Oliver Messel

It's more, for example, I am asked quite often to paint paintings.

like oak leaves like climbing oak leaf murals which um I painted one it was really it was inspired by there's an amazing room um in summer called Parham House in West Sussex which is um the long gallery it's a beautiful kind of barrel vaulted room which um a set designer called Oliver Messel painted in the 1960s and it has yeah these kind of quite graphic like oak leaves and um chestnuts and trees growing over.

He also has lots of animals like monkeys and things, which I didn't include.

But I painted a room that was loosely inspired by that and have done a few other projects where it'll always be specific to what trees are growing in their garden or whatever.

It's the beginning of his public-facing path as heir to the throne." The palace is incredibly protective of that narrative, and any competing headline, especially one involving Harry and Meghan, threatens to distract from the steady, future-focused brand the Prince and Princess of Wales have worked so hard to build.

It would certainly be a shame for his first days at Eton to see him embroiled in a feud narrative with his uncle and aunt.

Palace aides know better than anyone how quickly a delicate PR plan and media cycle can be dominated by a competing story.

It's not necessarily even about the Sussexes' actions, but it's completely up to the editors running headlines.

It's called Old House and just south of Crawley.

But don't let that put you off.

It's sensationally pretty, a very typical Sussex brick house given to Anthony Armstrong-Jones, subsequently the Earl of Snowdon by his uncle, the stage designer Oliver Messel in 1958, not long before he married Princess Margaret.

By all accounts, it was a bit of a wreck when Snowdon took over.

I was inspired and interested in how certain figures and characters from our many royal musings and readings just seemed to pop up all the time.

And there was a painting by Oliver Messel displayed in a book at his house.

And I just thought only Allie or I would really be able to connect all these dots between all these different people and how they appear over and over again in the lives of English people of a certain class from a certain era.

I feel you should give a brief primer on who Oliver Messel is in case anyone forgets, which would be a shame.

Yes, thank you.

Oliver Messel,

we talked about him again recently, but he was an artist, architect, designer in the, I would say... 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s.

And he was responsible for designing a lot of homes on Mystique.