dame penelope keith dies

O'Connell's Clothing Store

https://oconnellsclothing.com/

O'Connell's Clothing is an iconic, family-owned traditional clothier established in 1959 and headquartered in Buffalo, New York. Widely revered in traditional menswear communities, the shop is famous for keeping the "Ivy Style" and classic American "trad" aesthetic alive with zero compromise on period-correct tailoring.

Specialty Categories & Inventory

O'Connell's maintains an exceptionally vast inventory of high-quality garments primarily sourced from the USA, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Their hallmark offerings include:

• Shetland Sweaters: Famous for an extensive array of authentic, vibrant colors and high-quality wool imported directly from Scotland.
• Natural Shoulder Blazers & Suits: Rare, time-honored three-button sack suits and worsted wool blazers crafted without heavy shoulder padding.
• Unlined OCBDs: Classic Oxford Cloth Button-Down shirts prized for their unlined and unfused collars that create the perfect historic collar "roll".
• Premium Outerwear: Authoritative stockist of heritage brands like Barbour, Baracuta, and Chrysalis field coats.
• Fine Trousers: Known for precise in-house tailoring on exceptional fabrics, ranging from military-grade army drill to heavy wool flannel and corduroy.

Where to Buy

• Official Storefront: You can explore their full catalog online through the O'Connell's Clothing Official Website.
• Flagship Brick-and-Mortar: If you are near Western New York, you can shop their tightly packed, legendary racks in person on Main Street in Buffalo.

 

What Prince William is like behind closed doors | Simon Case Exclusive Interview

 

The moment Harry gave up any chance of reconciliation with William

Prince Harry may cancel UK family visit after being refused police protection

Prince Harry is reconsidering his upcoming trip to the UK with Meghan Markle and their children after his request for taxpayer-funded police protection was rejected.

The family had planned a five-day visit to Britain in early July 2026 to attend events marking the "One Year to Go" countdown for the Invictus Games in Birmingham. They were also scheduled to stay at a royal residence as guests of King Charles III. However, the Royal and VIP Executive Committee (RAVEC) denied his application for state security during the trip.

 

Key Details of the Security Dispute

• The Denial: RAVEC informed Prince Harry that his application for a state security package was denied shortly after details of the family trip were made public.
• The Core Conflict: The Duke of Sussex has stated that he feels it is unsafe to bring his family to the UK without armed police protection. While the family would be safe inside royal residences, they will not receive taxpayer-funded protection when moving around Britain.
• Private Security Limitations: A source close to the Sussexes stated that their private security team identified serious safety concerns. Private teams cannot replicate state-level protection or access local intelligence.
• Potential Compromise: Insiders report that Prince Harry is currently looking at alternatives, which include flying his family into the UK for just a single day instead of five.
• Legal Context: This dispute follows a string of legal defeats for the Duke. He previously lost a high-profile Court of Appeal challenge to fully reinstate his automatic, taxpayer-funded security, which was downgraded to a "case-by-case" basis after he stepped down as a working royal in 2020

 

"Tweedland" has reached 10.000.000 page views ! Thanks to you all ! Jeeves.

 

Royals Have No Savings: Why MPs Approved £369m Palace Refurbishment | Baroness Margaret Hodge

The king, his millions, and the first public royal tax bill | The Latest

 

Now we know how much tax King Charles pays, and it is very little

 

Analysis

Now we know how much tax King Charles pays, and it is very little

Juliette Garside

The monarch’s declaration does not tell us much, except that his bill is lower than for people with much smaller fortunes

 

Fri 26 Jun 2026 18.23 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jun/26/now-we-know-how-much-tax-king-charles-pays-and-it-is-very-little

 

The veil of secrecy that surrounds the royal finances was nudged aside a little on Thursday to allow the release of a new piece of information. We learned for the first time how much the king’s annual tax bill comes to.

 

This was not a full tax return. It was a two-sentence declaration, stating his tax payable amounted to £12.9m in 2024-25, and a slightly smaller sum the year before. His total tax payable since accession comes to £30m.

 

It has been a long time coming. Unlike other citizens, the monarch is not liable for tax, but the king and his mother before him started paying it voluntarily in 1993.

 

The declaration was short on detail. We don’t know what his total income was for those years. We don’t know the total value of his private fortune. And we have no idea how much his tax bill was reduced by for expenses such as those incurred performing royal duties.

 

The small nugget of new information has brought to light one startling fact though. The king’s tax bill is low, even when compared with those who have smaller fortunes.

 

Thanks to painstaking investigations by the Guardian, in its 2023 cost of the crown series, the king’s private wealth, known as the privy purse, is estimated to be at least £1.8bn. This includes the Duchy of Lancaster estate – a £690m land and property portfolio handed from one monarch to the next and which provides him with income of £25m a year; and an even larger pile of other assets, such as cars, jewels, art and the private residences of Balmoral and Sandringham. We have very little idea how much the king holds in financial investments, or what the revenues from these are.

 

The tax the king pays covers all of the privy purse, all £1.8bn or more of assets.

 

Because we don’t know the total income, we are not able to check what the king’s effective tax rate is, but comparisons with other taxpayers raise questions.

 

A scan of this year’s Sunday Times tax list shows that the hedge fund boss Suneil Setiya, also estimated to be worth £1.8bn, paid £114m in annual tax. This is 10 times the sum the king paid in 2023-24.

 

The musician Ed Sheeran, whose fortune at £410m is a fraction of the king’s, paid £20m to HMRC. The author JK Rowling, worth an estimated £975m, was billed £47m on her earnings and gains.

 

Even the Manchester City footballer Erling Haaland, who is Norwegian, pays more than the king – his most recent tax bill was £17m.

 

Without more information about the size and shape of the privy purse, it is impossible to say why the king’s bill is so low.

 

What we do know is that the Duchy of Lancaster is not liable for the kinds of taxes that might be paid by a company or a trust. The capital gains made by buying and selling property, and the rents received from tenants, can all accumulate and be reinvested tax free, allowing the king’s wealth to grow more quickly than that of his subjects.

 

The privy purse could be described as operating like a mini-tax haven. The assets held by the duchy are untaxed, while the king’s other holdings are undeclared. The palace says the king voluntarily pays capital gains on his privately held wealth, and that the accounts are externally audited each year. They say this part of his personal holdings remains private, as for any other citizen. But no other citizen has such discretion over the tax they choose to pay.

 

The palace was approached for comment.

Behind the Scenes: Chariots of Fire (Hudson, 1981) with Ben Cross and Ian Charleson

The Story of Eric Liddell

.The new UK Olympic kit / REMEMBERING CHARRIOTS OF FIRE and the Great Milena Canonero ..

 

 

The new UK Olympic kit looks something straight outta Sports Direct

https://twitter.com/anouj?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

The GB olympic kit is absolutely revolting. Looks like something co-designed between Lonsdale and Tommy Robinson.

pic.twitter.com/tEWAY8x9Mz

These are just some of the remarks which are going around in the net concerning the kit designed by Stella McCartney . Let's just revisit this post by Tweedland and get some real references about heraldic/s and sense of representation and circumstance

JEEVES

REMEMBERING CHARRIOTS OF FIRE and the Great Milena Canonero ...

Born in Turin, Italy, Canonero studied art, design history and costume design in Genoa. She then moved to England, where she began working in small theatre and film productions. While designing for commercials in London, she met many film directors.

Her first major film work as a costume designer was in Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (1971) after having met Kubrick on the set of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). She worked with Kubrick again on Barry Lyndon (1975), for which she won her first Oscar with Ulla-Britt Söderlund, and The Shining (1980). Her second Oscar win was for Chariots of Fire (1981), directed by Hugh Hudson.

Canonero has also designed the costumes for several stagings directed by Otto Schenk, such as Il trittico (Puccini, Vienna State Opera 1979), As You Like It (Shakespeare, Salzburg Festival 1980), Die Fledermaus (Strauss, Vienna State Opera 1980), Andrea Chénier (Giordano, Vienna State Opera 1981), and Arabella (Strauss, Metropolitan Opera 1983). For director Luc Bondy she created the costumes for new productions of Puccini's Tosca (Metropolitan Opera, 2009), and of Euripides' Helena (Burgtheater, Vienna, 2010).

In 1986, Canonero became the costume designer for the television series Miami Vice.

In 2001, Canonero received the Career Achievement Award in Film from the Costume Designers Guild. In 2005, Canonero won the guild's award for excellence in contemporary film for her work on Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004). She won her third Oscar for Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette (2006).

Canonero reteamed with Anderson in 2014 on The Grand Budapest Hotel, for which she received her ninth nomination and fourth win at the 87th Academy Awards. She also won a BAFTA award for her work on the film

The Real Chariots Of Fire

Rowing Blazers by Jack Carlson.

Henley Royal Regatta: secrets of the rowing blazer

A new book reveals the history of the rowing blazer – and explains why Dutch rowers have to wear blazers covered in sweat, beer and river water

Posted by

Lauren Cochrane

Friday 4 July 2014

theguardian.com

http://www.theguardian.com/fashion/fashion-blog/2014/jul/04/henley-royal-regatta-secrets-rowing-blazer

Jack Carlson's new book Rowing Blazers is dedicated to an oddity of British style – one that is now nearly 200 years old. As a professional rower taking part in the Henley Royal Regatta this week, rowing apparel is a subject that the American knows a lot about, and his access to this privileged, preppy world, provides stories from clubs all over the country. Here is Carlson's crib sheet on the history of the rowing blazer.

• "The Oxford and Cambridge boat race started in 1829, while Henley is celebrating its 175th anniversary this year. Although rowers wore blazers from the beginning, they weren't originally called blazers. Clubs in Oxford and Cambridge would compete against each other and they wore brightly coloured jackets so those watching on the bank could distinguish between teams."

• "The bright red jacket of the Lady Margaret boat club in Cambridge was the first to be called a blazer, because of the 'blazing' red colour. We found the first mention of it in the Cambridge University Almanac of 1852, where the word blazer is in inverted commas; you see its usage evolve over the next 10 years. By the 1890s, people talk about the cricket blazer, for example."

• "The blazer crossed the Atlantic in the 1910s. Universities such as Cornell and Princeton began to have blazers on their campuses in the mid-1910s. It is part of the Ivy League look, based on the Oxford and Cambridge blazers. It has been part of the preppy style vocabulary for the past 100 years – brands such as Ralph Lauren, Hackett and Gant use it. There is a huge market for vintage rowing blazers in the US and Japan – they can fetch thousands of pounds, even when they're riddled with moth holes."

• "New clubs in Australia, America and Japan often have blazers. It's all about looking the part and fitting in. Oklahoma City is racing this year and it has a blazer. It's a horrible thing – cream with turquoise binding."

• "The Dutch have interesting traditions. No one owns their own blazer there – they're handed down to the next generation. The result is that they're often terribly fitting – you'll see a little coxswain in a huge jacket or a massive guy in a tiny jacket from 100 years ago. They're not allowed to clean them unless they win the varsity race, which doesn't happen very often. That means most blazers aren't cleaned in decades – they're covered in sweat, beer and river water."

• Rowing Blazers by Jack Carlson is out on July 7.

Friday 30 June 2017 : Blazers and bubbly – a Henley regatta photo essay / The Guardian picture essay

The Guardian picture essay

Blazers and bubbly – a Henley regatta photo essay

Photographer Alicia Canter took to the river Thames for the rowing social event of the year, Henley’s 178-year old royal regatta, and took in the scenes, from the stewards’ enclosure to the fun and frolicks on the water

by Alicia Canter and Matt Fidler

Friday 30 June 2017 08.00 BST Last modified on Friday 30 June 2017 09.06 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/jun/30/blazers-and-bubbly-a-henley-regatta-photo-essay#img-33

The Henley regatta is an event synonymous with the English social season, both a competitive rowing event and a chance for the well-heeled to don their blazers and frocks for a spot of traditional summer fun.

The rowing course is just over two kilometres long and straddles Buckinghamshire and Berkshire on either side of the Thames.

Five hundred and seventy-eight crews are entered into the regatta this year. They come from universities, colleges, schools and independent rowing clubs from around the world. Normally more than 100 are from overseas.