Meghan set to join Harry at Invictus Games in Canada
The Duchess of Sussex will join her husband, the Duke of Sussex, at the Invictus Games in Canada.
The seventh edition of the games, established by Harry in 2014, begin in Vancouver on Saturday and bring together more than 500 competitors from 23 nations.
It is the first time the games will include winter sports.
Meghan's attendance is understood to underscore her support for her husband and the mission of Invictus, a cause that is deeply personal to them both, and her focus at the games will be on uplifting her husband, the competitors and sharing their stories.
The couple famously appeared in public together for the first time at the Toronto Invictus Games in 2017, pictured hand-in-hand at a wheelchair tennis event.
In 2023, Meghan and Harry cheered on athletes among the crowds at the Invictus Games in Dusseldorf, Germany.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex were sitting side-by-side clapping and also reacting to the game tensely as they watched the wheelchair basketball with Australia supporters.
While Meghan is understood to have several projects on the horizon, her family remains her top priority and she is determined to continue to stand together with Harry to support the causes they care about.
The couple visited Colombia for a four-day tour last August, with the trip focusing on tackling cyber-bullying and online digital violence as well as promoting women's leadership.
They also embarked on a three-day visit to Nigeria earlier in 2024 at the invitation of the West African nation's chief of defence staff.
British veterans and serving personnel who were injured during service departed for Canada earlier this week for the games.
The 62 competitors – all veterans and serving personnel who sustained life-changing injuries and illnesses while serving in the UK Armed Forces – left the country from Birmingham Airport on Thursday.
The games aim to 'inspire recovery, support rehabilitation and generate a wider understanding and respect for those who have served their country', the Royal British Legion said.
The games have previously been held in London in 2014, in Orlando in 2016, Toronto in 2017, Sydney in 2018, The Hague in 2022 and Dusseldorf in 2023.
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Scottish Sun
13 minutes ago
- Scottish Sun
World's longest flight was the worst 18 hours of my life – here's the only reason I'm tempted back onboard
New planes will also offer a feature that's completely unheard of in economy... and it could make a huge difference for travellers PLANE NO World's longest flight was the worst 18 hours of my life – here's the only reason I'm tempted back onboard BACK in 2018, I spent 18 hours trapped in what felt like a flying sardine can on Qantas' inaugural Perth to London route. Seven years later, the airline is finally fixing everything that made me want to never fly direct again - and launching an even longer Sydney to London route that could actually be worth doing. 11 Jacob spent 18 hours on Qantas' inaugural Perth to London route in 2018 Credit: The Sun 11 The writer says the trip made him want to never fly direct again Credit: Jacob Lewis - The Sun 11 The food on the flight was largely tasteless Credit: The Sun 11 It was designed by nutrition experts to keep you hydrated Credit: The Sun When Qantas launched the world's longest flight from the UK back then, I was the first journalist to test it out in economy - crammed into cattle class for every excruciating minute of the 17-hour fight (nearly 18 hours including tarmac time) from Perth to London. It was supposed to be a game-changer for British holidaymakers heading Down Under, cutting out those tedious stopovers in Dubai or Singapore. Instead, it felt more like an endurance test. 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While the food - designed by nutrition experts to be intentionally bland and keep you hydrated - was largely tasteless. But the real killer? The complete lack of WiFi on what was supposed to be Qantas' flagship route. Qantas reveal Project Sunrise A350 For someone used to being constantly connected, going offline for nearly 17 hours felt like stepping back into the Stone Age. Why The Route Exists The Perth-London route isn't just about convenience - it's about cold, hard economics. When the "kangaroo route" first opened in 1947, passengers had to endure seven stops over four days to reach Australia. Even modern connections through Dubai or Singapore add hours to your journey and the hassle of changing planes. 11 Qantas is replacing those Dreamliners with brand-new Airbus A350-1000s Credit: Qantas 11 The Perth-London route is about cold, hard economics Credit: Jacob Lewis - The Sun For Aussies living on the west coast, Perth is their natural gateway to Europe. 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The numbers tell the story: where the old planes had economy seats squeezed to just 17.2 inches wide, the new A350s will feature 18-inch seats - actually wider than the airline's double-decker A380s used on their stopover routes. That might sound like a small difference, but when you're trapped for 17 hours, every millimetre counts. Even better, seat pitch increases from a knee-crunching 32 inches to a much more civilised 34 inches. It's still not business class, but it's the difference between agony and merely uncomfortable. The Wellness Revolution 11 The new planes will feature a dedicated 'Wellbeing Zone' Credit: Quantas 11 Passengers on the new Qantas route will be able to actually get up, stretch, and move around Credit: Quantas Perhaps most importantly, the new planes will feature something completely unheard of in economy: a dedicated "Wellbeing Zone" where passengers can actually get up, stretch, and move around during the flight. Anyone who's done a long-haul flight knows that desperate dance in the aisles trying to get blood flowing back to your legs. Having a proper space to stretch could be the difference between arriving in London feeling human versus feeling like you've been folded into a suitcase for a day. The entertainment system gets a major upgrade too, with 13.3-inch touchscreens (bigger than many laptops), Bluetooth connectivity for your own headphones, and modern high-speed USB-C charging ports. Most crucially, there will finally be WiFi - because who wants to go offline for nearly a day in 2025? 'Project Sunrise' 11 Qantas is fixing the Perth route and launching the ultimate endurance test: direct flights from Sydney to London with 'Project Sunrise' Qantas isn't just fixing the Perth route - they're launching the ultimate endurance test: direct flights from Sydney to London that will take over 19 hours, plus a Sydney to New York route. 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If they don't, well, at least Singapore and Dubai have the world's best airports for stopovers.
Edinburgh Live
21 minutes ago
- Edinburgh Live
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle send 'strong message' to royals in personal video
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Time Out
25 minutes ago
- Time Out
Stereophonic
Stereophonic playwright David Adjmi recently wrote an article for a major British newspaper in which he waxed effusively about how his Broadway smash had been inspired by the band Led Zeppelin. I wonder if his lawyer was holding a gun to his head as he wrote it, because while the Zep may have been a tertiary influence, Stereophonic is very very very very very very very clearly about Fleetwood Mac. There are Fleetwood Mac fan conventions less about Fleetwood Mac. Hell, there are incarnations of Fleetwood Mac that have been less about Fleetwood Mac. Specifically, it's a lightly fictionalised account of the recording of the Anglo-American band's mega-selling Rumours album, and while not every detail is the same, many are identical, from the cities it was recorded in (Sausalito then LA) to the gender, nationality and internal-relationship makeup of the band, to details like female members 'Holly' (aka Christine McVie) and 'Diana' (aka Stevie Nicks) moving out out the studio accommodation they were sharing with the band's menfolk in favour of their own condominiums. Which l hasten to say is all to the good, even if it frequently feels like a miracle that Stereophonic has stormed Broadway – becoming the most Tony-nominated play of all time – without being derailed by legal issues (though there is a lawsuit against it from Rumours producer Ken Caillet, who has accused Adjmi of ripping off his memoir). Of course, it is a great subject for a play. The story of how erstwhile blues noodlers Fleetwood Mac recorded one of the greatest pop albums in history, while breaking up with each other, while on drugs isn't simply a bit of pop trivia: it's a parable on the nature of the creative process. It's an incredibly tricky story to tell in a way that doesn't come across all VH1 Behind the Music. But Stereophonic carries it off spectacularly well. For starters, the veil of fiction allows Adjmi to portray Peter (Jack Riffiford, basically Lindsay Buckingham) and Reg (Zachary Hart, basically John McVie) as catastrophic fuck ups - the former toxic and controlling, the latter addled and out of control. The reason biographical musicals are uniformly terrible is that the musicians or their estate have to sign the content off before they'll allow their songs to be used, resulting in tediously flattering portraits. That does not happen here. For all their faults it's a pleasure spending time with these fuck ups And then there are the songs by erstwhile Arcade Fire man Will Butler. They don't sound anything like Fleetwood Mac really: at a pinch you could argue they sound like Arcade Fire gone '70s soft rock. The lyrics don't have the stinging rawness of Rumours – it would be clunky cosplay to try and write a song like 'Go Your Own Way' for this project. But they're rousing, emotional, layered tunes, written for a band with the same makeup of singers and instrumentalists as Fleetwood Mac, performed live by the cast. There's a notable scene in which the band go through endless takes of a track called 'Masquerade': spoiler etc, but the scene finally ends with them getting it right – the scene would fall flat if it wasn't a good song. So no, Butler hasn't written Rumours II, or even tried. But Daniel Aukin's production hinges on the songs written for it being good enough to feel credible, which is pretty audacious. Structurally, it's a three-and-a-bit-hour interrogation of the creative process that features little more than the band chatting to each other or recording. Set solely in a windowless studio, director Aukin has supreme confidence in the play's pacing and rhythms. There is a lot – like a lot – of fannying around over drum sounds and guitar tones, but the play leads us to the right psychological space to understand that there's much more to this than musos muso-ing. A blizzard of coke, exhaustion, the enormous pressure to follow up their previous album, and of course cataclysmic inter-band tensions all go some way to explain why the band and their affable engineers Grover (Eli Gelb) and Charlie (Andrew R Butler) find themselves agonising over every detail. There is a lot about gender and power here. If the broad brushstroke picture is 'band makes an album', the more nuanced one is 'two talented women try to assert themselves in a toxic male-dominated creative environment'. Both Holly (Nia Towle) and Diana (Lucy Karczewski) know their worth. But Holly has to negotiate the broken heart of her ex, Reg, who has pretty much fallen apart after she dumped him and needs to be looked after if they're actually going to make this record. Meanwhile Diana has to deal with the brittle, self-absorbed musical virtuoso Peter, who she's still in a relationship with. His natural sense of perfectionism has been curdled by resentment over Diana's rising star status in the band, and his many snarling putdowns of her work are deeply uncomfortable. Zoom in even closer, and it's the story of Diana stepping out from Peter's control – at the beginning she's subservient to him for the sake of keeping the peace, but she will soon reject this volcanically. It's worth stressing that Stereophonic is extremely entertaining, because it's a show about seven great characters, and the reason the characters are so great is largely because the IRL Fleetwood Mac are a great bunch of characters. For all their faults it's a pleasure spending time with these fuck ups, from Towle's tough, brassy Holly to Chris Stack's avuncular-but-edgy Simon (ie the Mick Fleetwood character). Knob twiddlers Grover and Charlie aren't based on famous people, but still counterbalance the story, a couple of guys who might have expected themselves to be out of their depth musically instead finding themselves totally stumped by the band's emotional problems If there's one thing beyond a degree of legal protection that Stereophonic obviously gains from not technically being about Fleetwood Mac, it's that it ends on a genuinely uncertain note, and not with, I dunno, the band slamming through 'The Chain' while stats about the album's colossal sales flash up. Was this tectonic creative process worth all the damage inflicted for the music it created? Rumours is so beloved now that it's hard to conclude the band should have actually sacked it off. And you'd probably say the same for the Stereophonic band to be honest. But without the quadrillions of sales and instantly recognisable tunes, the damage these people did to each other in the name of art is brought home with devastating eloquence.
