did you when did you first hear? Cuz I would It was before before the wedding.

[00:41:17]>> Yeah, way Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we heard certain stories about certain moments that actually then after a years came out.

[00:41:23]>> Yeah. Will you take my point then?

[00:41:25]You know, if if you're serious about stopping that happening, you deal with it then.

[00:41:30]>> Yeah.

[00:41:31]Let's go from one difficult case to another.

[00:41:34]>> [laughter] >> Because you did say at the beginning, you know, you spoke about the end of her life and how it would was it avoidable? Because she was loved. I mean, she was hounded by the press, but it was different.

[00:41:46]>> When you say she was loved, no. I mean, honestly, the one of the the bits that surprised me is going through the press coverage.

[00:41:55]>> I remember in the lead up to her accident.

[00:41:58]>> It was toxic toxic toxic. It's it was so bad.

[00:42:01]>> Oh, so young. Sorry.

[00:42:03]>> [laughter] >> No.

[00:42:06]It There there are things like um the article that I think came out the day she died that um said something like it's a shame Gucci doesn't make face zips because then >> Oh, no.

[00:42:18]>> Um then if when she was about to open her ill-informed mouth, you know, we'd be able to zip it up and stuff.

[00:42:26]Um but no, it was disgusting what was written about her. It was actually by the way disgusting what was written about Dodi. So the the sort of um it's it's like I keep wondering whether some of the awful allegations against Mohamed Al-Fayed were actually missed because people assumed it was part of that terrible coverage that there was around you know, the the the brown man and the princess which which was is so bad. I'm I'm not going to quote any of it, but it's terrible.

[00:43:03]And um the but but with Diana herself, it's the most reductive um and nasty coverage.

[00:43:13]She's being portrayed as insane. She's being portrayed as a bad mother. She has been You know, she appears at some point with a slightly rounded stomach and there's a ton of pregnancy rumors.

[00:43:26]Um and but also, you know, commentary on her body just unbridled and this is a woman in recovery from eating disorders.

[00:43:34]So um it really is about as bad as it could be.

[00:43:40]And so this the the subsequent you know, now that Diana's is portrayed as as this figure who could do no wrong in many, you know, there are still she still has her detractors, but um that the about turn was instant. Some of the same people who were writing and by the way, a lot of them women.

[00:44:02]>> Oh.

[00:44:02]>> Can I just say one of the other things that you know, I knew, but seeing it making myself go through the cuttings the use of the female columnists to attack other women >> It's horrible.

[00:44:14]>> is so unpleasant. Um you know, don't do it women. Um >> [laughter] >> you There's no need. Um but you know, it's it's done to give cover.

[00:44:24]>> Mhm.

[00:44:24]>> If you can if you can get a woman to say it, um then then it must be >> obvious misogyny. Yeah.

[00:44:30]>> But it But it absolutely is.

[00:44:32]>> Mhm.

[00:44:33]>> Was that the worst chapter of >> I was thinking the word in Spanish. Sorry. Was that the worst chapter for you to kind of research and unpick?

[00:44:43]>> Uh it was when I got emotional about it.

[00:44:45]I mean, there is also cuz I wrote about uh my friend Paula Yates who had um some people uh listening or watching uh this will will probably be like you >> No, but I do remember Paula Yates.

[00:45:01]>> discussing Paula Yates recently because I was I was telling some other younger colleagues about her and what a huge cultural figure she was.

[00:45:09]>> Yeah.

[00:45:10]>> That's one to go and research listeners if you're not familiar with her.

[00:45:12]>> Yeah. I mean, just just look up her interviews. She was funny. She was brilliant. She was transgressive. She was the first woman to front a rock show. She was the first woman to appear pregnant while fronting a rock show.

[00:45:25]And um do you know what the um what the uh was it the NME that wrote uh that terrible thing when she appeared um pregnant uh on on the tube which was the program with Jools Holland. It said the only saving grace would be if she miscarried.

[00:45:45]You know, I mean, the stuff that people were writing about women, the level of misogyny. Now, Paula was a friend of mine.

[00:45:52]She was broken by many things in life, but her coverage was one of them and she had this encounter with Diana where um Diana said to her mean, that she and Diana knew each other.

[00:46:06]And uh Diana said to her, "Oh, I'm always pleased when I see you on the covers of the papers because I know I'll have the day off."

[00:46:14]>> God, how awful. How sad.

[00:46:16]>> and you know, I I lived through the death of Paula's um partner um Michael Hutchence, who was a very close friend of mine, and then her death, and she was a very close friend of mine around that same period. And so, I think when I was thinking about the impacts of that kind of media coverage on vulnerable people, because both Michael and Paula were vulnerable, and Diana was 100% a vulnerable person.

[00:46:50]Um I think that that's where I I had forced myself really, because I'd had to live through it, and I'd had to pick up pieces and do all sorts of supporting of other people in the aftermath. I think I had not ever let myself access my emotions around it, to be perfectly honest. So, in that sense, um you can probably see I'm slightly welling up now, and I sat there just weeping while I read the chapter.

[00:47:17]>> it brought that whole period back to you, I can imagine. Yeah.

[00:47:20]>> Yeah.

[00:47:21]>> Oh, it's terrible. I'm so sorry.

[00:47:24]Last time we saw each other was at a Woman of the World event hosted by Queen Camilla.

[00:47:29]Um you've got you've been able to spend a bit of time following her, getting to know her. I'm fascinated to hear your take on how and she has sort of transformed her own image in the public eye, hasn't she?

[00:47:42]>> She's she's the most amazing She has the most amazing arc of all of the women in the book. Yeah. She's probably the one that from the outside people will think, "Oh, there's less of interest in this chapter." No.

[00:47:53]Oh my god, no.

[00:47:55]Um but you know, she was she has described the opposite arc to Meghan.

[00:48:02]She she has gone from the probably most hated or one of the most hated women in the world when, you know, seen as the other woman in in the Charles and Diana marriage breakdown to being um, she's not top of the pops, but um, she is solidly into the um, plus popularity ratings and more to the point she's now seen as a stalwart of the monarchy as opposed to the biggest threat that it faced.

[00:48:33]>> Yeah, it's an incredible change.

[00:48:35]>> amazing. But, also she's an incomer.

[00:48:39]She's that she So, the two successful incomers, well, three cuz obviously Sophie Rhys-Jones as she was, you know, Sophie Edinburgh is now um, a successful incomer, but she certainly had a huge bump on on her early days.

[00:48:56]Kate is, you know, successful, but doesn't always look like she's enjoying it and you sort of sense this huge huge pressure on her as the star.

[00:49:06]Camilla just kind of like comes in and takes to it like a duck to water. I do think that part of the reason that she and Charles have such a good relationship is that thing about the similarity in their background. So, although he comes from this sort of cold and dysfunctional planet Windsor, they have huge numbers of friendships and and attitudes and and a world view that is in many ways closely aligned. Um, and so, you see that, but what she has, and you will know this from being around her is she has an absolutely wicked sense of humor. She's very funny. Yeah. Quite blue. Um, >> [laughter] >> I think since she became queen, I think it also has improved. I remember around the time they didn't want her to be queen and there was all this chatter about, you know, no queen consort and that was a queen consort was the word that was used. But I have to say in recently she that this is very silly but there was a video of her getting a dog at a walkabout and letting the dog lick her face and we put it on our social media and it went viral. All the comments were, "Oh, well, now I like her." Yeah.

[00:50:18]>> It took >> Yeah, it took her >> It took a >> [laughter] >> Yeah, and they were like, "Well, look at her. Wow, she's incredible." She's actually really good with animals and I think that also it appeals to a lot of people, you know, not >> She's almost as as much of a horsewoman as as her mother-in-law. Yeah. Not not the man. I mean, obviously, nobody is as is as much of a horsewoman except her daughter but yeah, I mean, she is one of the thing I talked to a lot of the people I talked to would not be named but I did talk to Patty Hewson who was named who was there um director of uh the secretary of communications throughout the the really key period including the marriage.

[00:51:01]And um he his whole thing was kind of like, "Well, if people see more of her, they'll like her."

[00:51:07]>> Mhm.

[00:51:08]>> Yeah.

[00:51:08]>> And I think that is absolutely true but I think it needed that bedding down into the formal, you know, who she is, what the role is for that to work. Um and that's and it also needed the uh warmth or the apparent warmth with other family members to help that, too.

[00:51:31]Um but but I do think also the fact that when both Charles and Kate got their cancer diagnosis, she was one of the ones who just had to step in and do everything.

[00:51:41]>> really sort of come to the fore at that moment, didn't she?

[00:51:43]>> I feel I feel like there are two other things I want to say about that occasion that we met each other at.

[00:51:49]>> Yes, these two. Which was >> Um you know, it's a very very lovely party in St. James's Palace and um one is a serious point, which is she gave a speech there that showed >> It was it but so tricky in the circumstances and it showed you how difficult their lives are because of the whole issue with uh Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor's association with Jeffrey Epstein. But what you saw was um her talking about Giselle Pelico and talking about uh the abuse of women but not being able to name-check um the Epstein victims. And um there were legal reasons for her doing that, but everybody in the room was very aware that she was she was trying to say something without saying anything.

[00:52:42]>> as she could >> as close as she could get, but it It It would It showed a whole you know, It showed a showed a potential huge fault line for the future, but it but it was interesting.

[00:52:53]But there's also something um that happened on the edge of that party, which is when we came into the big room at St. James's, you go through a room called the Tapestry Room, which is a kind of very beautiful but longer narrow uh corridor-shaped room and there's a fireplace in it and on that fireplace there are uh carvings known as quatrefoils.

[00:53:18]And one of them has an entwined H and A and it is one of the few examples, a few traces of Anne Boleyn left because that whole palace was being built by Henry VIII for Anne, but she never got to live in it. When he had her executed, he sent his workmen out to remove all trace of her.

[00:53:43]They missed her They They did some really chilling things like um her emblem was a falcon and they turned it into the bird that represented Jane Seymour. They just like changed the bird.

[00:53:57]>> going over your tattoos, isn't it?

[00:53:59]>> And um but they got rid of the They got rid of these things, but they missed it on the fireplace. And I was pointing this out to um Sandi cuz I I arrived with Sandi.

[00:54:13]And we somehow managed to arrive at the same time as Helen Mirren. And we were in this mad We suddenly in this mad group of women. It was me, Sandi, Helen Mirren, um Hannah Waddingham, uh and um Miriam Margolyes.

[00:54:31]>> What What a lineup.

[00:54:32]>> And And I was suddenly tour guiding for them. So >> [laughter] >> I was I was thinking my life is sometimes quite surreal and I was explaining what that was on the fireplace. And then I said, "You may also find that you're told that um Queen Elizabeth I wrote her famous Tilbury speech in this room, but let me tell you two things about that. One is that that's very probably not true.

[00:54:58]And two is that she quite possibly never wrote the speech or never gave it at all."

[00:55:03]>> Oh.

[00:55:03]>> And what I had forgotten is that Helen Mirren herself has delivered that speech. And she got kind of upset and she was kind of going, "But I love that speech."

[00:55:14]>> [laughter] >> I was like, "Oh my god, I've upset the queen."

[00:55:19]And um And while this was going on, I felt like a tugging on my sleeve and I looked down and Miriam Margolyes said, "You are a very attractive woman, you know."

[00:55:28]>> [laughter] >> What a day out. I I obviously missed the the most fun parts of it because I was in the room waiting to [clears throat] cover it. But it sounds like it was all going It was all happening before you [laughter] got into the room. Um Catherine is absolutely fascinating. Um what what do you think that I mean, what would you like your book to achieve? Do you Would you like us all to take a long hard look at the way uh you know, the world the way the world views royal women? I mean, the women in general.

[00:55:56]>> I think it started for me in some ways because people were always telling me, "Oh, the monarchy's a sideshow. Royal women are a sideshow." And all all all my sort of feminist friends was like, "We don't care about royal women." And I was saying, "Well, you should because most women are if anything marginal Women's history is marginalized. A tiny, tiny portion of recorded history is devoted to women's stories. So, I was like, "Well, actually, you need to care about royal women because they are the ones that we know the most about. We see them most the most reliably."

[00:56:30]But I also feel that one of the things that is most wrong with the world at the moment is the the intersection of old media and new and the polarization and the hatred. We are so easily persuaded and disinformation, by the way, you know, in my last chapter I go into to deep fakes and all of these things. We are so easily persuaded to not only believe lies but inflammatory lies and to hate women and to pit women against each other. And I am just This is This is a plea to not do that because we all suffer as a result. The women themselves suffer. We suffer because of views of women. But it's also something that like literally has an impact on the kind of world we live in.

[00:57:20]>> Thank you, Catherine. And all the best for the book. And we'd love to have you back to talk more.

[00:57:26]>> Congratulations.

[00:57:27]>> Thank you.

[00:57:28]>> That's all from us today. Thanks very much to Catherine for joining us and to you for listening. And don't forget if you want to keep the royal conversation going, >> [music] >> come and join us over at Hello VIP. It's the only place where you can read our exclusive [music] unfiltered opinion pieces, browse our historic magazine vault and unlock premium reporting you won't find anywhere [music] else. To sign up head to hellomagazine.com/subscribe or click the link in our podcast description.

[00:57:54]See you next week.