After three years on the run and a new baby boy, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have finally settled on a bolthole in Montecito. It's a fine house, with plenty of room for more kids. Whether this means they will stay is the question. They have left four houses behind them in the last months.
To the extent that Oprah Winfrey, or Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, can be said to"live" anywhere, close observers and fans of the couple can comfort themselves that whenever their next external, or self-induced, crisis hits, the exile prince and Ms.
Markle can avail themselves of plenty of positive, possibly even on-camera, counseling by a master of the art. In the national chat-show sweepstakes, Ms. Winfrey certainly now seems to have the inside track on bagging the first interview with Harry and Ms. Markle, especially since the other big-name show-runner and Montecito resident, Ellen DeGeneres, is now tainted and fully beleaguered with multiple accusations of having fostered a toxic work environment. The buyers effected the purchase of the former Grishin estate with a $9.5 million mortgage, according to public records. On paper anyway, it seems that Mr. Grishin, whose checkered legacy in the States and in Russia is studded with scandal and extraordinary legal dust-ups, took a little bit better than a $10 million hit on the sale., which is relatively new, having been built in 2003, but presumably a few of those baths belong to the estate's outbuildings, pool, and tennis court. Put another way, there's plenty of room for Harry's mother-in-law, Dora Ragland, who has been taking care of young Archie since the SARS-CoV-2 lockdown lifted while they were at Mr. Perry's house, to move in with them. The larger question is whether this abode is able to provide the peripatetic couple with what they need to stay for a while. Practically speaking, Montecito does afford a gentler security profile than does Los Angeles, in the sense that it is more remote, far smaller, elite , and thus easier for a security detail to oversee and protect. Two hours by car north of Los Angeles, Montecito — and Santa Barbara county generally — are considered less paparazzi-infested by the celebrities who live there than are the more accessible hills and canyons of Los Angeles proper. An example: Less than eight weeks into Prince Harry's and Meghan Markle's stay in Tyler Perry's mansion in Beverly Hills, the city of Los Angeles opened a hiking trail on an opposite hillside,along one flank of Mr. Perry's estate to prevent any telefoto-lens-bearing"hikers" of privacy-invading intent, of which there were more than a few, from occupying the opposing hillside as a photo redoubt. When the screens went up, thus negating the opposing hill's tactical value, the paparazzi responded by sending fleets of drones over the house. Which, sadly, never stopped. Wholly unclear is whether the former Grishin estate in Montecito, or any house in any celebrity enclave anywhere, is drone-proof. Experience suggests that it is not. Whether Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's security detail have availed themselves of the latest drone-signal-scrambling tech is probable, but bottom line, even the best of that tech has limits. What that means is that the heretofore untroubled Montecito neighbors of Mr. Grishin's former estate will, no matter who they are, have to adjust to the new celebrity reality, which is that the still-glammy, abdicated couple will continue to draw scrutiny by the tabloids and their wiliest lensmen-agents. Though arguably less glitzy than Tyler Perry's Beverly Hills estate, the new Montecito digs imply that Prince Harry's and Meghan Markle's ongoing struggle for meaningful activity in the world will continue in Southern Califormia. Their Archewell foundation is nascent, but just that. Harry will still have the Invictus Games, which are on hold, and Sentebale, his AIDS charity for children, and his newly-launched sustainable travel philanthropy Travalyst, also on hold as a result of the pandemic, which is among the bits and shards left over from his many royal patronages. Meghan Markle's prospects are less sure, but by no means finite. Her old-school television wattage may be nearing the end of its shelf life —not because of her age but rather because it's been a while since she's been in the game, and, at this point, it's hard to see her returning to"audition" for anybody, for anything. She could very well produce. And she's got her obviously treasured, ongoing lawsuit against Britain's Associcated Newspapers to fight, but, however that plays out, it's finite. Leaving how they intend to occupy themselves aside, it's worth nothing that, predictably, the house purchase is far bigger news in London than it is in the States, since it's the first, real, serious sign that the Harry will be staying in America for the time being. The very sharpest among London's royal pundits and close observers are,. We'll have to wait and see about that, but recent history seems to argue against putting down roots: In 2018 they began as newlyweds in Kensington Palace, then renovated Frogmore House at Windsor and moved, briefly, before absconding to Vancouver in 2019, which they fled for Tyler Perry's in March 2020. Bottom line, from the British perspective: Aside from having finally locked down a private tennis court, a lovely pool, and plenty of breezy hilltop space for Master Archie to run around with his American grandmother, Harry is at sea. Back in the Pleistocene, at military school in the South, some of my dorm-mates and I started a mimeographed—remember mimeographs?—broadside called the TrustyBack in the Pleistocene, at military school in the South, some of my dorm-mates and I started a mimeographed—remember mimeographs?—broadside called the Trusty Tribunal. We were pamphleteers in the 18th-century sense, with approximately the same tech, but at a military school—M.A.S.H, basically, minus the operating rooms and the grownups. I accidentally learned German, then studied in Berlin, which drove me to cover the fall of the Berlin Wall. This determines the larger part of my political reporting year being spent in Europe to this day. Currently at work in Berlin on a book for Alfred A. Knopf Publishers about the Cold War in East Berlin, I have since reported from London, Warsaw, Prague, Istanbul, Moscow, Hong Kong, Lima, Manila, Beirut, Tel Aviv, St. Moritz, Granada, Mindanao, and from my native South for Esquire, Town and Country, Garden and Gun, Conde Nast Traveler, Men's Journal, US Racing, the New Yorker, and a host of other publications and platforms in the States and overseas.
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