Hello, and happy Friday! This correspondence is coming to you all the way from coronation-themed London, where virtually every street has been decked out in red, white, and blue bunting and mini Union Jack flags in preparation for this weekend’s official crowning of King Charles III.
Fun fact: The United Kingdom is the only European monarchy that still retains a coronation. For anyone under the age of 70, this will be the first one they’ve ever seen.
As someone who is avowedly indifferent to all things monarchy, I’ve struggled to feign much interest in the coronation. (As soon as I’m finished covering the main event on Saturday, I’ll be jumping on the first train out of London to escape the mayhem). If the polls are any indication, most Britons aren’t all that enthused about it either. But you wouldn’t necessarily know it if you were here:
In fairness to the royalists among us, this coronation does mark a historic, if mostly symbolic, moment for Britain. And after the past year this country has had—three prime ministers, record-breaking inflation, crippling strikes, and a deep cost-of-living crisis—perhaps the festivities are just what it needs. Goodness knows we could all use more bank holidays.
What I’ve written
In the run-up to the coronation, I wrote this fun piece on the enduring oddness of King Charles III.
What distinguishes Charles from his mother, as well as most other members of his family, is his vast array of interests and hobbies. Many Britons could probably name something about the king that most would find eccentric or odd: His love of red squirrels, for example, or his passion for British hedgerows. There’s also his disdain for cube-shaped ice. Virtually everyone in the country, if not the world, knows how he feels about leaking pens. Keep reading here
I also wrote about how the rmonarchy’s popularity is faring under its new sovereign:
Opponents of the monarchy believe that time is on their side. As they see it, Queen Elizabeth was the royal family’s star player who was widely admired by royalists and anti-royalists alike. Though Charles’ personal approval rating has improved recently to 62%, it scarcely rivals that of the late queen. “There are plenty of criticisms made about Charles, but he just isn’t the queen,” says Graham Smith, the chief executive of the anti-monarchy group Republic and the author of the forthcoming book, Abolish the Monarchy. “And that’s his main problem.” Keep reading here
Plus, more monarchy-related stories:
How much King Charles’s coronation is setting back British taxpayers
What to make of new revelations that King Charles III’s ancestors owned slaves
What I’ve read
This excerpt from Samuel Earle’s new book, Tory Nation (The New York Times)
For over a decade, the Conservatives have ransacked the country they claim to love, unmooring it from its foundations and enriching their chums. While the wealth of the very richest rocketed, the party’s program of austerity, begun by David Cameron in 2010 and continued by each Conservative prime minister since, starved public services, created one of the most miserly welfare states in the developed world and contributed to the longest period of wage stagnation — for many, wage regression — since the Napoleonic Wars. Life expectancy is down, child poverty is up, and there are few signs of a reprieve on the horizon. Life under the Tories has become poorer, nastier, more brutish and shorter.
This extraordinary piece on the royal women of Dubai who risked everything to flee (The New Yorker)
For more than half her life, Latifa had been devising plans to flee her father, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the leader of Dubai and the Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates. Sheikh Mohammed is an ally of Western governments, celebrated for transforming Dubai into a modern power. Publicly, he has placed gender equality at the heart of his plan to propel the U.A.E. to the top of the world economic order, vowing to “remove all the hurdles that women face.” But for his daughter Dubai was “an open air prison,” where disobedience was brutally punished.
This long read on Ukraine’s plan to beat Putin—and take back Crimea (The Atlantic)
Only one thing matters: Russia’s leaders must conclude that the war was a mistake, and Russia must acknowledge Ukraine as an independent country with the right to exist. The Russian elite, in other words, must experience an internal shift of the kind that led the French to end their colonial project in Algeria in the early 1960s—a change that was accompanied by the collapse of the French constitutional order, attempted assassinations, and a failed coup d’état. A slower but equally profound shift took place in Britain in the early 20th century, when the British ruling class was forced to stop talking about the Irish as peasants incapable of running their own state, and let them create one. When that happens in Russia, the war will be over. Not suspended, not delayed for a month or a year—over.
What I’m thinking about
Just how good the latest season of Ted Lasso has been. Although I initially chafed at Apple TV’s decision to release episodes one week at a time (no doubt to make sure those seasonal subscriptions last a bit longer), I’ve come to appreciate enjoying this new season slowly. Goodness knows every episode has been well worth the wait.
Until next time,
Yasmeen
P.S. I’ve got a big story coming out in a couple of weeks! Stay tuned 👀