Sir Mo Farah and Stanley Tucci among the stars spotted in Wimbledon's Royal Box
They were sitting in the Royal Box on day 13 of the championships with the Princess of Wales, who is patron of the All England Lawn Tennis Club.
Polish eighth seed Iga Swiatek won the Wimbledon women's singles title for the first time by beating American 13th seed Amanda Anisimova 6-0 6-0 in the final.
Olympic champion Sir Mo was seen shaking hands with Tucci, and tennis legend Billie Jean King was seated next to Kate.
Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch was also in the Royal Box with her husband, Hamish, with swimmer Adam Peaty also in attendance.
Benedict Cumberbatch, Dame Anna Wintour and Leonardo DiCaprio were among the famous faces to attend the tennis championships on Friday.
Wolf Of Wall Street actor DiCaprio was seen taking in the men's singles semi-final between defending champion Carlos Alcaraz and Taylor Fritz, with McMafia actor James Norton also watching on.
Dame Anna, who recently announced she was stepping down as day-to-day editor of American Vogue, arrived at the championships in her signature dark sunglasses and wearing a white dress adorned with blue flowers.
American actor Rami Malek was pictured arriving at the tournament in a cream suit and tie, with Indian cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar among the other notable names.
Sir Stephen Fry, Ellie Goulding and Cherie Blair led the famous faces in Wimbledon's Royal Box on Thursday.
Sir Stephen was seen speaking to Welsh comedian Rob Brydon on Centre Court, with actor Ben Whishaw and former government chief scientific adviser, Lord Patrick Vallance, also in attendance.
The Queen and Peter Phillips, son of the Princess Royal, were among a host of famous faces from the worlds of acting, politics and sport at day 10 of Wimbledon on Wednesday.
Mr Phillips was joined in the Royal Box by his partner Harriet Sperling, and did not sit with Camilla, who was accompanied by her sister Annabel Elliot.
Also watching Novak Djokovic play Flavio Cobolli in the quarter-final were British actors Hugh Grant, Joe Alwyn and US actors Cooper Koch and Matt Bomer.
Former prime minister Sir John Major and Victoria's Secret model Mia Armstrong were also present, with the latter sitting next to Koch and with Alwyn on his other side.
Tuesday's proceedings at Wimbledon attracted acting royalty, including Sir Ian McKellen, Sir Mark Rylance, Jodie Foster, Richard E Grant and Sienna Miller.
Other well-known faces to have attended this year's championships so far include the Princess of Wales's parents, Carole and Michael Middleton, Sir Lenny Henry, Sir David Beckham, Sir Gareth Southgate and Gary Lineker, who were all seen in the Royal Box.
US music stars Olivia Rodrigo and Dave Grohl have also been spotted enjoying the tennis.
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Spectator
38 minutes ago
- Spectator
The Donald and the art of golf diplomacy
In 1969, one of the great acts of sportsmanship occurred at Royal Birkdale golf club in Southport, when the Ryder Cup came down to the last green. Britain's Tony Jacklin had a three-foot putt to halve the final match with Jack Nicklaus and make the score 16-16, but the American picked up Jacklin's marker and said he was happy to share the spoils. 'I don't think you would have missed,' he said, 'but I didn't want to give you the chance.' The gesture was immortalised in the naming of a Florida golf course, the Concession, which has just been awarded the next three senior PGA Championships, one of the majors. I suspect that Donald Trump, who owns three courses in that state, might regard Nicklaus as a loser. The coat of arms for Trump's latest course in Scotland has the motto Numquam Concedere ('never let them have a gimme', to paraphrase) and the emblem of an eagle clutching two balls. Subtle. Police and protestors are ready for Trump's visit to Aberdeenshire this weekend, where he will open the course at Menie, which is due to be named the MacLeod after his mother and has, the family boasts, 'the largest sand dunes in Scotland'. That might trigger environmentalists, since the ancient links has lost its Site of Special Scientific Interest status as a result of Trump's development. Sir Keir Starmer is expected to travel north during the visit to bend a knee and watch Trump drive, since the way to the President's heart is by admiring his swing. One of the things Trump would most like the Prime Minister to bring as a gift is the right to host the Open Championship, which was held last week at Royal Portrush in Northern Ireland. When Trump bought the Turnberry course in Ayrshire in 2014, it was with the expectation that the Open would follow. The R&A, which organises the Open, initially made positive noises and it is believed the course had been earmarked to host the tournament in 2020. Turnberry is undeniably a magnificent course, rated the eighth finest outside the US by Golf Digest, and it has hosted four excellent Opens including in 1977, when Nicklaus slugged it out for four days with Tom Watson, and the Open in 2009, when Watson almost won again at the age of 59. It would be a more than worthy venue. Then Trump decided to become president, and his controversial comments made people feel uneasy. In 2015, Peter Dawson, the outgoing chief executive of the R&A, said that a bit of time should pass before returning to Turnberry. His successor, Martin Slumbers, took a harder line, saying it could not be held there because the focus would be on the course's owner rather than the golfers. This came after the PGA of America removed the 2022 PGA Championship from Trump's Bedminster course in New Jersey following the attack on the Capitol in 2021. Since then, the position against giving Trump an Open has become more nuanced. Mark Darbon, the new R&A chief executive, says he would 'love' the Open to return to Turnberry but while he has discussed it recently with Eric Trump, Donald's son, there are 'logistical challenges'. The course is in the middle of nowhere and the transport links and hotel accommodation can't cope. Only 120,000 could attend Turnberry in 2009, while 280,000 came to Portrush. Sorry Donald, nothing personal. A feasibility study, that old favourite for kicking things into the long grass (and the rough can be very long at the Open), has been commissioned to ease the political pressure. If that fails, they can fall back on Sir Humphrey's 'in the fullness of time' tactic. The next two Opens have been allocated – Birkdale in 2026 and St Andrews in 2027 – and it is believed that Muirfield in East Lothian, which last hosted an Open in 2013, will be given 2028 as the reward for agreeing to allow women members. The last time three successive Opens were held in Scotland was 1893, so that means we're looking at 2030, when Trump will be 84 and (presumably) no longer in the White House. This may be nudged back even further if there are difficult scenes at the Ryder Cup in late September, to be held in Bethpage, New York, where the fans are notoriously raucous. Trump will surely be there on the tee, a week after his state visit to Britain, having missed the chance to host a Ryder Cup in his first term. It was to be at Whistling Straits, Wisconsin, in 2020, a few weeks before he fought re-election, but was postponed by the pandemic. A US win might have swayed the election for him. He will not miss this Ryder Cup but if it is a rowdy one – expect no sporting concessions this time – the R&A may find a new reason to delay a decision. One thing that is certain about Trump's visit to Aberdeenshire is that he will have a GREAT opening round. He is a more than decent golfer to judge by footage (though his declared handicap of 2.8 raises eyebrows), but he has never knowingly played badly, certainly not at a club he owns. Two weeks ago, he won the members' championship at Bedminster yet again, while in 2023 he won a two-day competition at his West Palm Beach course, despite being 600 miles away on the first day. Trump explained that he'd had a brilliant practice round two days before and so submitted that as his Saturday scorecard in absentia, meaning the field began Sunday five strokes behind. This performance, Trump declared, proved that he had the 'strength and stamina' to deserve a second term. He certainly has the sneakiness and chutzpah, though he falls a long way behind Kim Jong-il, the Eternal Scratch Champion of Pyong-yang, who famously once had five holes-in-one during a round that was 38 under par. Trump and Kim's sporting prowess matches that of Vladimir Putin, who has scored eight goals in an ice hockey match three times, and Mao Zedong, who was said to have swum ten miles of the Yangtze in just over an hour. It was ever thus with vain leaders, whose sporting boasts are rarely challenged. The Emperor Nero competed at the Olympics in the race for four-horse chariots, steering a vehicle pulled by ten horses. The excessive horsepower meant Nero crashed at the first corner, but he successfully persuaded the judges to award him the laurels since he should have won. Trump's latest visit to Bedminster put him within sight of Barack Obama in the list of golf-mad presidents. Obama played 306 rounds while in office, and Trump is now up to 304 after six months of his second term. During the 2016 election, Trump claimed he would be too busy to play golf as president. He then squeezed in 11 rounds in his first eight weeks. This term, he was back on the course on Day 6. And again on Day 7. Trump is also not far behind Bill Clinton, the only president whose handicap went down in the White House – but he has some way to go to beat the top two. Dwight Eisenhower notched up 800 rounds in office, some quite iffy. Bob Hope quipped: 'If Eisenhower slices the budget like he slices a golf ball, the nation has nothing to worry about.' Way out in front is Woodrow Wilson, who played every other day during the first world war, including at the Versailles peace conference, but he remained mediocre. As a presidential duffer, he comes behind William Taft, who once recorded a 27 on one hole, including 17 to get out of a bunker, but believed that it was gentlemanly to be honest. 'There is nothing which furnishes a greater test of character and self-restraint than golf,' Taft said. Trump takes a different view, which is why it is unsurprising that world leaders now see golf as a tool of diplomacy. Shinzo Abe, the deceased former prime minister of Japan, played five rounds with Trump and in 2016 gave him a $3,700 golden driver. Abe did so well out of this that Yoon Suk Yeol, the President of South Korea, took up the sport to help his own diplomatic game. Nigel Farage's close friendship with Trump may in part be due to this shared interest – the Reform UK leader says he almost took up a US college golf scholarship – though Farage's bad back doesn't allow him to play any more. When Cyril Ramaphosa visited the White House in May, the South African President took with him a pair of major-winning golfers, Ernie Els and Retief Goosen, in the hope that it would impress Trump. Alexander Stubb, the Finnish President and a former college golfer in South Carolina, negotiated the purchase by the US of some Finnish icebreakers after he played (and won) a tournament in Palm Beach with Trump as his partner in March. That will be the challenge for Starmer when he pays homage. Unlike David Cameron, who rewarded Obama for his Brexit intervention in 2016 with a round at the Grove in Hertfordshire, Starmer can't fake an interest in golf. He was the first prime minister to reject honorary membership of the Ellesborough golf club near Chequers. Perhaps he will bring a star golfer like Sir Nick Faldo with him to swing for Britain. Starmer did have a professional golfer on his backbenches in Brian Leishman, MP for Alloa and Grangemouth, but the Socialist Campaign Group member, who recently lost the whip for rebelling, will surely not play ball. How about the Paymaster General? Nick Thomas-Symonds's skill with a mashie niblick is unknown, but he was named Nicklaus by a golf-mad father. For diplomatic reasons, Starmer may want to allow Trump to say that his course was blessed by a British Nicklaus. Just don't expect the President to concede any short putts.
Spectator
38 minutes ago
- Spectator
Monaco, the people-watching paradise
I'm lying on a sun lounger in Monte Carlo and there are so many women with extended blonde hair, hornet-stung lips and bazooka breasts stuffed into tiny monogrammed bikinis that I can't distinguish between them. They make me feel as though I'm part of a different species. My battered copy of Bret Easton Ellis's The Rules of Attraction and a sweating glass of champagne complete the scene. Like Bret, I'm drawn to the dark side of glamour, which means Monaco is a people-watching paradise. Along with the bazooka babes, ninety-something men also aren't in short supply. A leathery, wispy-chested man in that age category is slumped next to the pool, with a bandage on his foot, plasters up his arm and a wheelchair tucked away to the side. He is chain-smoking cigars and chugging beers. I fear his obit is due any minute, but what a way to go. One striking feature is the sheer number of newly installed British expats. With Labour's changes to non-dom status and the tax raids on private schools, can anyone be that surprised that our ultra-rich are fleeing to places like Monaco? Though I've heard there have been complaints from bored wives trapped in their new gilded cages abroad, missing the verve of British society, which nothing can ever replace. Poor Rachel Reeves. The left-wingers in her party want to bring in a wealth tax, which everyone with a brain knows will drive away even more high-earners, but she's too weak to rule it out. Ever since her horrific breakdown in the Commons, she's been singing for her supper in the City, with a desperate smile screwed to her face. Oh well, at least some of the expats seem to be enjoying their time here. I watch an English man with big gnashers devour an entire watermelon while casually transferring hundreds of thousands of dollars from one account to another on his laptop, which has a terrier drinking a cocktail as its background. A week before I flew to Monaco, I had a padel lesson as part of my attempt to ingratiate myself with the world's elite. Forget Wimbledon or even polo, these days it's all about padel in high-society land. Clare Stobart – of the haulage dynasty – took her helicopter to a club in Oxfordshire to meet me and we pranced around with a dashing Spanish instructor (they are always Spanish and always hot) firing balls at us. Goldman Sachs-type guys in caps battled it out on the next-door court while yummy mummies waited their turn. I've been a Francophile since my late grandmother, Anne, first told me stories of her summers in Paris. During the second world war, when she was wee, the family had hosted officers from the Polish tank regiment at home in Kelso. One of those officers, Romain, died in battle in France and was never forgotten by my family. One day at the end of the war there came a knock at the door. A Parisian woman in a powder-blue Dior suit asked to come in – her name was Agnès Chabrier. She claimed to be Romain's fiancée and wanted to see where he had been happy. As it turns out, Agnès was a fierce writer in the Saint Germain set. She released political manifestos under her own name (she wrote scathingly against the USSR, saying that 'When the Russians take Paris I'll be the first to hang from my balcony!') and potboilers under the name Daniel Gray. She became close to the family and invited Anne to spend summer with her in Paris, in her apartment on Boulevard Raspail. The characters my grandmother met there became my fairy tales: the Japanese woman in the kimono who came to tell of the horrors of Hiroshima; the Slav who put his gun on the mantelpiece; the Dior model on the train; the American soldiers celebrating Bastille Day. So began my lifelong pursuit of France and society (I once lived for a year on an oyster farm on Ile de Ré – but that is a story for another time). Monte Carlo, though, is more humorous than France, so extravagant is the richesse. At breakfast at the Hotel de Paris, I enjoy watching the super-rich on the terrace front row being attacked by hungry gulls. (The secret is to ask for a table a row or two back.) Schadenfreude is delicious. And hubris is punishable. On my final night, I request room service on my balcony and brush off the server's warning about those gulls – I want that sea view. So when, like harpies, they circle, swoop and attack, I flee screaming inside only to see my dinner be snatched up and the glasses smashed. I suppose it's only fair enough.
Spectator
39 minutes ago
- Spectator
Pity the censor: Moderation, by Elaine Castillo, reviewed
After her America is Not the Heart was published in 2018, Elaine Castillo was named by the Financial Times one of 'the planet's 30 most exciting young people', alongside Billie Eilish and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. That debut novel told the story of three generations of women torn between the Philippines and the United States. In Moderation, thirtysomething Filipina-American Girlie Delmundo (not her real name) works as a content moderator, removing the most hideous material to be found on the internet. The author doesn't pull her punches. In an early scene, Girlie has to moderate a video of child sexual abuse as part of her final assessment to get the job. (Another candidate passes his assessment, even though he throws up during it because, crucially, he doesn't pause the video.) She is asked to explain how she knows it is a young girl in the footage and not a consenting adult. The details are hard to stomach. Castillo has said that her two main characters (one of whom is Girlie) don't realise they are in a 'Jane Austen-style Regency romance'. In fairness, I'm not sure I clocked this either, at least in the first half, when a love story is barely mentioned and the pages are so muddy it is genuinely hard to persevere. In the second half, however, when Girlie starts to fall for an English co-worker, a sort of fluency develops. Good at her job, Girlie is offered a large pay raise by her company to moderate virtual reality theme parks. The frequency of rape in these environments becomes horribly numbing, at least for the reader. We are led to understand that Girlie has long been desensitised. The reasons for this are hinted at when we learn that she 'had known since she was seven what it looked like when she turned a man on'. Castillo has important things to say about the internet, trauma and true connection, but it's a shame that this novel wasn't polished to make it clearer or more enjoyable to read.
