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The news has just come through that Prince William and Kate Middleton are to marry next year. This will dash the hopes of millions of women (and perhaps millions of gay men).

Royal weddings are an occasion in the United Kingdom for an outpouring of nationalistic rejoicing. The last occasion on which this happened was Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer's wedding at St. Paul's Cathedral in 1981. So we've been 20 years without—a long time between them.

What will happen? First, the poor lady will be inundated by paparazzi, newspapers, other media types, and will be hectored to within an inch of her life. This will be combatted by her husband, very fiercely. Second, I believe that the pressure will be off as far as William's parents and grandparents are concerned. While the Royal Family in general are not terribly intelligent in an intellectual way, they do seem to learn from their mistakes in a corporate way. I suspect that William will continue his military career and his wife will act as a loyal serviceman's wife. They will be living in North Wales (the island of Anglesey), which is where he is based. After seeing what the family did to his mother, I don't believe that William will allow a rerun of that; he'll protect her to the extent he can. Remember, she is university-educated (which Diana was not) and has been in "the world" in a way that Diana never was. She is not aristocratic; her parents are millionaires, true, but it is a self-made million and her background is distinctly middle-class. This will horrify some royal-watchers, but the vast mass of the British people will be happy to welcome Kate into the Royal Family.

I think the wedding will be low-key, no carriages through the streets, no out-of-control wedding garments, that kind of thing. The economic circumstances of the time mean that the Royal Family would be particularly tin-eared to insist on such stuff.

There will be some pressure to produce an heir and a spare, and I think that this will happen relatively quickly. That will relieve pressure on Prince Harry, of course, and allow him to marry at his leisure (or not, as the case may be).

The hounding has already started, with a BBC helicopter following the couple's car as it speeds toward Clarence House near Buckingham Palace.

The other piece of news that has impressed itself on me today is the sentencing of Alan Shadrake to 6 weeks in prison and a fine of more than £9,000 for contempt of court in Singapore. Shadrake wrote a book called Once a Jolly Hangman, which concerned the manner in which the death penalty is imposed and administered in Singapore.

I'm personally not happy with this result; I don't believe that a book of this sort is any more harmful to Singapore's judiciary than the history of Singaporean justice has been. However, I can only believe that Shadrake is either colossally stupid, or is on a drive to increase sales of his book. Singapore is an easy place to avoid if you need to do that. Shadrake is based in Malaysia, and from there he could go anywhere he liked without touching down at Changi. However, he chose to go to Singapore, get arrested, be tried, and sentenced. Why be a martyr unnecessarily?

His lawyer says that Shadrake has been disappointed by the lack of support from the British public. There are two reasons for that. First, there has been a minimal amount of coverage in the news media here of the case. Second, Brits in general do not particularly want to support people who are stupid enough to deliberately put themselves in danger of this sort.

Today is Her Majesty the Queen's 81st birthday. This is her real birthday, not the public holiday celebrated as her birthday in some Commonwealth countries. If she goes on as long as her ma did, she's got about 20 years left in her. Prince Charles would thus ascend the throne 77 years young. And if Charles then sticks around for, say, 10 years, William would be almost as old as his father is now (57) when he ascended the throne. I will, I fear, be only a memory when William becomes King William V.

As is its wont, we were awakened this morning by the BBC stating ponderously: "Today is the birthday of Her Majesty the Queen" followed by the National Anthem. They do not wish her many happy returns of the day, as they used to for the Queen Mother and other senior royals whose birthdays they announced. We knew the Queen Mum was nearing her end when they changed from wishing her "many happy returns of the day" to "a very happy day".

And we bid a fond farewell to Terry Major-Ball, the brother of Sir John Major, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and First Lord of the Treasury (to give him his full title). Mr. Major-Ball was a truly interesting character, always ready with a smile and a quotable quote about his brother. He failed in the garden gnome business (I'll bet you didn't know there was such a thing as a garden gnome business) and pottered around in various professions until retirement. But when it came to his brother, he was loyal and discreet. He knew of John Major's affair with Edwina Currie but kept his trap shut about it. He wrote an autobiography that wittily said almost nothing controversial, thus rivaling Diary of a Nobody. Terry Major-Ball died of prostate cancer in Somerset last month. He'll be missed.

Well, thank God it's over.

The question in my mind is this: for the UK, where a General Election is imminent, political news will vie with news first about the Pope's funeral, and then the election and coronation of the new one. If my recollection is correct, John Paul II's funeral will be sometime towards the end of next week (Thursday or Friday). The Conclave begins 15 days after the pope's death, or 20 days at the latest. That would mean April 17 or 18th for the start of the Conclave, and probably an election by the 20th. The Coronation (perhaps they don't call it that any more) will then happen sometime toward the 25th to the 30th of April.

Parliament is probably going to be dissolved by the end of next week, and an election will probably happen on May 5th, when local elections for most of the local councils in England and Wales are set. So people's attention will be divided between the two elections, one Papal, the other Presidential...er...Parliamentary (sorry for the slip; it's so easy...) It will be difficult for the political parties to capture the mood and mind of the electorate when the media will be full of Roman Catholic pomp and ceremony.

This is probably one of the worst things that could happen to UK politics short of an assassination or the death of the monarch.

Oh, and that little soirée in Windsor? Who cares about that any more?!!

Well, according to the Sun here in the UK, the world is reeling at Prince Harry's wearing a Nazi uniform to a fancy dress (=costume) party. I, for one, am not surprised, nor am I shocked. While these boys are in the public eye, they are also (by common admission) not the brightest bulbs in the chandelier. Inbreeding, plus moneyed upbringing, often produces thoughtless aristocrats.

I think there's a wider question here: should costume shops actually be selling Nazi uniforms? If it's wrong for him to wear one, it should equally be wrong for everyone else.

While I hold no brief for the Royal Family, carbuncles on the rump of Britain as they are, it's unfair to castigate Harry alone for this--the only establishments that should be selling Nazi uniforms are those that supply theatrical and cinematic costumes for plays and films about the Nazi era. Other than that, let's stick to fairies, sprites, cardinals, and other such merrier disguises.