EXCLUSIVE When Queen heard it was Harry on the phone there was stony silence: Peerless Royal expert RICHARD KAY sensationally tells for first time exactly how Prince and Meghan 'blew' relationship with his grandmother
The procedure was to ring the Queen's private number and let her know who was on the line. 'She would always thank you and then you would connect the call and leave them to their conversation,' the operator recalled.
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BBC News
22 minutes ago
- BBC News
Evicted family struggling with unfit flat
A woman who has been evicted from her home in Ealing where she was living with her disabled daughter and son says she is now struggling in temporary "inaccessible" says the one-bed flat on the first floor of a house in Southall is not wheelchair accessible for her six-year-old daughter, Victoria, who has Phelan McDermid Syndrome which means she has difficulty walking and a developmental also means they now have a 90 minute journey on two buses to get to Victoria's Council said it was working to find more suitable accommodation but said it was at the "sharpest end of the national housing crisis". Kinga says her daughter has trouble accessing the bathroom because it is not accessible for her. 'Aren't enough homes' After they were evicted from the property in Ealing, Kinga said they spent two nights of sleeping on her friend's floor before they were placed in the flat in Southall. Despite this, Kinga says she was told by Ealing Council the family needed to be homeless before they could be re-homed."I think the council as soon as they have an eviction notice, they should start working on it instead of the process being that you need to be homeless before they start on finding somewhere for you," she told BBC London."When I first came here I said it's not suitable for a wheelchair, there are so many stairs, it's so hard."The first night she woke up banging her head on the walls."I'm sleeping in the same room as my 19-year-old son too - we don't have privacy or anything."Ealing Council says it is sorry about the challenges facing this family and that it is looking for an accessible property for a statement, a spokesperson added: "We are at the sharpest end of the national housing crisis, and with almost 7,000 local families on the waiting list for social housing, there simply aren't enough affordable homes in the borough for everyone who needs one."We are working hard to drive down the numbers of people in temporary accommodation and getting families into more suitable accommodation instead."
BBC News
39 minutes ago
- BBC News
South Bank station's unsafe footbridge demolition begins
Construction of a new train station footbridge has begun after the existing one was deemed to build the temporary bridge at South Bank station, near Middlesbrough, will take about a month, which will also see the old structure discovered serious safety defects with the bridge in October, forcing Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council to close it to the Tees Valley Combined Authority's (TVCA) head of transport, Alan Weston, said the new bridge would be open for use by the end of July or early August. Once complete, the bridge will provide access to both platforms as well as to Smith's Dock Road, to the north of the station, according to the Local Democracy Reporting said most of the work would take place overnight and on weekends to minimise temporary structure has been designed to last between three and five years and will be in place until the station is redeveloped and a permanent solution is March, Mr Weston said the wider redevelopment of the station was a two to three-year project, but building the temporary bridge was the more immediate priority. Follow BBC Tees on X, Facebook, Nextdoor and Instagram.
BBC News
44 minutes ago
- BBC News
Hidden chapel in Checkendon offers clue to refugee camp past
An abandoned Catholic chapel in rural Oxfordshire is one of the last visible reminders of a refugee camp that once housed thousands of people after World War Checkendon Polish camp – officially a resettlement hostel – became home to families who had fled Poland in the aftermath of the and Basia Karpowicz spent their early childhoods living there. Now, alongside friend and local history enthusiast Graham Drucker, they are hoping to trace others who lived in the camp, or in a nearby one at Drucker said they hoped to install a monument or plaque to commemorate the camp and those who lived and served there. Mr Ducker said the camp was thought to have been built in 1942 and served as a base for US soldiers in the run up to the D-Day was later used as a hospital and then a prisoner of war camp for German and Italian after the war, with their homes destroyed and nations under the control of the Soviet Union, millions of eastern Europeans found themselves in displaced persons' camps around the continent, waiting for the time they could return was one such camp, housing an estimated 2,500 Polish people on a site big enough to not only have a chapel, but also shops and a cinema. Mr and Mrs Karpowicz were both born in the camp and christened in the chapel there. Both left with their families when the site closed in recalled "lovely" memories of the site, including playing in the bluebell woods and walking to the nearby Checkendon to go to the post office."For children this place was really quite idyllic. It was a Polish village in the middle of the beechwoods," said Mr Karpowicz, now he said for his parents and grandparents, who lived in Checkendon for 12 years following a turbulent time in their nation's history, the experience was different."This was just another temporary place where they would live... like a road to nowhere," he said. Mrs Karpowicz, now 69, and her family eventually moved to Reading, she and Mr Karpowicz attended the Polish Sacred Heart Church in Reading and later got closed, the camp fell into disrepair, and the stained glass windows from the chapel were moved to the Sacred Heart Church. Despite the site's important history, Mr Ducker said there was virtually nothing left of it - just a few abandoned Nissen huts and, for the eagle-eyed, carvings left on some of the surrounding trees."It's not even a ghost town - just isolated ghosty buildings," he added there was "next to zero" in the way of official records about the site and the people who lived there."Checkendon and its history has been forgotten," he the trio want to change that. Their plan, Mr Ducker said, was to host an event to mark next year's 80th anniversary of when Polish troops first came to guard the prisoners of event would mark the anniversary of its official establishment as a resettlement camp in also said he wanted to create a roll of honour for the people who served and lived there, as well as a memorial to mark the site."Because the generation that endured the Second World War and post-war are largely dying out, I feel that it's time to do something to keep alive that memory of the unwritten heroic deeds," said Mr Ducker."[Checkendon] is so special... I think it deserves it."He asked anyone who lived in the camp, or who knows or is related to someone who lived in the camp, to get in touch via the Commonwealth Family History Research society. You can follow BBC Berkshire on Facebook, X (Twitter), or Instagram.
