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King Charles banknotes go for 11 times face value

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Banknotes with a face value of £78,430 have raised more than 11 times that amount for charity following a series of auctions.

New £5, £10, £20 and £50 notes featuring King Charles III entered circulation in June.

A full set of the first issues were presented to the monarch, but hundreds of other low serial numbered banknotes have gone under the hammer.

One single £10 note with the serial number HB01 000002 sold for £17,000 during bidding.

During another lot, a sheet of 40 connected £50 notes – with a face value of £2,000 – sold for £26,000. That was a record for any Bank of England auction.

The four sales run by auctioneers Spink in London raised £914,127 in total.

Collectors seek banknotes which come as close to the 00001 serial number as possible, hence the large amounts raised.

When the notes entered circulation in June, the Post Office reported collectors visiting branches which had stocks of the notes during the first day. There was also an early queue outside the Bank of England in London.

Sarah John, the Bank’s chief cashier – whose signature is on the notes – said she was “thrilled” that such such a “remarkable” amount was raised.

The proceeds will be shared equally between 10 charities chosen by the Bank:

  • Childhood Trust
  • The Trussell Trust
  • Shout
  • Carers UK
  • Demelza
  • WWF-UK
  • The Brain Tumour Charity
  • London’s Air Ambulance Charity
  • Child Bereavement UK
  • The Samaritans.

It is the first time the monarch has changed on Bank of England notes, because Queen Elizabeth II was the first to routinely appear on Bank of England banknotes from 1960. The monarch does not feature on banknotes in Scotland.

Although the use of notes and coins is declining, the number of people mainly using cash for day-to-day spending hit a four-year high during the cost of living crisis, according to banking trade body UK Finance.

Post offices also reported handling a record amount of cash in July, with transactions totalling £3.77bn.

And HSBC has promised it will not announce any new closures of its bank branches until at least 2026.

Royal Family

King Charles ‘irritated’ over Prince William and Kate Middleton event blunder

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The health challenges currently facing the Royal Family have made this one of the most difficult years the monarchy has experienced in recent history.

With both King Charles and Princess Kate currently undergoing treatment for cancer their already close relationship has only grown stronger with the King’s spokesperson noting earlier in the year that he has stayed in the “closest contact” with his “beloved daughter-in-law” throughout the difficult period.

However like all families just because the royals share close bonds doesn’t mean that they never get on each other’s nerves and one royal expert has revealed that when Prince William and Kate made one particular blunder last year during a seriously high-profile royal event, the King was left feeling pretty “irritated” at the couple.

The expert – royal author Katie Nicholl – revealed the blunder, and the King’s reaction to it, in an episode of Vanity Fair’s Dynasty podcast, which explored how Prince William’s role has adapted within the Royal Family over the course of this last, and challenging, year.

The high-profile event at which the blunder was made was none other than the Coronation of King Charles and Queen Camilla, one of the most historic days in for the monarchy in decades.

 

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Prince Harry ‘blinded by his own sibling-sour grapes’ in feud with William, expert says

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A royal commentator has claimed that Prince Harry was “blinded by sour grapes” in his feud with his brother, Prince William.

Dr Tessa Dunlop’s remarks come after the Prince of Wales’ new documentary on the homelessness crisis was released on ITV.

In the documentary, William mentioned Harry while talking about their late mother, Princess Diana, taking them to a homeless shelter.

Dunlop said, according to GB News, “ITV’s ‘Prince William, Together We Can End Homelessness’ wasn’t just moving television, it reframed the Prince of Wales as a future ‘King of hearts’.

In the opening of his memoir Spare, Harry insisted that William with his ‘alarming baldness’ was losing his ‘famous resemblance to Mummy.’

It was fading apparently. The Duke of Sussex, blinded by his own sibling-sour grapes, couldn’t be more wrong.”

Dunlop added, “Last night, William channelled Diana. The same big-eyed stare, the same capacity to make the unseen in society feel seen, the same sincerity; as William readily owned, he had ‘taken guidance from what my mother did’.”

‘William isn’t just a celebrity, he is a ‘super celebrity’’
The second part of the documentary is also set to air. It will be available to international audiences on Disney+ from Friday, November 1.

Meanwhile, Dunlop said, “As a charity boss casually observed, William isn’t just a celebrity, he is a ‘super celebrity’ and his capacity to work that status was there for all to see. When else would an issue like homelessness get two consecutive slots on prime-time TV?”

“As for questions about the prince owning too many palaces to be a credible homelessness champion – he faced down that accusation by front-lining Windsor Castle mid-documentary to underscore his status as the man who can. Former street sleeper Wayne didn’t care, he just wanted a platform to tell his story,” Dunlop added.

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Duchess Sophie reduced to tears after meeting Sudanese refugees fleeing civil war

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The Duchess of Edinburgh was visibly moved to tears during her recent visit to Chad, where she met with refugees who had fled the brutal civil war in Sudan.

During her time there, the Duchess listened to their heartbreaking accounts of sexual violence and the harrowing experiences they endured.

Sophie, 59, became the first member of the royal family to make an official visit to the central African country, spending three days in Chad, including a day at the border with Sudan, before departing on Monday afternoon.

At a hospital centre in Adre, near the border, the Duchess hugged five survivors of conflict-related sexual violence after hearing what they had been through.

Overcome with emotion, Sophie was moved to tears as she addressed the media following the private meeting, reflecting on the profound impact of the survivors’ courage and resilience.

People are having to exchange food and water for sex, for rape,” she said. “That is violence that is being enacted through conflict. It is being used as a bargaining tool.

“These women have no option but to leave. And, even then, they’re lucky if some of them can get away because some of the villages and towns that they come from they can’t even leave their houses any more. If they leave their houses they get killed.”

The royal added: “What they do to the children is… I can’t even use the words.”

The Duchess – who has two children, Lady Louise Windsor, 20, and 16-year-old James, the Earl of Wessex with her husband the Duke of Edinburgh – admitted she was “quite wobbly” after hearing the women’s experiences, which she described as “devastating”.

The Duchess spoke to victims of conflict-related sexual violence and saw work carried out by UNICEF

One of the women who Sophie met said afterwards she had fled the city of Geneina, in the west Darfur region of Sudan, after thousands of people were killed in a matter of days.

The woman said her family had been threatened with death and rape if they left their home, while her teenage son and brothers were among men who were rounded up and taken away.

After arriving in Chad’s capital city N’Djamena on Saturday, Sophie took an early morning flight on Sunday to Farchana on the other side of the country.

A motorcade with a military escort then took her a further hour and a half’s drive, over rough terrain, to Adre, where more than 220,000 refugees, mostly women and children, are living in a camp after fleeing following the conflict between the Sudanese armed forces (SAF) and the paramilitary RSF which broke out in April 2023.

After her emotional meeting with the sexual violence survivors, Sophie visited a session run by Plan International, which runs mobile protection units to try to identify children in the camps who need help.

The Duchess is a champion of the UN’s Women, Peace and Security Agenda (WPS) and a supporter of the UK’s Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative (PSVI).

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