Sussex

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are reportedly moving back across the pond, six years after their dramatic exit from the Royal family stunned Americans and Britons and exposed scandal in Buckingham Palace.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex will return to British soil along with their two young children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet, for an extended period starting this month, People reported last week. While the pair’s decision may be unsurprising to some, Prince Harry and Meghan made clear in 2020 that their personal Brexit was because of several factors, ranging from severe scrutiny by the British media to alleged racism and bullying from the royal family.

Meghan, during the couple’s memorable tell-all interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2021, spoke plainly of her experience among the royals: “I just didn’t want to be alive anymore. And that was very clear and real and frightening.”

King Charles III is aware of the plans for his son and Meghan‘s U.K. return and “welcomes the opportunity to see more of the Sussex family in a private and personal capacity,” People reported. The spouses are also said to retain their property in the affluent Santa Barbara enclave of Montecito, and vacation home in Portugal while also making a “private, non-royal” home in Britain. This retrospective tracks the early years of the highly scrutinized pair’s relationship, the fallout from their royal exit, their media ventures and more.

When Harry met Meghan

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry attend a Wheelchair Tennis match during the Invictus Games 2017 at Nathan Philips Square in Toronto, Canada.

(Vaughn Ridley / Getty Images)

“Personally, I love a great love story.”

That’s what Meghan Markle, formerly of “Suits” fame, told Vanity Fair in October 2017. By then, more than a year of media speculation and rumors surrounded the L.A.-raised actor and activist’s romance with Britain’s Prince Harry, younger brother to Prince William and the second son of Charles and the late Princess Diana, who was killed at age 36 in 1997 after the car she was in crashed while fleeing paparazzi in Paris.

Meghan and Prince Harry kindled a romance in 2016 at that year’s edition of his veteran-centered Invictus Games, held in Orlando. Markle quickly found herself in the beloved “bad boy” Royal’s orbit — including the tireless swarm of tabloids and paparazzi who have captured almost his every move from childhood. The pair was already subject to media frenzy early in their relationship, prompting Harry via Buckingham Palace to plead with reporters to respect his then-girlfriend’s privacy and to condemn the “outright sexism and racism” in online comments. Markle had also remarked early on that she was disheartened that so much coverage of her romance focused on her ethnicity.

News of their engagement in 2017 further raised eyebrows among the public and even more so with established British tabloids, including the Daily Mail, which had once described the pair’s relationship as a “VERY unlikely romance.” In the context of the longstanding (and almost exclusively white) British monarchy, Meghan was an outsider: American, mixed-race (she is half white and half Black), an outspoken public figure and a divorcée (she was previously married to film producer Trevor Engelson).

Prince Harry and Meghan married in May 2018 and were named Duke and Duchess of Sussex. At the time, Prince Harry was sixth in line to the British throne. During the wedding ceremony, the Rev. Michael Bruce Curry heralded the pair’s union with calls for justice and equality — amid the country’s early steps into leaving the European Union — and made references to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

“When love is the way, there’s plenty of room for all of God’s children,” Curry said during the ceremony. “When love is the way, we actually treat each other — well, like we are actually family.”

Between the newlyweds and the British royals, family ties proved only so strong.

Buckingham Palace faces a new era of controversy

As new parents, the Duchess and Duke of Sussex pose with their newborn son, Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor, at Windsor Castle on May 8, 2019 in England.

(WPA pool / Getty Images)

Marrying into British royalty did not shield Meghan from criticism, speculation and attacks by the press — it appeared to have the opposite effect. Sound familiar?

British tabloids and several media personalities continued taking aim at Meghan, portraying her as a rude “trailer trash” personality amid a rumored riff with Princess Kate and using racist imagery to mock the arrival of her firstborn son, Archie, in 2019. The public ridicule remained ceaseless, but alleged tension was also brewing behind palace walls.

Less than a year after their first heir’s arrival, the Duke and Duchess announced in a shocking personal statement in 2020 that they would step down as senior members of the royal family and would work to become financially independent. They also announced at the time that they would split their time between the U.K. and North America. A year later, the spouses announced they would not return to royal duties. Shortly after, they memorably shed light on their decision in a bombshell CBS interview with Oprah Winfrey, unleashing a disturbing look into their life as members of the royal family.

Meghan claimed that while pregnant with Archie, she and her husband were informed their son would not have the title of prince or princess, which she said deviated from longtime protocol, and would not be entitled to security. The actor also implied that during discussions about her son’s title, there were “also concerns and conversations about how dark his skin might be when he’s born.”

“They were concerned that if he were too brown, that that would be a problem?” Winfrey asked.

“If that’s the assumption you’re making,” Meghan replied, “I think that’s a pretty safe one.” She did not identify the person who made the remarks: “I think that would be very damaging to them.”

Winfrey later clarified that Harry said neither his grandmother Queen Elizabeth II or his grandfather Prince Philip “were a part of those conversations.”

Meghan also spoke about her struggles with her mental health while part of the royal family. She revealed that she was suicidal while pregnant with Archie, citing isolation and helplessness amid ceaseless attacks by the press.

“I just didn’t want to be alive anymore. And that was a very clear and real and frightening constant thought,” she said, adding that she went to the palace’s corporate institution for help. “I was told that I couldn’t, that it wouldn’t be good for the institution.” At the time of the interview, Harry and Meghan revealed they were expecting a baby girl. Lilibet was born June 2021.

“The whole family is saddened to learn the full extent of how challenging the last few years have been for Harry and Meghan,” Buckingham Palace said in a statement responding to the spouses’ interview. “The issues raised, particularly that of race, are concerning. While some recollections may vary, they are taken very seriously and will be addressed by the family privately.”

Royal fallout

Prince Harry with Meghan, standing behind Prince William and Kate, during the funeral service for Queen Elizabeth II in September 2022.

(WPA pool / Getty Images)

In addition to Harry and Meghan’s self-demotion, Buckingham Palace faced tragedy and additional criticism in the following years. Prince Philip died in April 2021 and long-reigning Queen Elizabeth II died in September 2022 at age 96. Prince Harry and Meghan both attended the queen’s funeral, but under close watch by the British media.

Charles ascended to the throne after Queen Elizabeth’s death, marginally moving up Harry and his children with Meghan — the children later received their royal titles of prince and princess. — in the line of succession to the British throne.

When 2023 arrived, so did a fresh batch of revelations about the Windsors. Prince Harry published his memoir, “Spare,” providing readers an unflinching look at his family but an even more unforgiving description of the paparazzi. In the book he recalled needing to ask his grandmother’s permission to propose to Meghan, wrote that older brother Prince William had “been pretty discouraging about my even dating Meg” and accused queen consort Camilla of making shady deals with the press.

Months after the memoir’s publication, Prince Harry and Meghan were asked to vacate their British home of Frogmore Cottage on the grounds of Windsor Castle. Reportedly, King Charles began the eviction process the day after his son published the memoir.

Meghan, left, and Chrissy Teigen in an episode of Netflix’s “With Love, Meghan.”

(Jake Rosenberg / Netflix)

As Meghan and Harry moved to separate themselves from the royal family and from life in the U.K., they settled down in California in the affluent neighborhood of Montecito and into new business ventures. Among their earliest post-palace endeavors was the creation of multimedia company Archewell Productions, which in September 2020 inked a multiyear deal with Netflix to produce series, docuseries, documentaries and other programming.

For Netflix, the spouses have put forward numerous projects, including documentary series and reality shows “Harry & Meghan,” “Heart of Invictus” and cooking show “With Love, Meghan.” The pair opted last year to maintain its relationship with the streaming giant, signing another multiyear, first-look deal.

Additionally the ex-royals’ Archewell Audio inked a multiyear deal with Spotify to produce podcasts and shows for the platform in a deal that was reportedly worth $20 million. Archewell Audio released a 30-minute holiday special in 2020 and one audio series — “Archetypes” — hosted by Meghan in August 2022. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex‘s podcasting endeavor at Spotify ended in 2023.

Unsurprisingly, Prince Harry and Meghan, who have also busied themselves with various philanthropic causes, faced backlash for their Spotify departure. Meghan was also accused of faking some “Archetypes” interviews.

In addition to big-swing media ventures, Meghan launched a lifestyle and food business that had undergone multiple name changes. She initially launched her brand under the moniker American Riviera Orchard, specializing in artisan jams she notably gifted to celebs, including Kris Jenner, Chrissy Teigen and Mindy Kaling. She later rebranded the line to As Ever, following a minor roadblock with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

“I was figuring it out in real time,” she told People of the naming debacle in 2025. She also said she now sees herself “as an entrepreneur and a female founder.”

According to recent reporting, Meghan can add “actor” back into that description. She is reportedly in talks to join the third season of Guy Ritchie’s Netflix series “The Gentleman.” That would be her first acting gig since the end of “Suits” and marrying into the royal family.

Sussex have announced that former Kent boss Matt Walker will take over as their new head coach for the 2027 season.

The 52-year-old will take charge on 1 November, succeeding Paul Farbrace, who is switching roles to become Sussex’s new Director of Cricket.

Walker spent eight seasons as head coach at Kent, guiding them to promotion to Division One in 2018, T20 Blast success in 2021 and the One-Day Cup in 2022.

He has also coached in the England men’s set-up and is currently batting coach at Warwickshire and assistant coach with MI London, formerly known as Oval Invincibles, in The Hundred.

More to follow.

‘Uh oh, look at these!” I call to my friends, Annie and Mike. “Ominous,” remarks Annie. Mike raises an eyebrow. We’re hiking the Pevensey Levels, marshland first drained in 772, home now to sheep and cattle, but also water spiders, living underwater in air-filled webs. The ground is pocked with endless impressions of horseshoes.

“It’s almost as if an army came this way,” I say.

And we laugh, but only because we missed that army by 959 years. Annie, Mike, Fflos the dog, and I are on our first day of following the 1066 Country Walk across East Sussex, beginning at Pevensey, ending in Rye. At the midpoint is the town of Battle, where we have rented an outbuilding conversion for three nights. Battle is known as the probable site of the Battle of Hastings: the brutal killing field where about 2,000 Normans, 4,000 Anglo-Saxons and 700 horses died one day in October 1066, according to various sources, leading to William the Conqueror defeating King Harold for the crown of England.

History commands an immediacy outdoors that it doesn’t in books. You ask different questions on foot. We were on the Levels at the same time of year, September, as the Normans: did they note the blackthorn heavy with sloes? Spot blackbirds feasting on blood-red hawthorn berries? Hear the wind in the rushes alongside the River Pevensey? Did they remark how faded yet abundant this land was on the cusp of autumn? Doubtful, but the contradictions of war-making in such a gentle place – gentle light, gentle breeze, birdsong and river currents – make an impression on us. We notice how the landscape offers the same russet, sage and ochre hues as the Bayeux tapestry.

The 1066 Walk covers 31 miles, and we’ve given it four days: Pevensey to Herstmonceux, 6 miles; Herstmonceux to Battle, 11; Battle to Icklesham, 9; and Icklesham to Rye, 5. Our second day is the longest and steepest, and yet my favourite, as it establishes a pattern that continues throughout. We pick up the well-signposted route in the green secrecy of Wartling Wood, carpeted in acorns, lined by blackberries, and follow it around sunny fields. We emerge into the neat village of Boreham Street, plunge down a holloway guarded by beeches, and roll out into more fields with windswept, distant horizons. The impression is of a settled, well-inhabited landscape – a feeling augmented by morning tea at the Ash Tree Inn in the hamlet of Brownbread Street – but another deeper, more enduring impression underlies it.

Perhaps because the route is designed to call the distant past to mind, with every shift of scene we experience a slippage of time. One moment we’re walking down a contemporary street being passed by speeding cars, then we slip through a small opening in a hedge and plunge not only into fields or woods, but out of the present into time immemorial. There’s a constant weaving in and out of darkness and light, wildness and cultivation, close-grown tunnels of greenery and wide-open, windy spaces, and with each shift comes a hurtling from present to past and back again. The effect is of a temporal quilt sewn with our own footsteps. We encounter few other walkers to break the spell.

Elasticity of time is most apparent on Tent Hill, where, as Mike puts it, “the reward to effort ratio is quite good”. Sources suggest one army or the other – no one knows which – camped here, hence the name. Instead of troops, we discover an ancient horse chestnut with branches so immense they have touched the ground and put down roots of their own, creating a family of trees around a living, central ancestor. Joining their company is occupying past and present at once.

Because Mike has had the good sense to rent accommodation at Abbey View Cottages – there is indeed a view of Battle Abbey’s towers – we set forth on day three from our own digs. Another plunge off a country lane lands us on a bridle path in Battle’s Great Wood, where Mike announces: “My fungi sense is twitching.” Soon he is giving a mushroom tutorial: fly agarics; edible boletes and parasols; great penny buns (“the Rolls-Royce of mushrooms,” Mike pronounces).

And then the temporal hopscotch continues. One minute we’re crossing a golf course, the next we’re in deep countryside with venerable oasthouses tucked into hill folds. Shortly before arriving at the welcoming Three Oaks pub, we come upon one of artist Keith Pettit’s 10 Bayeux tapestry-inspired sculptures on the route: six hollow, Celtic-carved oak pillars planted inside with hawthorn. Together they form a circle of growing, living wonder on a hillcrest.

Our final hike brings us to medieval Winchelsea, rebuilt by Edward I in the 1280s after the original town was washed away. We have traversed apple orchards and spent the morning in mellowness reminiscent of Dutch landscape paintings. To our joy, the modern stained glass windows of Winchlesea’s St Thomas church, created by Douglas Strachan as memorials following the first world war, bloom on the route like colour-saturated rainbows.

From Winchelsea, we head to Rye across the silted-in, coastal lowland that would have been underwater in Edward’s day. With Rye in eyeshot, we depart from the official 1066 Country Walk to detour past the ruin of Camber Castle, pressed into the flatland by a big, heavy sky. Begun in 1512, finished in 1544 and demolished in the 1640s by parliamentary forces in the English civil war, it’s a reminder of vulnerability – the waves and threats of invasions this coast has seen – and hubris, simultaneously.

With a final shift of perspective – pastureland to townscape – we fetch up in pretty, comfortable Rye, town of Henry James, antique shops and good food. We are more energised than exhausted, and grateful we didn’t have to conquer this place with anything more than our imaginations.

The Bayeux tapestry is on display at the British Museum from 10 September to 11 July 2027’ tickets now on sale. Abbey View Cottages sleeps four, from £200 a night; rooms as the Ship Inn in Rye from £75.

Pamela Petro is the author of The Long Field, published by Little Toller (£14). To support the Guardian buy a copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

One of my favourite recent photographs is of me (unusually), perched on the bonnet of our car, about to set off on a solo, two-week road trip from our Sussex home to the wilds of Scotland, taking in Eryri (Snowdonia), Lancashire, the Lake District and Yorkshire. I had no idea that the research trip I was about to embark on – for my book, which traces the story of British holidays over 400 years – was going to reveal my homeland as somewhere I barely knew.

As a southerner, it was the northern half of Britain that I needed to discover. I’d stitched together my route with visits to museums, archives and classic seaside resorts that had once blazed so brightly. I’d visited Cumbria before, but the Conwy coast, the Lancashire countryside, Blackpool, Morecambe, Scarborough? All these were unknowns.

My first stop was Eryri, where it turned out my hotel, the Royal Oak in Betws-y-Coed, had been welcoming artists such as JMW Turner since the late 18th century. Fifty years later, it became the hub of the country’s first artists’ colony, drawn here by the dramatic beauty of the dense, bottle-green swathes of the Gwydir Forest and the spectacular peaks of the Glyderau range and Moel Siabod.

Over coffee, hotel manager Katie Valentine told me about the artists who called the area home – David Cox, Henry Clarence Whaite and Thomas Collier among others – at least until Betws railway station opened in 1868. “At that point,” she said, “many moved to houses further up the valley, grumbling that the place was becoming flooded with tourists.” As I would discover on this journey, it seems overtourism is far from a contemporary travel trend.

From Eryri, it was a short hop to Llandudno, a beach town so pristine it felt a little like a Victorian theme park resort. “In some ways it is,” Judith Phillips, trustee of the Llandudno Museum, told me. “The family who built Llandudno in the mid-19th century – the Mostyns – still own much of it now, and control everything from what colours people can paint their hotels to what businesses are allowed on the promenade.”

The Llandudno Museum made plain that much of our history is not in the great city museums, but in libraries, archives and small museums on quiet high streets, often run by passionate volunteers with an encyclopaedic knowledge of their local heritage.

Driving from Llandudno up to Lancashire along the North Wales Expressway, I whipped in and out of tunnels, emerging to see great swathes of the cobalt-blue Irish Sea stretching to the horizon.

Further into my journey, I was pointed towards early editions of the very first guidebooks to the Lake District, written by Thomas West and William Wordsworth, at the Armitt Library in Ambleside; shown handwritten letters by Queen Victoria at Blair Castle (including her personal recipe for potato salad); and told wonderful stories of Wakes Week holidays in Blackpool by the dapper Richard Croisdale at Blackburn Museum – their longest-serving volunteer, at a sprightly 90 years old.

Blackburn’s grandiose Victorian museum and Bolton’s neoclassical town hall stand as legacies of the era when Lancashire towns were affluent manufacturing bases home to tens of thousands of factory workers. The Georgian streets of Richmond are like a mini Bath, but steeped in Yorkshire heritage. But perhaps nowhere confounded my expectations more than Blackpool.

Arriving on a Friday night, the promenade buzzed with lights and life; the illuminations blazing all the way to the tower, kids skipping along the seafront entirely unaware they had been brought to one of the most deprived towns in the country. “We are a town of extremes,” said Claire Smith, co-owner of the chic Number One South Beach B&B. “We have pockets of absolute joy next to complete caverns of woe. There’s no blending. It’s either amazing or awful.”

Claire and husband Mark shared stories of Blackpool in the 1970s, not least his coming back from the pub as a teenager to find his parents had let his bedroom – along with their own – to guests, leaving them to sleep in the lounge. This was the era when guests queued in their dressing gowns to use the bathrooms, landladies locked the doors between mealtimes, and peach Melba was the height of culinary flair.

“They were simpler times, people expected much less,” Claire told me, a little wistfully. “But I do think people were happier.” There’s still plenty of joy to be found, though. When I visit the Pleasure Beach as it opens on a Sunday morning, families are streaming in; the first coasters rattling skywards; a general air of giddy excitement that is a stark counterpoint to the rundown streets elsewhere in the town.

So many of my preconceptions were corrected or reversed: the elegant St George’s Hotel in Llandudno showed me that not all grand dame seaside hotels are faded or old-fashioned. And while we do love to run down our own seaside resorts, I saw beaches to rival anything the Med has to offer, from Scarborough’s South Bay to Morecambe’s vast, empty sandscapes.

Beyond the seaside, it was Scotland that really blew my mind. Following in the footsteps of William and Dorothy Wordsworth, who toured the Highlands and Lowlands for six weeks in 1803, I headed up the western flank of Loch Lomond, entirely unprepared for what I was about to discover. Dusk was falling as I drove across Rannoch Moor – a silent, pockmarked moonscape that seemed entirely bereft of life, save for a lone pair of car headlights, somewhere up ahead. And then, in the distance, great, hulking mountains began to rise up, guarding the entrance to Glen Coe. It is a landscape so forbidding that when I pulled up at the Three Sisters viewpoint, I was genuinely relieved to see another couple, so I didn’t have to stand alone among the ominous peaks.

Scotland had stories, too: from the spruce and redwood trees planted in Glen Coe by Lord Strathcona in the 1890s to make his Canadian wife feel at home, to Queen Victoria taking the first ever fly-and-flop (train-and-flop, perhaps more accurately) at Blair Castle in 1844. Her visit was hosted by the 6th Duke of Atholl, who promised the security of his own private army (and who had to move out of his own castle during the royal stay). It was the beginning of a royal love affair with Scotland that led to the purchase of Balmoral in 1852.

When I got home from the long road trip – 13 days and 1,600 miles later – my husband took the same photograph of me perched on the car. It had been more of an adventure than I could have ever imagined – to lands unknown on the island I call home.

The Great Escape: Britain’s 400-Year Love Affair with Holidays by Annabelle Thorpe (£18.99, DK Red) is available now. To support the Guardian, buy a copy from guardianbookshop.com for £17.09