Omid Scobie writing tell all book

[CosmosQueen]

The biographer of the Duke and Duchess of Sussexwarned that his next book will reveal moments that the Royal family should be “ashamed of”.
Omid Scobie claimed he was one of few journalists writing about the Royal family whose work was impartial and “spin-free”
As such, he said his forthcoming book, provocatively titled Endgame: Inside the Royal Family and the Monarchy’s Fight for Survival, would focus on the negative as much as the positive and would shine a light on “unsolved mysteries”
“Endgame not only looks at the successes of our Royal family but also the failures; the things to be proud of and those they should be ashamed of,” he wrote in the I newspaper

Just when will this end? I feel so sorry for their poor children who will have to live with the knowledge that their parents and his obnoxious individual were prepared to do anything to make money.

Oh dear .
more revisionism .

I remember the ‘royal’ response to the accusations of racism .
It was made v clear that this was Elizabeth addressing the nation

It wasn’t .

What else wasn’t true ?
Did Elizabeth really change her mind about Camilla or was that anothe weekend at Bernie’s scenario ?

Good grief.

Quite. The statement came from “the Palace”. No one ever said it came from the Queen directly, although it would be assumed that she would have been well aware of the wording and would have had final approval. There are presumably some who believe it came directly from her, but most would have applied common sense.

Only one revising things is you.

I'm not being drawn into your pigeon chess anymore.

this why we cant have nice things ffs

The palace statements are made in the queens name .
It is the queen speaking .

look it up

So we now know it wasn’t the queen at all .
So that shows all the froth about the Windsors being trained from birth to do this special role is more bullshit .
A commitee is running the show !
Lets cut out the middleman

No I don’t think the same about politicans and their speech writers

The royals are presented as ‘special’ individuals when it suits them and mere figureheads when it suits them .
We were told it was the queen addressing the nation over serious allegations.
Now we are told it wasn’t the queen at all.

If they are made in the monarch’s name, then the monarch has given their approval of what is being said. So it was the Queen. She was the boss. Hers was the final decision. Not the committee’s that came up with the ideas. She just took their counsel then made the final decision. Very wise

You know, when I first starting posting here, I was barely lukewarm towards the RF, and had definite Republican leanings.

I'm now very much pro-Royalty as the Republican arguments are just batshit crazy generally.

I read them and I just continually facepalm.

I feel the same way about the pro-royalty posts. Completely nuts.

Absolutely this .

William and Catherine are rich beyond dreams, they are the King and Queen in waiting, and they don't have to do a thing. It's all theirs; a billionaire lifestyle, feted, applauded, invited to anything that matters, just for being them. They smile for the cameras and leave everyone in their wake astonished at how lovely, down to earth, interested and how just plain nice they are. They negotiate with the press regarding their and their children's privacy, they're reasonable, they listen to advice and they're winning the press game because of it.

Harry and Meghan had similar, they were slightly less important but that came with benefits. They couldn't do it, couldn't play the game, or couldn't bear to be second fiddle. They're now scrabbling around with pap shots and puff pieces in an attempt to save their reputation and to figure out ways of earning enough money to have the motorcade, red carpet and HRH days back. They had everything and they've lost it because of their hubris and I've never seen such a public and humiliating fumbling of the bag.

that's some weird fantasy you created there. Do you think being obscenely wealthy and privileged without doing anything for it is something to be admired?

Won't this be a derail? I'm not sure it's relevant to the thread... Maybe you could open a thread with that question and I'll look out for it if you're genuinely interested in whether I personally think inherited wealth is admirable. Give me a day or two to consider it because it's not something I've ever thought of, then maybe pm me.

Comparing the palace statement about "recollections" and the Sussex statements about the "near catastrophic car chase" to me it becomes apparent that anyone in the public eye needs really really good advice before they release any statement to the press. It seems very important that phrases are succinct and if at all possible not left open to interpretation or embellishment by the media. Whether or not the Queen herself wrote it I think the fact she approved it shows a grasp of how careful people need to be when making public statements.

To go back to the initial topic of the thread, I don't think Scobie is the right person to carefully sift through sources and interviews and draw any conclusions except those which he is already expecting to find.

@MrsLeonFarrell

The point is none of us have any idea if the queen approved the statement .
Never mind writing it !

Same goes for all recent statements ( looking at you Chaz and Camilla )

For the final time. It was an official BP statement - of course the Queen approved it. It wouldnt have been released if she hadnt approved it. It says in the Valentine Low article that she approved it. No, she didn't write it - I'm stunned anyone actually thought she did.

Any official statements have to be approved by the Principles involved.

I don't see any evidence that the Queen didn't approve the statement. In the absence of that I think the logical assumption is that she did approve it as head of the family. I see no reason to believe she wrote it though, in fact Valentine Low's article is clear she didn't. I would have the same assumption for any statement the King or the Prince of Wales' household releases.

On a slightly unrelated note it seems to me to be sensible to get others to draft statements in such situations. The royals are only human and regardless of what actually happened it is clear that emotions in the family were running high on both sides. How much better to get someone professional to write a draft. The palace is very good at grey rocking the media with short, fairly neutral comments that are harder to run with for very many articles. Longer, more emotional statements can be picked over by the tabloid for days.

Um, OK. Unnecessary take on it.

I'm sure a lot of people did fall over themselves to say the Queen was very clever. Others have now started to attribute it to Kate, even though the book literally just said that she approved it.

All I am saying is that I'm surprised that anyone could thing that the head of a billion pound global enterprise would be sat alone scratching out sentences with her pen, and logging into Twitter to schedule it too, I suppose.

Which is not the same as thinking that the Queen, as head of that enterprise, and whom the statement was attributed to, was wise to approve the statement in its final form. I wrote blog posts for other members of staff in a small firm all the time - and that was a tiny affair.

That's true now as it was then.

It’s unsurprising that all the posters who credited the queen with that phrase, and praised her for how clever she was, and how the phase so effectively discredited Harry and Meghan, are now absent from the RF forums.

I remember some posters saying that the PR teams would have written the statement and those posters being howled down for being wrong. When, it now turns out they weren’t wrong at all.

PR people spun the response, now they’re respinning it. They/RF have made it known Kate was the decisive one that wanted the phrase left in. I’m not sure that Kate being cast in this role is ultimately in Kate’s best interest. I hope it is. Time will tell.

At any rate, we now know for sure that any statement from Royal Family senior members is to be seen for what it is. Best case spin on any situation. Not from the heart of anyone.

I specifically remember thinking whoever came up with “recollections may very” should get a pay rise

Haha @Morestrangerthings I think there were even talks of how the queen gave a short sharp slap on Harry's wrist or something alike.

I get where you are coming from @Novella4
In her later years, the queen was being lied to left, right and centre. I remember Harry diplomatically saying "she gets bad advice".

One situation was Harry and Meghan telling a courtier all their problems, he put his hand to his mouth (feigning shock), writing everything down. He assured them that they will work a solution for them and seemed disgusted by what was going on against the couple. He told them to leave it with him. Some time later, a meeting with the queen and Harry repeats everything and says no help came. The queen asks if this is true, the same courtier says, no H&M never told them about their problems.

The queen was just a front, especially in her last days. Getting 'advice' and probably signing whatever was in front of her with no strength to scrutinise. The palace sure took advantage of 'our long serving queen' respect from the public.

Yes, what a brilliant phrase that was. A master stroke.

'At any rate, we now know for sure that any statement from Royal Family senior members is to be seen for what it is. Best case spin on any situation. Not from the heart of anyone.'

Actually, we don't know anything of the sort. It must be a very difficult, exasperating line to tread, responding to serious accusations without descending into tit for tat commentary. Least said, soonest mended is another great maxim (probably dreamed up by a spin doctor in the medieval court.)

As far as Kate having an input into the statement, after lipglossgate and bridesmaidsdressgate I'm sure she has as a very real idea of what recollections may vary actually means in this particular context.

After lipgloss and bridesmaid dresses and now this, Kate sure sound petty af.

I'm a bit at the idea that MNetters were praising the Queen specifically for coming up with the phrase

Here's a typical comment from the immediate aftermath

"That statement is a masterclass in public relations. It shuts it down and is dignified and classy"

Or posters saying they are "intrigued" by it, or think it's "sly", "code" "naughty" "passive aggressive" "clever" "deliberate" (I've been through a lot of threads via AS, and have tried to cover a range of comments, not just the positive, though I would say that positive is the vast majority - though it's about acumen in choosing a statement of that kind, nothing about specific authorship). Also that it will become a "classic phrase" - which indeed it has.

I don't see any specific praise for the late Queen as author, nor anything else that suggests a belief that she wrote it herself, though it is of course attributed to her because she published it