A London literature scholar reads about the Sussexes as very public private citizens and wonders what an Edwardian short story writer would have done with the belt
Monday, 19 October 2026. Bloomsbury. The British Library reading room, a book of Saki stories, a pencil, and a strict instruction not to laugh out loud, 2.40pm.
Saki And The Society Pages
For readers who have not met him, Saki was the pen name of H. H. Munro, an Edwardian short story writer who spent the years before the First World War demolishing upper-class society with stories so sharp they could be used to slice cucumber sandwiches. His characters are aunts, debutantes, bored young men and hostesses who mistake cruelty for conversation. He would have adored the twenty-first century. He would have adored the Sussexes most of all.
I was reading Saki in the library this afternoon when I made the mistake of checking my phone and reading the report on how Harry and Meghan insist they are private citizens. It describes a couple arriving at a charity engagement behind barriers, with pooled press, cheering crowds and a commentator logging the origin of a belt from Marks and Spencer. It calls the event an unofficial official royal engagement. It imagines a constitutional expert needing three cups of tea and an aspirin to explain it.
I had to leave the reading room and laugh in the corridor. A security guard asked if I was all right. I said I was reading Saki and the news at the same time. He said that would do it.
A Saki Story In Four Categories
The report’s constitutional expert concludes that the couple are private citizens when the subject is institutional obligation, public figures when the subject is security, royal celebrities when conducting engagements and ordinary parents when asking photographers to leave their children alone. All four can be true provided nobody asks which one applies at a given moment.
That is a Saki short story waiting to be written. A young Edwardian couple announce that they are retiring from society. They then hold a retirement party, invite the newspapers, and arrange a walk through Hyde Park at precisely the hour when society walks through Hyde Park. A dowager aunt observes that they have retired from society in the same way a cat retires from the kitchen, which is to say, loudly and near the food. I would read it. Saki would have written it in an afternoon and gone to his club.
The Belt As A Literary Device
The report notes that ITV’s coverage itemised the outfit down to the belt and the shoes, and that a burgundy coat became a diplomatic instrument. Edwardian fiction is full of this. In the novels I teach, a woman’s gloves can carry an entire chapter of meaning. A hat can end an engagement. In Saki, a carefully chosen waistcoat is often the most violent act in the story.
What has changed is not the attention to clothes. It is who supplies the meaning. In 1905, the novelist decided what the gloves meant. In 2026, a thousand commentators decide what the belt means, simultaneously, before the wearer has finished saying hello. The fashion is the same. The narrators have multiplied. As a literature scholar, I find this exhausting and thrilling in equal measure. It is like teaching a seminar in which every student has written a different novel about the same coat.
The Power Of Exaggeration
The London Prat’s piece works because it exaggerates just enough. The six hundred civil servants. The fourteen committees. The two hundred page form with three boxes. I recently read a short guide on the power of exaggeration in comedy, and it reminded me that Saki’s great skill was the same: take a real social absurdity and push it one step further, until the reader recognises it by its outline. The form with three boxes, Yes, No, Depends who is paying, is pure Saki. He would have added a fourth box, marked Ask my aunt.
Irish Interlude
As a Dubliner, I am obliged to note that Ireland has an entirely different relationship with royalty, which is to say we had a revolution about it. My grandmother, who was born in 1931 and lived until she was ninety-four, used to watch royal weddings on television with the volume up and a running commentary that was not, in the strict sense, broadcastable. She enjoyed every minute. Irish republicanism has always made room for a good outfit. You can disapprove of a monarchy and still want to see the hat.
Saki also understood something the modern press has forgotten, which is that the funniest thing about society is not its scandals but its procedures. His best stories are not about affairs or disgrace. They are about seating plans, invitations and who is allowed into which drawing room. The Nottingham coverage is the same. The real comedy is not in anything Harry or Meghan said. It is in the barriers, the pooled press, the accreditation, the careful choreography of a visit that is officially not official. Saki would have spent three pages on the accreditation lanyard and not a line on the speeches.
Leaving The Library
I closed the Saki at five and walked down the Euston Road in the drizzle. I thought about how literature has always known that the people who most loudly declare their privacy are often the ones most interested in being seen. Saki knew it. Wilde knew it. The London Prat knows it. And somewhere in California, I suspect, a very private couple are reading the coverage of their privacy with great attention. Saki would have given that its own final line. Something about the photographers being the only guests who were never told to leave.