There They Are Again

Issue dated September, 7, 2026

Why?

Harry and Meghan's planned return to the UK is big news, no surprise; I'll post various takes on the situation as they catch my eye. This article, titled "The Sussexes' selfish return spells peril for the Royal family," is from The Telegraph, a conservative British newspaper. In the last sentence, the author makes her sympathies clear. 

    “Please, boys. Don’t make my final years a misery.” The words of the future King Charles III as he pleaded with his two sons to patch things up at their grandfather’s funeral in April 2021 have just acquired a whole new resonance.

    The “boys”, better known as Prince William and Prince Harry, never did make up. Indeed, their feud only darkened and deepened as the elder brother fumed at the younger’s treachery towards the Royal family in general, and his wife, in particular. (Outrageously, in her interview with Oprah, Meghan accused unnamed members of the family of racism in relation to her unborn baby’s skin colour.)

    The last time Harry and William stood together, just the two of them, was in July 2021 at the unveiling of a bronze statue of their late mother on what would have been her 60th birthday. The pair could barely look at each other. For William, Harry’s deeply personal and spiteful revelations two years later in his biography, Spare, were an unimaginable betrayal by the human being he once trusted best.

    A lid could be kept on that seething Shakespearean sibling rivalry, as long as Diana’s beloved boys, now men in their 40s, were separated by an ocean. Harry and Meghan found freedom in California from the stultifying Windsor ways they so publicly scorned. The Waleses were left to steady the ship after the turbulence of “Megxit”. They did so admirably and to universal acclaim despite Princess Catherine’s shocking brush with cancer.

    The sudden announcement on Wednesday night that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are returning to the UK later this month – a typical piece of Sussex melodrama, both blithely selfish and utterly ruthless – threatens the uneasy truce between the brothers. It also heralds a moment of intense danger for the monarchy, I think, because almost anything could happen – and very little of it good.

    The King has shown immense fortitude during his cancer treatment, and continues to carry out his duties with charm and aplomb, but the 77-year-old Charles is ailing. Understandably, there is speculation that Harry has seized this moment to shore up his family’s position while a fond Papa is still on the throne and able to bail him out.

    With a commitment to a slimmed-down monarchy – probably comprised of his own three children, George, Charlotte and Louis, and their immediate heirs – things would look very different under a future King William V. The Duke and Duchess, and Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet (the children’s faces unknown to the British public even though they are sixth and seventh in line to our throne) might well lose their titles and their access to the only thing that they have left to sell, apart from tens of thousands of jars of Meghan’s jam. A sticky position, you have to agree.

    Cynics point out that Harry’s newfound enthusiasm for Britain follows a humiliating failure in the US. After the Duchess’s teeth-rottingly glutinous lifestyle show, With Love, Meghan, was panned, Netflix drastically watered down the couple’s lavish deal. When they were dropped by Spotify, allegedly for not creating enough content to earn out their $20m (£14.7m) payment, a furious senior executive called the royal couple “f---ing grifters”.

    Americans love success and stampede like startled bison from its opposite. People began to mock Harry and Meghan’s claim to want a low-profile, secluded private life dedicated to “service”. South Park’s “Worldwide Privacy Tour” episode, a hilarious satire on the shy, retiring Sussexes, burst the dam of deference. They became social poison and couldn’t blag an invitation to the Oscars. Even Oprah appeared to distance herself from the pair on whom she lavished such sympathy when they were revealing how ghastly those heartless Royals were while poor Prince Philip was on his deathbed.

    The truth is, however cynical you are about Meghan and Harry, it’s not cynical enough. Their jaw-dropping hypocrisy is only exceeded by their lack of self-awareness and contrition. A champion reciter of his own grievances, Harry can be astonishingly obtuse when it comes to appreciating the pain and embarrassment he has caused his own relatives. For Team Sussex, it’s “my truth” that counts.

    Only last year, a tearful Harry was telling the BBC: “It’s impossible for me to take my family back to the UK safely. I can’t see a world in which I would be bringing my wife and children back to the UK at this point.”

    So what changed? Is the UK no longer so racist that Meghan couldn’t bear to live here? Is she no longer worried about being “silenced” by her terrible in-laws? Has Queen Camilla ceased to be “dangerous”, as Harry claimed in his book? Is their personal safety no longer a priority? Did they get the apology from the royals they loftily demanded as a condition of returning?

    Well, they’re coming back anyway. And we don’t want them – we really don’t want them. Thousands of caustic jibes and angry outbursts mushroomed overnight on social media.

“What have we done to deserve this?” wondered one man.
“Maybe they got an offer to appear on Celebrity Traitors,” quipped another.
“Sickening. It’s obvious that this move, like everything else, is purely about what’s in it for them.”
“There must be a problem with Harry’s US visa – who in their right minds would go back to a country they trashed and where they are hated?”
“Never-ending attention seekers, they just want to cause more aggravation for William and Kate.”
“On the lookout for more material for their Diana documentary and next books no doubt.”
“They are coming back to monetise the kids!”
“With luck it will speed up the divorce.”
“The fact they even contemplate coming back shows they haven’t got a shred of contrition or shame. They will forever be a thorn in the side of the Royal family. And us too because we will never be able to escape hearing about them. They don’t want a quiet life.”
“Skint and hoping daddy will bail them out.”
“The whole thing is grotesque because of their disdain for our country and the way they treated the Queen.”

    The outpouring of hostility and bitterness is overwhelming, with the odd enthusiastic comment heavily outnumbered. (Judging by the remarks, Meghan will be lucky not to be booed should she ever venture into Waitrose.) Has any couple ever burnt through so much goodwill so quickly?

    How different it was back in May 2018 when I wrote for The Telegraph about Harry and Meghan’s fairytale wedding in St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle. It was a glorious day, the Union flag waved and the people cheered for their favourite young royal. Everyone was so happy that Diana’s lost boy – that shell-shocked 12-year-old we had watched as he walked, ghost-pale, beside his mother’s coffin – had finally found a bright and beautiful woman to love him.

    Admittedly, alarm bells rang when Meghan commandeered the engagement interview, promising to “hit the ground running”, more like a pushy contestant on The Apprentice than a doting fiancée, but doubts were vanquished by a beautiful ceremony that combined the best of British and American. In his Blues & Royals uniform, Harry looked like the foxiest Salvation Army sergeant ever, but was pensive and nervous.

    Seated beside him, William did his best to reassure his brother. We know now that William had grave doubts about the choice of bride and the speed of the courtship, but a besotted Harry wasn’t in the mood for listening or caution. As the bride stared up at her husband with a look of glistening adoration (that look seemed sweet and genuine back then, but fake and irritating now), the late Queen shot Meghan an owlish glare (she disapproved of the American divorcee wearing virginal white). In retrospect, she seems to have been the only one with a clear-eyed view of what was coming.

    Pretty much the entire country fell for the Sussexes that day. It took some serious effort on their part to make us fall out of love with them – they found fault with their handsome historic cottage, renovated to US standards at absurd expense, complained constantly about the (overwhelmingly positive) media coverage and “racism”, and then there were allegations that a high-maintenance Meghan bullied Palace staff.
    An absurdly swollen sense of entitlement led to demands that the couple be allowed to set up as Sussex royals in America, enjoying the perks of proximity to the throne without the dreary responsibilities. The late Queen wisely refused – she didn’t want them destroying trust in the Royal family by combining duty and money-making – and so “Megxit” became permanent in 2021.

    Harry was stripped of his military titles and royal patronages – things that had given his life ballast and meaning. Widely adored because he was always good for a laugh, Harry became a scowling social justice warrior parroting modish phrases about “unconscious bias” you knew Meghan had taught him.

    And then, the coup de grace. The Sussexes both slagged off the Royal family on American television in front of hundreds of millions – all that after they had caused the late Queen so much worry and distress in her final years. To the British people, who had forked out £32m for their wedding, it felt like the vilest ingratitude.

    So, it is to that sulphurous national mood that the Sussexes now return. Meghan narrowly avoids being the least popular Royal because the former Prince Andrew is even more detested than the Duchess. Some 65 per cent of Britons hold an unfavourable opinion of Meghan (22 per cent favourable), while 58 per cent dislike Harry (33 per cent positive).

    The Duke and Duchess’s status as “not working royals” will be unchanged, we are told, but who seriously believes that Meghan, the self-styled global humanitarian, will be content hanging out with some chickens in the Cotswolds where the family are likely to settle? She may be able to score the odd chai latte with her near-neighbour, Victoria Beckham, although Jeremy Clarkson definitely won’t be inviting the Sussexes over to Diddly Squat Farm for a hog roast. Meghan would have Clarkson cancelled like a shot.

    I think it’s likely that, apart from the Spencer side of the family, as well as Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, Meghan will find herself ostracised, lonely and increasingly frustrated. She never liked Britain, and is clearly jealous of the huge affection here for Kate. Frequent trips back to the US, with or without the children, could put physical distance between her and Harry, and kickstart the process of separation that many have foretold.

    On Friday, we learnt that Meghan may have an acting job lined up in the UK. I wasn’t aware the Royal Shakespeare Company was looking for a Lady Macbeth.

    Wherever they settle, Harry and Meghan will be a constant distraction from the activities of the working royals – see how their breaking news displaced the lovely story of Camilla talking about her husband’s cancer. There will effectively be two rival courts led by the warring brothers. What happens when Prince George starts at Eton in a few weeks’ time, and photographers are summoned to take the traditional picture? Will the Sussexes drop Archie and Lilibet off quietly at their new school with no snapper present, or will this be an opportunity to get one over on their rivals, the Waleses? The first picture of the faces of the Sussex children would beat George to every front page. Imagine how that would make William and Kate feel. Now imagine what whoop of satisfaction that would give Meghan.

    How long do you think it will be before the Sussexes make it known that they think it’s terribly sad that Archie and Lilibet are prevented from seeing their cousins by the cruel, stand-offish William and Kate? Using their children as pawns may not be beyond them.

    “It’s horrible,” says Harry’s biographer, Angela Levin. “Kate is gentle, she’s not like Meghan, and Meghan is not going to change one iota. She thinks she knows everything – she always has to win.” Levin worries about the effect the stress could have on Kate’s health.

    Senior members of the Royal family are currently enjoying their traditional summer break at Balmoral. I am told the news that Harry and Meghan returning to the UK went down like a sporran full of cold haggis. One senior Royal insider goes so far as to call it “an act of violent aggression. I feel desperately sorry for William and Kate. It’s awful for them”.

    The King is a very kind man, and it’s understandable that he wishes to spend more time with Harry and his children, but I’m not sure Charles has thought through what this means for his heir and his family. Are William and Kate to be pressured into forgiving a pair who caused them so much pain and turmoil? Remember how William angrily snapped at a reporter after that infamous Oprah interview: “We are very much NOT a racist family.”

The Waleses are said by a source to “have no interest in engaging with anything Harry and Meghan do or say”. Easier said than done when “Me Again Meghan” has a track record of trying to upstage the couple’s scheduled events with her own appearances.

    William and Kate, who have done so much to uphold the family’s reputation during “Megxit” and the disgrace of Andrew, could find themselves undermined by the Sussexes at every turn. William will be furious, and rightly so, if the prodigal son is so easily taken back into the fold by their good-natured father.

    What about Christmas? Must the Royal family gather at Sandringham, fake smiles plastered on their faces, with the ever-present fear that Harry and Meghan are taking notes for their next book or documentary on the 30th anniversary of Diana’s death next year? Heaven forbid, Harry, Meghan and the kids are allowed to join the walk from church on Christmas Day – if they do, the frost won’t just be on the ground. It’s a toxic situation because all trust is gone.

What are Harry and Meghan playing at? There was apparently no mention of them moving back to the UK at the tea they had at Highgrove with the King in July. He was blindsided and only told of the plan on Sunday, which, if true, is an extraordinarily rude way to treat the monarch. They must have been plotting this for months by finding a place to live and enrolling the children in a school. The Sussexes are dangerous. “Manipulative to the highest degree,” warns Tom Bower. If they do lots of charity appearances and fun events over the next year, they may gradually hope to win back the public and wangle the half-in, half-out model of monarchy that was specifically ruled out by the late Queen.

    Levin points out that, as non-working royals, “they are free to do and say what they want. They can read what the other family members are up to and get there first. They can muscle in on the limelight and champion political causes that embarrass the King. I’m really worried.”

    We should all be worried, at least those of us who care about the survival of the monarchy. “Please, boys. Don’t make my final years a misery,” the King pleaded five years ago. His sons are still estranged, and heaven knows it must be terribly painful. But while Charles may privately long for reconciliation, he has to take the hardest of hard lines with the Sussexes (his wife shares William’s views on that pair). It would be unforgivable, I think, to expect his eldest son to forgive so many unforgivable things – his family’s reputation trashed, his wife attacked when she had cancer, his beloved grandparents having to firefight Harry’s treachery while they were dying.

    You can forget building bridges. Isambard Kingdom Brunel himself couldn’t build a bridge that would repair what Harry and Meghan have done to the Windsors. There must be no quasi-Royal roles for them, and no undermining of the heir to the throne and his wonderful wife on whom the future of the institution rests. The King should welcome the family home from California as a father and grandfather. Then, as the monarch, he should remove their titles to limit the mischief they can cause.

    Just because the American dream went sour for Harry and Meghan, they have no right to come here and cause a nightmare. If there is to be a war of the rival courts, I am Team William and Kate all the way.

Brad Pitt Is Drinking Again, Updated

From the New York Times, in an article titled "The Planets, the Stars and Brad Pitt," and dated September 4, 2019:

Was "Ad Astra" a way to work through some of the loneliness he may have been experiencing? "The fact is, we all carry pain, grief and loss," he said. "We spend most of our time hiding it, but it's there, it's in you. So you open up those boxes."

It was reported that the final straw in Pitt's 11-year relationship with [Angelina] Jolie came in September 2016, when they fought about his drinking while aboard a private plane. Now, Pitt is committed to his sobriety. "I had taken things as far as I could take it, so I removed my drinking privileges," he told me. After she filed for divorce, Pitt spend a year and a half in Alcoholics Anonymous. 

His recovery group was composed entirely of men, and Pitt was moved by their vulnerability. "You  had all these men sitting around being open and honest in a way I have never heard," Pitt said. "It was this safe space where there was little judgment, and therefore little judgment of yourself."

Astonishingly, no one from the group sold Pitt's stories to the tabloids. The men trusted one another, and in that trust, he found catharsis. "It was actually really freeing just to expose the ugly sides of our self," he said. "There's great value in that." Read the entire article here. 

From Esquire magazine, in an article titled A Monday with Brad Pitt and dated August 10, 2026:

We pull down the little Perriers pretty quick, and I point out that he offered me wine earlier. At an  awards ceremony in 2020, he thanked his friend Bradley Cooper for helping him get sober and talked more deeply about his sobriety on Dax Shepard's podcast, Armchair Expert, last June. I ask him if the wine is something for guests?  

"No, I got--I was sober for seven years. And then I got back off the wagon." Little laugh. He raises his famous opposing-diacritic eyebrows and holds a finger up: "In a more restrained manner. I got overconfident a couple times, went, Yep, nope, not good for me. Not in big quantities." 

"You can have a glass of wine."

"Yeah. Well... I can have a few. But I can't have a lot. I have to be professional about it."  Read the entire article here. 

That Esquire article got a lot of attention, no surprise; here's what The Hollywood Reporter has to say, in an article titled Addiction Experts on Brad Pitt: “Alcoholics Are a Horrible Source of Information About Themselves":

Brad Pitt's admission that he's consuming alcohol again after seven years sober and attending Alcoholics Anonymous for 18 months has set off some strong reactions within the recovery community. 

The 62-year-old star revealed to Esquire that he's "off the wagon," but says he's only drinking "in a more restrained manner," claiming, "I can have a few [glasses of wine]. But I can't have a lot. I have to be professional about it." 

The comments drew some skepticism online, including in recovery-minded forums like Reddit's r/stopdrinking. "'I can handle a few'--same thing every alcoholic in the history of the world says when they relapse," wrote one user. "If I could moderate I wouldn't need to think about moderating," noted another. "If you have a healthy relationship with alcohol, it is something you just do--no need to make rules and be disciplined." Another wrote, "'I have to be professional about it'--oh honey, I'm four years sober and there's no being professional about addition."

But recovery experts who spoke to The Hollywood Reporter had a more nuanced take on the subject, essentially noting that not everybody who turns their life around needs to follow AA's abstinence-based model.

Clinical social worker and policy advocate Joe Schrank--who has worked with addicts for more than 20 years and was a founding member of the first recovery program in a New York City public school--first agrees that Pitt's comments about his moderate drinking should be viewed with some degree of skepticism. 

"When he said he's drinking moderately after seven years of abstinence, there's a bunch of different things going on there," he says. "Typically speaking, alcoholics are just a horrible source of information about themselves. Matthew Perry walked around reeking like booze telling people he was sober. But maybe [Pitt] is [drinking moderately]. The World Health Organization says that this is possible--that with moderate drinking, even after long periods of abstinence, there are lots people who find success of clinical significance and life improvement. The AA morality police takes this stuff as red meat for their need to finger wag and shame. Not everybody needs to spend the rest of their life totally abstinent with a cup of shitty coffee in a Styrofoam cup regurgitating platitudes. Some do--I'm one of those people."

Continues Schrank: "The truth is, for most people, their recovery is a living, breathing thing that is evolving over time and it's a spectrum. He's a big movie star and he's been very successful in a tough business over many years. But are your children upset with you? That's the kind of question I would pose to him." Note from your blogger: yes, there are stories out there that say Brad's children are very upset with him, and I admit, I had been wondering why.   

Keith Humphreys, a professor of psychiatry and an addiction researcher at Stanford University, similarly notes there are important unknowns when it comes to Pitt's journey, but that he might fit the profile of somebody who is more likely to successfully transition from absinence to modest amounts of drinking. 

"Certainly if you talk to AA members, they would say [Pitt's comments are] a delusion and it's going to end in tears," Humphreys says. "But it's pretty clear from the evidence that people who are able to, after having a drinking problem, eventually get back to moderate drinking, tend to have a few things in common. One, they don't have high dependency--and I don't know how bad [Pitt's] alcohol problems were that led to this seven-year sobriety. Number two, they tend to have high social capital--educated, a job, somebody who loves them--which he does. And three, that they do not have serious psychiatric problems. Those are the predictors, with no guarantees either way. I wish him the best. There's clearly some risk here, but it may be manageable depending on how he did on those other dimensions."  

Adds Schrank: "I think it's important for people to understand that this is a common recovery story. Most people who have this problem ebb and flow out of various levels of improvement and safety. Recovery is not going to go in a straight line. I don't think this deserves the moral panic it got and the freaking out is actually harmful to him. When you have diabetes or obesity and lose 50 pounds and then gain back 20, you don't freak out. You say, 'OK, well, what are we going to do?' Because you did pretty well for a long time and sustained change is really hard. So I hope he finds his way, whatever it is."

That said, Schrank also points to the headlines we've all seen over the past few years. Evidence increasingly suggests alcohol is so toxic  that no amount is truly risk-free--regardless of whether somebody is an alcoholic or not. The World Health Organization announced this "no level is safe" conclusion three years ago, and since a review of the current literature in the medical journal Herz stated that when it comes to alcohol, none is better than a little." This is the article in its entirety. 

Here are two People covers featuring Matthew Perry, 10 years apart. Will Brad Pitt's story end in tears or worse? I think it's possible.  

Speaking of People covers, most of the time I don't play the Guessing Game anymore, but right now, a cover about Brad Pitt's drinking would be very high on my list. Stay tuned.   

Update on Sunday morning:

From MS.Now: "Katie MacBride is a health and medical writer whose work has appeared in New York Magazine, Slate, The Daily Beast, Vice News, Buzzfeed News, Rolling Stone, and Longreads, among other publications. Her newsletter,  Ask a Sober Lady, answers questions and explores essays about substance abuse and recovery." 

In an article posted this morning, MacBride ponders whether or not a person who has identified themselves as an alcoholic can safely resume drinking, saying that in Pitt's case, there are some important concerns worth considering:

[After Angelina Jolie filed for divorce in 2016] Pitt spent the next seven years telling outlets like The New York Times that he was committed to his sobriety and had “removed my drinking privileges.” When Rolling Stone published its story about the FBI investigation, Pitt reportedly hired the crisis manager for stars like Johnny Depp, Matthew Hiltzik, to help his “divorce narrative,” which “emphasized contrition and sobriety over scandal.” Just last year, Pitt told Armchair Expert podcast host Dax Shepard (whom Pitt credits with helping him find his way into Alcoholics Anonymous) that, following his split from Jolie, he was “desperate” and came to AA “on my knees…really open…trying anything anyone threw at me.”

So it was understandably jarring to read the following exchange in the Esquire profile. In it, Pitt stresses to Esquire writer Ryan D'Agostino that moderation is his goal:

Pitt: [I can have wine] in a more restrained manner. I got overconfident a couple of times, went, Yep, nope, not good for me. Not in big quantities."

D'Agostino: "You can have a glass of wine."

Pitt: "Yeah. Well... I can have a few. But I can't have a lot. I have to be professional about it."

(In a discordant echo from that 2017 GQ piece where he claimed, "I could drink a Russian under the table with his own vodka. I was a professional," "professionalism" in the Esquire profile now refers to the opposite behavior: moderation.)

So to answer the question asked of me so often, yes, it is possible for some people to drink in moderation after identifying as an alcoholic and maintaining sobriety. But in Pitt's case, I have concerns. If Jolie's allegations are true (no criminal charges were filed as a result of of the alleged incident), it's hard to view Pitt's renewed alcohol use as inherently innocuous. 

When a box office mega-star and allegations of abuse are at play, the equation isn't quite as simple as "recovery looks different for everyone." Alcohol-induced behaviour isn't magically remedied by a period of sobriety, which is something people following his high-profile journey might want to keep in mind. If alcohol was the catalyst for Pitt's alleged actions, that's usually a bigger issue than a seven-year time-out.  Read the entire article here. 

The Esquire article has more than 5500 words. Early on, the writer explains that promoting Brad's new movie is the reason Brad agreed to be interviewed and invited the writer to his home. Was Brad prepared for a handful of sentences in the middle of a very long article to explode into the zeitgeist, putting his drinking, his sobriety and his alleged abusive behaviour in a very bright spotlight? Is he surprised, maybe annoyed, possibly volcanically pissed off about the fact that no-one, but no-one, is talking about the movie the article was supposed to promote?  

 My guess? Yes.