King Charles declared he was “all right very much, just about” today in his first public comments since fresh controversy erupted over a royal race row.
He is in the city to give an opening address at the COP28 climate change summit and began his visit with a 30 minute meeting with Nigeria’s President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
They shook hands warmly and President Tinubu asked: “How are you?” The King, in a tanned suit, took his seat and said; “I’m all right very much, just about. Having had a rather ancient birthday recently recovering from the shock of that.”
Rick Evers, a Dutch journalist who wrote a review of the book but was then asked to remove it after the Dutch publishers withdrew the edition from sale, read out the extracts on social media.
“Complete paragraphs are missing,” he said, identifying the royals. “That’s as clear as anything. I cannot imagine that that’s a matter of translation.”
The Dutch edition covers private letters between the King and Meghan discussing the controversy in which the monarch insisted there was no ill will or bias. It says: “But in those private letters an identity was revealed and confirmed”. It then goes on to name the individual.
Mr Evers, who normally specialises in covering the Dutch monarchy, quoted from a passage describing how the second royal jokingly shivered when Meghan’s name was mentioned.
It goes on to say that Meghan and Charles spoke about “unconscious bias within the family after it was revealed that x and y (the Daily Express has redacted the names) participated in such conversations about Archie”. That intensified speculation about how the two names could have crept into the book, amid threats of legal action from the Royal Household.
It comes after the controversy over a new book about the monarchy deepened yesterday after it emerged that a second royal alleged to be embroiled in a race row has been named.
Author Omid Scobie and his publishers have been unable to explain how two royals alleged to have raised concerns about the skin colour of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s first child, Prince Archie, were named in the Dutch edition of the book Endgame but not elsewhere in the world.
Mr Scobie and his Dutch publishers blamed a mistranslation when it was revealed that one senior royal was named on page 128. They insisted that at no point did the author send out any manuscripts identifying the individuals he believes made the remarks.
That seemed to be clear. But doubts grew over the idea that it was a mistranslation yesterday after it emerged that a second royal is named on page 324 of the Dutch edition. In both cases, the entire paragraph is missing from the editions published in Britain and other countries.
