It’s time for another installment of Cosmic Grab Bag, AAA’s catchall collection of smaller stories that were skipped in real time, but deserve honorable celestial mention. In this issue we deal with a royal “first” in religion, a World Series outcome, a royal demotion, and a Supreme Court hearing.
In his new royal biography, “Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York,” released 14 August 2025, author Andrew Lownie thoroughly exposes and consistently trashes HRH Prince Andrew, Duke of York, Queen Elizabeth II’s second son. Andrew is mercilessly depicted as arrogant, self-serving and in denial about his links to the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. In 2021, one of Epstein’s many victims, Virginia Guiffre, brought a civil suit against Andrew, to whom she alleged Epstein had trafficked her at age 17. The suit was settled out of court in March 2022 for a reported $16 million, with a substantial portion of the award to go to Giuffre’s sex trafficking charity.
What is going on with Britain’s Royal Family and cancer? King Charles III was revealed to have an undisclosed type of cancer on February 5th, now his daughter-in-law faces the same situation less than two months later. Catherine, Princess of Wales, more commonly known as Kate, released a video statement about her condition on Friday, 22 March, 2024: “In January, I underwent major abdominal surgery in London and at the time, it was thought that my condition was non-cancerous. The surgery was successful. However, tests after the operation found cancer had been present. My medical team therefore advised that I should undergo a course of preventative chemotherapy and I am now in the early stages of that treatment.” As with Charles, no specifics were revealed.
Grace Kelly has always been one of my favorite actresses, despite a thin body of work, with just ten films to her credit over her truncated, five-year career. But what credits! “High Noon” with Gary Cooper; “Mogambo” with Clark Gable; “The Country Girl” with Bing Crosby and William Holden (which garnered her an Oscar); and three Hitchcock classics: “Dial M for Murder” with Ray Milland; “To Catch a Thief” with Cary Grant; and “Rear Window” with Jimmy Stewart. Kelly abruptly left show business at the peak of her career for a higher calling: to become a princess as the wife of Prince Rainier III of Monaco. The connection to royalty didn’t hurt one bit in my admiration of her.
On November 14, 2022, Charles III of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland will celebrate his 74th birthday, the first as King. Having served the longest apprenticeship in British royal history, Charles had been heir apparent for seventy years before his mother passed away in early September and the Prince of Wales finally came into his inheritance. It had been a long road. Once the world’s most eligible bachelor, Charles became half of the fairytale wedding of the 20th century, followed by scandal and divorce, and a second, controversial marriage with the love of his life. While kicking his heels for three-quarters of a century, Charles established The Prince of Wales’s Charitable Fund, founded in 1979, which awards money to grant applicants in six categories: heritage and conservation, education, health and wellbeing, social inclusion, environment, and countryside. He is also a noted proponent of efforts to combat climate change and species extinction.
At the age of 25, Elizabeth found herself reigning head of an empire upon which the sun literally never set, comprising some quarter of the globe. The seventy intervening years have seen much change and turmoil, both for Britain and the world at large, but the Queen has been a rock in the stream of time, a stabilizing influence for her people, and an invaluable source of information and experience for her governments over the decades.
