The Sunday Times May 29, 2022 2GN 3
NEWS
The Queen does not plan to attend the
Epsom Derby as she wants to “pace her-
self ” over the Platinum Jubilee weekend,
when the Prince of Wales and Duke of
Cambridge will pay her deeply personal
tributes.
It is understood the monarch will miss
the event on Saturday, with the Princess
Royal and her family representing the
Queen at the racecourse.
Many royal watchers had expected
attending the Derby to be the monarch’s
personal highlight of her jubilee celebra-
tions. However, sources close to the
Queen, 96, who continues to experience
“episodic mobility problems” and used a
buggy on her visit to the Chelsea Flower
Show last week, say it is “increasingly
unlikely” she will journey to Epsom mid-
way through four days of festivities to
mark her 70 years on the throne.
A royal source said the Queen was
“pacing herself ” in the hope she will feel
up to attending events on other days. She
is resting at Balmoral, her Scottish
retreat, ahead of celebrations this week.
Until the pandemic, the Queen, a
prolific racehorse owner and breeder,
had missed Derby Day only twice during
her reign. In 1956 she was on a state visit
to Sweden and in 1984 she was in France
for the 40th anniversary of D-Day. The
Derby was without spectators in 2020
and in front of a restricted crowd in 2021.
All three of the Queen’s horses that
were entered for the Derby have been
withdrawn, although her colt, Educator,
may still run in another race at the meet,
which the Queen is expected to watch on
television from Windsor Castle.
It is thought plans for a guard of hon-
our of her current and former jockeys,
wearing her distinctive purple, red and
gold racing silks, and a parade of her
former racehorses will still go ahead at
Epsom on Saturday.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex will
travel to the UK from their home in the
United States with their children, Archie,
3, and Lilibet, 11 months, to join the
Queen for some of her celebrations.
It will be the first time Harry, 37, and
Meghan, 40, have been reunited with the
wider royal family for more than two
years, and the first time Archie has been
to the UK since November 2019, when he
was six months old.
Lilibet was born in California and has
never been to Britain. She will celebrate
her first birthday on Saturday, and it is
thought the Sussexes may visit the
Queen, who has not yet met the great-
Roya Nikkhah Royal Editor
The novelist Monica Ali was
left “sweating” and
“terrified” at the thought of
writing the sex scenes in her
latest book — and then found
that the intimate passages
embarrassed both her
daughter and her father.
Ali, whose fifth novel Love
Marriage was published in
February, said that there are
“all sorts of pitfalls” with
writing sex in fiction.
“You might end up using
words like ‘throbbing’,
‘thrusting’ or ‘member’,”
Ali, 54, told the Hay Festival
yesterday. “For me, it was
about not describing the
mechanics as such... those
bits were not the point, it was
about describing the mental
experience of it and the
significance of it. And not
being scared to do that in a
way that can be sexy.”
Love Marriage features two
families from very different
cultural backgrounds who are
brought together by an
engagement. Its themes
including infidelity, revenge
sex and sex addiction, while
one of the intimate scenes
features menstrual blood.
This provoked a reaction
from her daughter, who is 20
and at university, after Ali
sent her a proof copy of
the book.
“She rang up after a couple
of days and said: ‘I’m really
enjoying the book, Mum, it’s
great,’ ” Ali recalled. “And
then she rang up a couple of
days later having just read the
period sex scene and she
said, ‘Mum! How could you?
Don’t you know Grandpa is
going to read it?’”
Ali’s father did then read
the novel. “He told me... that
it was excellent but that there
was too much swearing — by
which he means sex, but he
can’t say the word ‘sex’,” she
added.
One of Ali’s biggest fears
was becoming a contender
for the Bad Sex in Fiction
award, a literary prize given
to the worst description of
coitus in novels.
“The Bad Sex award did
cross my mind, [although]
what tends to win the award
are extended metaphors:
crashing waves and tunnels,”
Ali said.Rosamund Urwin
Media EditorAuthor’s
sex scenes
left family
red-faced
granddaughter who bears her nickname.
The Sussexes are expected to stay at Frog-
more Cottage, their home on the Wind-
sor estate, which is understood no longer
to be occupied by Princess Eugenie and
her family. They had previously rented it
from Harry and Meghan.
It is not known whether a Netflix
camera crew will follow the couple dur-
ing their trip. Harry is filming a documen-
tary for the streaming giant about the
Invictus Games, and a large crew
documented the couple’s movements
last month during the games in The
Hague. There have also been uncon-
firmed reports that the Sussexes are
taking part in an “at-home” style
documentary with Netflix, with which
they have a lucrative film deal.
The Queen plans to attend Trooping
the Colour briefly, marking her official
birthday on Thursday, but Prince
Charles, 73, Prince William, 39, and
Princess Anne, 71, will stand in for her at
Horse Guards Parade for the first time in
her reign.
It is understood the sovereign will
instead appear twice on the Buckingham
Palace balcony, emerging for the first
time with the Duke of Kent, 86, to watch
the troops marching back towards the
palace after the parade, and then again
alongside working members of the royal
family for the traditional RAF fly-past.
She is expected to attend the national
service of thanksgiving at St Paul’s Cathe-
dral on Friday with her family, including
the Duke of York and the Sussexes. Harry
and Meghan are due to attend her birth-
day parade, but will not join the party on
the palace balcony, having stepped back
from official royal duties in 2020.
After the service of thanksgiving,
most senior members of the royal family
will attend a reception at the Guildhall
for Commonwealth leaders and other
guests from the service, hosted by the
Lord Mayor.
On Saturday night, Charles and Will-
iam will lead the royal family’s tributes to
the Queen at the Platinum Party at the
Palace concert, which will be televised by
the BBC. It is thought father and son will
make separate tributes at the concert,
featuring performances by Diana Ross,
Sir Elton John, Duran Duran, the Ameri-
can singer Alicia Keys, Lord Lloyd-
Webber, the rock band Elbow and the
UK’s Eurovision entry, Sam Ryder. The
Queen guitarist, Brian May, who played
the national anthem from the roof of the
palace for the golden jubilee in 2002, has
pledged to top that performance with a
“very special one-off production”.Images from
Elizabeth: The
Unseen Queen, to
be broadcast
tonight, show the
future monarch
in pink in 1940,
as a toddler, and
as a ten-year-oldPatriotic news alert! No 10 exploits royal fervour and revives pounds and ounces
When the nation celebrates
the Platinum Jubilee this
week, many will rejoice about
how far the country has come
in the past seven decades.
In Whitehall, however,
ministers appear to be keen
to turn the clock back to 1952.
While the nation is putting
out the bunting for the
monarch’s seven decades on
the throne, the government is
dusting off plans to let shops
sell their products under
imperial measurements to
highlight some of the benefits
of Brexit.
They were revealed by an
altogether more modern
system, however: a leak from
the “grid” — a New Labour
innovation that lists
government announcements
for the week — passed to The
Sunday Times via Whatsapp.
A consultation on how to
change the law on weights
and measurements will be
launched this week to enable
shops to return to weighing
products in pounds and
ounces. It follows a review of
“hangover” EU laws taken on
by Liz Truss, the foreign
secretary.
UK law requires metric
units to be used, with only a
limited number of
exemptions, including the
sale of draught beer and
cider, which can be sold in
pint measures.
The shift from imperial to
metric measurements began
before the UK joined the
European trading bloc in- But the issue became a
rallying cry for Eurosceptics
after fruit and veg traders —
dubbed the “metric martyrs”
— faced prosecution in 2001
for selling goods in kilograms
and grams.
It is understood that the
changes will pave the way for
the reintroduction of the pint
bottle of champagne, hailed
by Boris Johnson’s hero,
Winston Churchill, as the
“ideal size... enough for
two at lunch and one at
dinner”.
Before the UK became a
member of the European
Community, it is claimed
that 60 per cent of all
champagne sold in the
country came in imperial
pint-sized bottles.
Once the country was
accepted into the common
market, however, the UK was
forced to fall into line with a
Brussels ban on the glass
container, as well as other
uses of imperial
measurements.
Johnson vowed during the
2019 general election
campaign that he would bring
in “tolerance towardstraditional measurements”,
describing the right to
measure in pounds and
ounces as an “ancient
liberty.”
The return of metric
measurements is one of a
host of “patriotic”
announcements set to be
made this week, several of
which were due to be trailed
exclusively in The Daily
Telegraph, where the prime
minister used to earn
£275,000 a year as a
columnist.
His former aide, Dominic
Cummings, has claimed that
Johnson refers to the
newspaper even now as his
“real boss”.
According to the grid, the
Ministry of Defence is to
announce tomorrow a new
“Ukraine defence innovation
fund”, presumably with the
intention of bolstering
capabilities in the country inresponse to the Russian
invasion.
The Cabinet Office is also
scheduled to make an
announcement on “early
learning and childcare
regulations”, which is
expected to relax rules on the
ratio of staff in nurseries to
children to help ease cost
of living pressures
on families.
The move, already heavily
trailed, has the personal
backing of the prime
minister, who is known to
have at least seven children,
and Jacob Rees-Mogg, the
minister for Brexit
opportunities, who has six.
In a recent cabinet meeting
Rees-Mogg joked: “If I can
cope with seven children, so
can a child-minder.”
On Tuesday, a justice and
Home Office minister will
travel to Rwanda on a private
visit for meetings on the plansto send migrants who arrive
in Britain on small boats on a
one-way trip to east Africa.
On the same day, Uber, the
private hire taxi firm, is set to
announce it will provide
Ukrainian refugees in Britain
with free meals and rides.
The next day there will also
be an announcement on
whisky tariffs, with the grid
detailing an announcement
from the Foreign Office on
solutions for fixing the
Northern Ireland protocol.
Thursday will mark the
beginning of the four-day
bank holiday to mark the
Platinum Jubilee, with Nadine
Dorries, the culture
secretary, Alister Jack, the
Scottish secretary, and
Simon Hart, the Welsh
secretary, all lined up to
attend events in the Queen’s
honour.Editorial, page 22Caroline Wheeler
Political Editor
The Queen Mother enjoys a pint in an East End pub in 1987
— one of the few non-metric measures still in use in BritainREX FEATURESCharles and William will be at the
concert but the Queen is expected to
watch it on television with some of her
family and friends at Windsor.
Royal sources said “there is a hope
rather than an expectation” that the
Queen will make another appearance on
the Buckingham Palace balcony on
Sunday afternoon for the finale of the
Platinum Pageant, a carnival-style event
that will be televised by the BBC.
On Sunday, more than 85,000 peoplehave registered to hold “Big Jubilee
lunches” and street parties across the UK
and the Commonwealth.
This evening, BBC One will broadcast
Elizabeth: The Unseen Queen, a documen-
tary featuring extensive previously
unseen footage from her home-movie
archives, ranging from early childhood to
her Coronation in 1953.News Review, page 19
Magazine, pages 19-Queen to miss Derby, but she’s
back in the saddle for jubilee
Her Majesty is pacing herself ahead of the
big bash — while the Sussexes, visiting with
Lilibet, are planning to pay her a visit
BBC