#Except the political junkies and those who studied law

[crescent-coral-base]

People who didn't pay attention in Government class (what used to be called Civics) make me very, very tired.

[howyoutalktostrangers]

This interview was originally published by the Humber Literary Review

So,

Yasuko Thanh is an acclaimed short story writer and novelist from Victoria, B.C. After winning the Journey Prize for her short story about an island leper colony, “Floating like the Dead”, she went on to gain wide acclaim for her historical Vietnam-based novel The Mysterious Fragrance of the Yellow Mountains. Her work often features spiritual or fantastical elements, as well as brutality and violence, and fixates on those who exist just outside the margins of polite society. Her latest is a memoir called Mistakes to Run With that details her upwards ascent from teenage prostitute to literary icon.

The Humber Literary Review’s Will Johnson caught up with Yasuko to talk about George Orwell, what it’s like to leave Christianity behind, and how it feels to be truly naked in public.

HLR: George Orwell once said “Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful. A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying.” I thought about his words while reading your book, where it seems like you’re relentless about unearthing all your past foibles and sins for everyone to see. I admire your dedication to the truth, to introspection, but I wonder what compelled you to complete this public moral inventory. 

Why share your darkest secrets and shames with such a huge audience?

YT: When I started writing this memoir, I was still in therapy after a stay in the psych ward. It was Christmas of 2016, and in a six months period I’d won the Roger’s Writers’ Trust Prize and been abandoned by my husband of nine years. Now it was Christmas and my new anti-psychotic meds were addressing the worst of my mental illness symptoms. I no longer spent each day contemplating how to take my life, so I stopped going to therapy, and convinced myself that the writing of the memoir could serve as a replacement for Dialectical Behaviour Therapy. All my life, writing has been a sort of processing mill for experience so this idea, of writing as pseudo-therapy, was nothing new.

I used my experiences to shed light on certain issues. I wanted to examine the stigmatization of street-workers, and its contribution to a social milieu in which violence against sex workers has flourished. The experiences didn’t have to me mine per se but they were the ones I was most intimate with. Stories come from everywhere but the best ones often come from our own lives, what we think and feel, who and what we care about. 

At the time of the Pickton murders, the city of Vancouver propelled a harmful myth: that street workers were less valuable than other people. This thinking, this stigmatization of a group, was an obstacle to safer working conditions for them, and created the kind of environment on Vancouver’s downtown eastside from which nearly 60 women went missing. 

Various studies have looked at why adolescents start selling sex. At the time I was working the streets, I often felt that Social Services and the legal system had driven me to it.  I’d been denied Independent Living – welfare for youth under eighteen – I’d been jailed for shoplifting and could no longer maintain my career as a "booster."  I had seen friends arrested and forced by the police to violently choke up whatever acid or hash they had stashed in their mouth.  The sex workers I saw wore fur coats and red pig skin boots.

Money was the trade off for the conflicts I would experience with the law and abusive customers and pimps.  

I spent much of my career in the sex trade in Vancouver.

From the age of fifteen onward, my life included prostitution, arrests, drugs, an abusive relationship, and struggles with mental health. In 1998, when I realized I was pregnant with my first child, I began to examine my past and consider what I wanted my future to be like. What would I tell my child about the kind of person I was?

The seeds for the memoir were planted back then. 

My hope with this book was to begin a dialogue about the continued criminalisation of street-imbedded youth. A new model for understanding is needed, because their criminalisation entrenches them further in street life without addressing the social issues that put them there in the first place. I’d love for this book to spur a dialogue between legislators and the people for whom the skills and attitudes of the streets are logical means of survival. I’d love to contribute in some small way to the struggle for tolerance and open-mindedness.  

HLR: In an interview with the Vancouver Sun, you said that you hate the “role of victim into which the sex-traded are often cast — because of all the accompanying pity”. I thought one of the most striking and refreshing elements of your memoir was that you never moralized about sex work, or wrote condescendingly about the people you met during that time. It was simply a choice you made, and a milieu you existed within, before moving on. That being said, the danger and violence associated with that lifestyle clearly took its toll both on you and others you love. 

With all the stigma and misunderstanding surrounding the industry, is there something you’d like the average citizen to understand about that world?

YT: During the mid-1980s, right when I was entering the sex trade, working in both Victoria and Vancouver, I remember being chased from sidewalks with a garden hose, and men and women marching with placards.  I hid behind dumpsters and waited for the mobs to clear.  I was engaged with a profound feeling of puzzlement that people could be so self-assured without even knowing me or my name. 

One night, when I was about eighteen-years-old, I was sitting with my friend Frances in a diner called the Korner Kitchen, on the same corner where we caught dates, the corner of Richards and Helmcken. We drank coffee in the vinyl-seated booth; she stirred in her sugar and licked the spoon before laying it on the table. Neither one of us could see ourselves turning tricks forever, and we shared the conviction that we’d be good at a multitude of things, if we only had a chance to try them. She wanted to be a teacher, could see herself in that role. 

“But I wonder about a criminal record,” I said. 

Both of us had one.

 “With the kind of work you want to do,” she said, knowing I wanted to be a writer, “it won’t matter, anyway.”

The British philosopher and writer Iris Murdoch said that the goal of every writer was to cultivate what she called “true sight,” the ability to recognize other people really exist. I’m currently reading The Wisdom of the Body by Sherwin B. Nuland. In his chapter on “Biology, Destiny, and Free Will” he quotes Percy Bysshe Shelley. “Without imagination of another’s mind there can be no understanding of the other and therefore no love, and without love there can be no morality.” To be good, he says, is to imagine intensely and comprehensively the pains and pleasures of others. The great secret is love, or a going out of our own nature, an identification of ourselves with the other. 

The intimate tone of a memoir made it the ideal genre to negotiate such intensely personal material, and I hope it gives people the means to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes.

I guess what I’d like people to understand is that we/they have names. We have parents, siblings, spouses, children. To understand that “there but for the grace of God, go I.” That everyone has an identity outside of the roles we play even if, or maybe especially if, that role is dealer, junkie, prostitute, panhandler, street kid, etc. 

HLR: You were raised within an evangelical Christian context, but left the church and your faith behind as a teenager. This is a painful and confusing process, one that I went through, that often leaves people without something to replace their beliefs with. Have you ever been successful at filling the God-shaped hole? And is there any sort of spirituality you embrace?

YT: The spirituality I embrace is my personal religion of honouring anything and everything that spurs my writing. I deal with any number of doubts on a regular basis. Will I be good enough? Is what I have to say worth saying? Will anybody care? 

It’s enough to stop you in your tracks.

But stopping isn’t the same as quitting. 

And what keeps me going, and writing, is, at its core, akin to religious faith. 

Writing is what helps me battle the daily truth that people are separated by vast distances. And one of my main motivations,  one of the reasons I write, is because it helps me capture something from the inexorable, outward flow of time.  It’s nothing less than a fight against my own mortality, and a balm against my sadness at the transience of all things.

“No man writes except to get out of hell,” Antonin Artaud wrote from an insane asylum. 

I have to strongly believe in what I’m doing or I can’t do it. 

Toni Morrisson, expressing a similar dichotomy, wrote that love “is or it ain’t. Thin love ain’t love at all.” That sums it up nicely. 

I write all chips in, plunging ahead confidently, blindly, without real proof that anything will come of it, though maybe being published is a little bit like proof that one is on the right track -- but you can’t wait for signs. My belief or practice is based more on a type of apprehension: that, if I don’t write, something bad may happen. 

I’m not sure what. 

Maybe I’d stop being me. Or I’d go insane. Or the sky would fall. Not-writing is my version of hell. 

I love the Wallace Stevens quote that goes: “After one has abandoned a belief in God, poetry is that which takes its place as life’s redemption.”

Reading can be a spiritual act, in the way it affects the soul. Writing, for me is a way of expressing my hopes and wishes, and in that sense, it is a form of prayer.  

HLR: I’m working on a memoir at the moment, and one of the constant concerns is whether or not I’m honestly depicting the people involved—especially if the truth is less than flattering. I know you’ve changed some names, and utilized a composite character, but I’m sure there are people from your past who could potentially read your work and take issue with what you’ve written. How did you navigate these concerns while writing Mistakes to Run With, and how did you decide what to include and what not to?

YT: As you’ve pointed out, the people who share our lives may have very different opinions from us about what is appropriate and what is not to include in a work on nonfiction. I did ask one of my children about a specific episode in their life and whether they would feel comfortable with me sharing the story. They didn’t. So, out of respect for them, I didn’t include it in the book. However, the rest of my family and friends were fair game. 

That said, my aim was not to vilify anyone, because that’s bad writing, and I even pulled some punches with the intent of creating well-rounded characters. Good writing portrays character with all its complexity intact. Though, I’m sure there are people out there who are angry about things I wrote about. My answer to them is, Write your own book. I knew well in advance that I wasn’t going to let friends or family read it before it was published. I didn’t want to be swayed by their comments. I didn’t want to censure myself. I think writing by consensus is kind of a terrible idea. Post-publication, I’m happy to talk to anyone who takes issue, but the idea of being vetted beforehand? 

I think the prospect of allowing friends and family to sound in with their evaluations and appraisals of the work would make me too nervous to write at all.     

HLR: I love how diverse your work is, and how you seem to effortlessly jump genres. Your next novel is about Julia Pastrana, a 19th-century woman born with a genetic condition that resulted in abnormal growths of hair all over her body. I’m curious whether you’re purposefully challenging yourself to try new things, or if inspiration just happened to take you there. How did you land on this particular premise?

YT: That particular idea came about at a time I was reading a lot of books on so-called “freaks.” One book I remember in particular was A Cabinet of Medical Curiosities but Jan Bondeson. I came across Julia Pastrana’s story in there. What intrigues me about her story is the fact that she married her manager and toured across Europe and North America, even meeting royalty according to some versions. The hook (for me) is the way the story can be read one of two ways: her manager was just another kind of pimp who married her and told her he loved her to keep his paycheck close to home, or he was a man who, despite her unlikely appearance, was able to look past her outer shell and see her, love her, for who she was...I like the idea of playing with both versions, and having portions of each stand in for the truth. I like the idea of, perhaps, the truth being unknown even to Pastrana and her manager. 

We’re, all of us to varying degrees, mysteries to ourselves, often acting on our feelings whose origins lie in conflicting places. In these apparent dichotomies is where people come most alive for me. These contradictions in ourselves -- that’s when characters come most alive for me.

But here’s where I’m going to burst your bubble. That project has been put on the back-burner. Right now I’m working on two other projects. One is a collection of short stories with the working title, Death Rituals for a Modern Age. The other is a novel set in the present day, tentatively called, The Administration of Elementary Hopes. They share common themes of love and death (what else?) and I’m trying to lighten the load of the material through the use of dark humour, and in the case of the novel, the structure and tropes of the Gothic tale. 

HLR: Quill & Quire once quoted you saying “a good scream is worth a whole couple of months of therapy.” You were speaking about your musical projects, including your neo-punk band 12 Gauge Facial. I imagine the artistic impulse involved in creating your music is different than the much slower-paced process of writing a book. How does music fit into your artistic practice?

YT: The artistic impulse involved in creating music is different than the much slower-paced process of writing a book. Music fits into my artistic practice like a really good chocolate bar between meals. It’s one of the things I do between writing different works, or to jog something loose.

It also gives me a chance to express in greater depth things that continue to haunt but that were glossed over in the memoir. You can’t fit everything into the pages of a book. If I had it would have made a better doorstop than a book. The original plan was to release an album at the same time as the memoir. My idea was that it could form a kind of soundtrack for the book -- but, alas, money and time conspired against me. That said, the project hasn’t been abandoned. Only postponed. I have sixteen original tracks that I’m hoping to release at some point in the near future. 

HLR: I really appreciated the conclusion of your book, though I won’t share any spoilers here. What I appreciated about your approach was that you didn’t tie things up with a tidy bow, claiming your life issues are resolved, but rather acknowledged that you continue to be a work-in-progress (as we all are) with problems to face. Life doesn’t have endings, really, and neither does your book. Did you have to resist the urge to include a “What I’ve Learned” passage to the end?

YT: Resisting the urge wasn’t hard — in fact, I fought against this type of ending. Initially, the memoir ended many years earlier than the version which iI published. Both my editor and agent urged me to look at the material again, and consider extending the narrative up to the present day. In the end, I agreed to have the ending of the book coincide with the Rogers Writers Trust prize, and I’m happy I did so. But rather than have the book end with a Frank Capra-esque moment, where we know that everything from here on in is going to be rosy, I wanted to convey the sense that, as you said, life doesn’t have endings and we all are continuously working on ourselves by squarely facing our problems. I attempted to do this structurally, in terms of chapter headings, and through repetition of certain key lines or phrases. 

I’m glad you think it worked.

The Literary Goon

[clarabosswald]

I was wondering what your opinion on the whole gal gadot / Wonder Woman debate is? you totally don't have to answer I was just curious since you're Israeli, and I'm ignorant when it comes to that topic tbh, so I don't know which side to believe

it’s complicated.there are two main issues i’m aware of, and i’m gonna try to reply to both of them:

1. gal having served in the idf - this is the one that’s the easiest to reply to. military service is mandatory in israel (there are very few exceptions - for instance, arab israelis don’t have to serve, and people with medical/mental disabilities don’t either - which is why i didn’t/don’t serve but do national service instead - but many people volunteer to serve anyway). the overwhelming majority of people who serve in the army don’t do anything that involves shooting at people. most of it is boring administrative work (israeli movie zero motivation illustrates that very accurately). gal was never involved in any fighting, she served because that’s the law here.2. gal being proud and supportive of idf - that’s the one that’s the most controversial. and the hardest to explain.since military service is mandatory by law here, over the years it became a huge HUGE social taboo thing to speak against idf - because everyone’s served there, everyone’s family members and friends did, there’s this whole “these soldiers are our collective children” mentality going on in the israeli society. that’s why issues like the elor azaria incident cause such a HUGE, massive, seriously unexplainable rift/aggressive and passionate discussion in the israeli society - with the words “elor is everyone’s kid” being thrown around often. and outsiders have a really hard time understanding this because most countries don’t have mandatory service. i imagine when most of you imagine soldiers you imagine some egotistical jocks hell bent on showing the world how manly they are, or some shit. in israel, the word “soldier” is associated with 18 year old boys and girls, fresh out of high school, thrown into a never ending war because it’s the civil duty to do so.and that mentality is as deeply ingrained in gal as it is in most israelis. when she said she supports idf, i’m nearly 100% certain that what she had in mind is those 18 year olds who are everyone’s children. not some adrenaline junkies who want to shoot up people, which is again is what i imagine soldiers are perceived as in other countries. as for my personal viewpoint? idf does shitty things. idf killed many, many innocent civilians. still does. i’m on the “elor azaria is a murderer” side of that specific issue. my opinions are highly unpopular in the current social climate in israel, but they are what they are and i stand by them.BUT.my highschool friends all went to the military (most still haven’t finished their service). my brother is in the military still, he’s doing an extended program which involves academic studies - he basically does HR/social work. none of them have ever killed anyone. they’re just doing their civil duty, because they have to by law.ALSO.the internet - and specifically, the social justice part of it - is super, super, SUPER biased against israel. because palestinians have harnessed one power they have and are using it to max effect - social media. and god knows israel’s dumb military leaders have given them TONS of ammunition against israel in the form of unnecessary civil killings and destruction. there’s nothing more powerful than that to turn the international opinion against israel. and that indeed happened. and honestly? quite rightfully so. our leadership is crap, talk of peace have felt hollow for years, they’re trying to maintain a status quo that is only dragging all of us further down into conflict hell. and one of the people who get hurt the most from that are idf soldiers who, by law, have to follow those stupid political decisions and pay the price.and thus “outsiders” attack israeli soldiers and citizens instead of our catastrophic military and political “leadership”. and thus people turn their eyes away from the crimes the palestinians do in this conflict, since they’re the underdogs.so i’m gonna try to tl;dr thatgal doesn’t actively or knowingly support the wrongdoings that the palestinians are going through by expressing her support of idf. she just supports israeli youth, who’s going through some hard shit. who have to spend days and nights away from home, and whose families miss and worry sick about. that’s 99% of what idf means to israeli people. that’s the mental conditioning in the israeli society. and it’s hard to explain to outsiders.

[gyrlversion]

Windsor hunk who survived bombing before winning army of society girls

Almost exactly a year to the day that Prince Harry married Meghan Markle, Windsor is gearing up for another royal wedding. Once again the ceremony will be held in St George’s Chapel, and the Queen will be among the smiling guests.

But that is where the similarity ends.

This time, there will be no horse-drawn carriage ride, no official range of commemorative china and no flag-waving members of the public straining to catch a glimpse of the bride and groom.

The wedding of Lady Gabriella Windsor, daughter of Princess Michael of Kent, to banker Tom Kingston has no constitutional implications — she is, after all, 51st in line to the throne — and Ella, as she is known to friends, is not a working member of the Royal Family and performs no public duties.

Banker Tom Kingston, 40, is due to marry Lady Gabriella Windsor, daughter of Princess Michael of Kent, in May this year

Gabriella, the 51st in line to the throne, is picturing with her parents the Princess and Prince Michael of Kent

Yet somehow after the glitz and glamour of Hollywood that descended on Windsor for former actress Meghan’s nuptials, the newest recruit to royal ranks will bring not just charm and good looks, but a whiff of derring-do. Fifteen years ago, Ella’s fiancé was working in Baghdad in the dangerous world of hostage negotiation, helping to free captives from the bloodthirsty militias spawned in the wake of the ill-fated war in Iraq.

He had countless narrow escapes in three action-packed years in the Iraqi capital, where he served in the diplomatic missions unit of the Foreign Office, including escaping a suicide-bombing that claimed 22 lives.

No one knew him better in those perilous times than the Reverend Canon Andrew White, who for more than ten years presided over the only Anglican church in Iraq, a role that led to him being dubbed the Vicar of Baghdad.

Yesterday, he recalled Kingston as ‘an exceptional young man’ who ‘makes things happen’. His great strength, he said, was to ‘see beyond the impossible’.

Like the priest with whom he shared a strong faith, Kingston was also an ‘adrenaline junkie’. He helped with his ministry, which built up a following of 6,500 worshippers.

The couple announced their engagement a few days before Christmas, four years after first going out. He proposed on Sark in the Channel Islands, where his parents Martin and Jill have a holiday home

Canon White added: ‘Tom is one of the most remarkable people I have ever worked with and I would have him back at my side tomorrow, if he would come.’

Godliness, however, was not his only quality.

For Kingston, who will be 41 in June, is someone who has always flitted discreetly in and around royal circles, a man about whom friends like to tell tales of amorous adventures.

Women are drawn to his languid confidence, while men have envied his effortless success with the opposite sex.

Indeed, he has attracted some of the prettiest young women around the Prince William and Prince Harry sets.

Among them were Pippa Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge’s sister, now married to hedge fund executive James Matthews — although he denied they were romantically linked — financier Louisa Strutt and Natalie Hicks-Lobbecke, an old flame of Prince William whom he dated while working in Iraq.

He and ‘Nats’, who is now married to baronet’s son Ed Milbank, met when both were at Bristol University.

As one close friend said admiringly: ‘Tom’s great achievement is that none of his old girlfriends have anything but nice things to say about him. Even when it’s all over, they still like him.

‘In old-fashioned terms, he is a gentleman, just the kind of guy you want to introduce to your mother.’

A male friend adds this: ‘He’s one of those guys who can be quite enigmatic and doesn’t tell you what he is thinking. He’s careful. Perhaps it’s a legacy from the work he was doing in Iraq.’

Pointedly, his stag dinner at White’s, the St James’s club, was said to be ‘quiet’.

Kingston has attracted some of the prettiest young women around the Prince William and Prince Harry sets. Among them were Pippa Middleton (pictured), the Duchess of Cambridge’s sister, now married to hedge fund executive James Matthews

All in all, these could be valuable qualities as he contemplates life as Princess Michael of Kent’s son-in-law. She is said to like him enormously and has remarked on his perfect manners.

In an observation many might think typical of the princess, she has also noted that Tom is ‘a bit short’. But then the lofty former secretary Marie Christine von Reibnitz speaks from a position of authority, having introduced height into the House of Windsor.

While friends say the princess may once have had hopes that her only daughter would be betrothed to a duke or, better still, European nobility — it’s said Ella studied Spanish at exclusive Downe House school because of her mother’s dreams that she might marry into Spain’s aristocracy — she is happy about the union.

(Ella went on to graduate from Ivy League Brown University in the U.S. and Oxford, with degrees in comparative literature and social anthropology, and is now a director at Knightsbridge-based Branding Latin America, which promotes that continent in Europe.)

Prince and Princess Michael of Kent leave St Mary’s Hospital in London with their new baby, Lady Gabriella, and son Lord Frederick in April 1981

One thing is certain: with Tom Kingston there is no question of Princess Michael experiencing again the touch of the vapours that followed an extraordinary article in the magazine Vanity Fair which raised the issue of racism and the royals last year.

The article was written by a former boyfriend of Lady Gabriella, Aatish Taseer, a young man with a Sikh mother and Muslim father who, a few years back, some thought might become the Michaels’ son-in-law.

He dated Ella, 38 next month, for three years between 2003 and 2006 and he is now married to a man.

In the article, he flippantly declared that ‘royals and Nazis go together like blini and caviar’ and claimed that Princess Michael owned two black sheep at her former country home, where he often stayed, which she named Venus and Serena after the African-American Williams tennis sisters.

Piquantly, he wrote that the princess, although ‘generally free of British colonial prejudices’, was nonetheless ‘of the firm belief that it was a bad idea for royalty to marry commoners’.

While Princess Michael was understandably deeply hurt by the betrayal, it was nothing compared with the great embarrassment Taseer dealt ex-girlfriend Ella.

For he boasted that they had swum naked in the Queen’s swimming pool at Buckingham Palace and, more worryingly, that they had taken the drug MDMA — Ecstasy — while guests at Windsor Castle.

At the time, a friend of Ella was reported as describing the allegation as ‘fiction’. ‘Aatish is a novelist. He has an active imagination,’ they said.

The Prince and Princess Michael Of Kent are pictured with their children Lady Gabriella Windsor and Lord Frederick Windsor at Eton School 

All the same, the revelations left courtiers stunned, not least because Ella, who has never put a foot wrong, has always been a favourite of the Queen. Happily, there was no lasting damage.

‘Her Majesty agreed to attend her wedding at once,’ I am told. Interestingly, the Queen was not at the Hampton Court ceremony of Ella’s brother, Lord Frederick Windsor, to actress Sophie Winkleman in 2009. As a young man, Freddie found himself in a number of colourful scrapes when he was dubbed London’s ‘most louche lord’.

For Ella, the Taseer episode brought her and Kingston closer. They announced their engagement a few days before Christmas, four years after first going out.

He proposed on Sark in the Channel Islands, where his parents Martin and Jill have a holiday home.

Following other recent newcomers to the Royal Family — Kate Middleton, great-granddaughter of a coalminer, and Meghan Markle, descended from American cotton slaves — Kingston also solidly fits the new egalitarianism of the Windsors.

Kingston also dated (alongside Pippa Middleton, pictured) financier Louisa Strutt and Natalie Hicks-Lobbecke, an old flame of Prince William whom he dated while working in Iraq

His family’s background includes a former ambassador to Denmark and a great-grandfather who was thrice mayor of Walsall in the West Midlands. Tom, who has two sisters, was born in Evesham, Worcestershire. His QC father, a self-made man educated at a secondary modern school, has been a hugely successful barrister specialising in planning law.

Today, the family home is a Grade II-listed manor house in Kemble, Gloucestershire, close to Prince Charles’s Highgrove.

It is from his parents that he has drawn his strong faith — in 2015, his father was elected to the General Synod of the Church of England and his mother is a trustee of a Christian healing centre in Cirencester.

Unlike many young men drawn to Iraq for the business opportunities that followed the 2003 Gulf War, Kingston was on a different mission.

Sent to Baghdad, he was seconded as a project manager for the International Centre for Reconciliation, which is based at Coventry Cathedral, to mediate in disputes between political, religious and tribal leaders and to negotiate the release of hostages.

Baghdad was where Canon White and Tom met. ‘Tom is an individual with a very strong faith,’ recalls the Canon. ‘It was that faith and commitment which led to us working together in Iraq, where we survived some close scrapes. They were a daily occurrence.

‘Tom has a fierce determination to make things succeed and great insight into what makes humans tick, both good and bad. He uses those to see beyond the impossible and get through to the other side.’

His work with Canon White, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, helped maintain the Anglican Church in Baghdad, which was established in 1990. ‘We built up a huge following, hundreds of whom I baptised as children and who have relocated to Jordan. Tom helped me.’

The church was in a former palace of Saddam Hussein’s and the pulpit one of his thrones. ‘Those were good times,’ recalled the clergyman. ‘I think Tom would agree and we have stayed in touch by phone and email since.’

No one knew Kingston better while he was in Iraw than the Reverend Canon Andrew White (pictured), who for more than ten years presided over the only Anglican church in Iraq, a role that led to him being dubbed the Vicar of Baghdad

Both men were in the church when it was targeted in a suicide-bomb attack in 2004.

They had walked in just before the blast, which killed two of the congregation and 20 others.

Intriguingly, Kingston was also at the time working with Prince Michael of Kent, his future father-in-law, even though he had not at that stage met his daughter, Ella.

‘Prince Michael has a relative who is buried on the Mount of Olives. While we were working there, we located the grave for him and ensured it was properly tended,’ added Canon White.

Next week, the two friends are due to meet in London to talk through arrangements for Tom’s wedding in May. It will also be the first time Canon White meets Lady Gabriella.

‘I’m very excited — about seeing them both and about the marriage. I think both her cousins, William and Harry, who are very loyal, will be there with Kate and Meghan.’

Kingston left Baghdad to join Schroders, the private bank. He is currently a director of Devonport Capital, which helps find investment for ‘frontier’ economies and those undergoing postwar reconstruction.

Meanwhile, the couple have a wedding to plan. The ceremony will be followed by a reception for around 400 at Frogmore House, where Harry and Meghan had their evening party. It is being organised by the Queen’s party planner, Lady Elizabeth Anson. That evening, there will be a lively second party for the couple’s friends in London.

And Princess Michael? ‘She will be enormously proud,’ says a friend. ‘She’s been talking about being mother of the bride for more than ten years.’

Additional reporting: Simon Trump

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