Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist, podcaster and political/royal/social commentator. I’ve read and covered some of her Guardian columns before, especially the ones about the Windsors and the Sussexes. Well, Hyde has been following the Thomas Markle catastrophe and she has some thoughts. One of the most interesting parts of Hyde’s piece is her assessment of the Daily Mail’s Caroline Graham, who has been filing exclusives with her dear friend Thomas Markle for years. Here’s that section, and you can read the full piece here.

There is a richly grotesque tradition of Fleet Street reporters cultivating questionable contacts as close personal friends. Why? Either out of the pure altruism of their human souls, or – I must leave you to decide – the possibility that this arguably somewhat synthetic connection will lead to story gold along the way. It doesn’t always pay off. Richard Kay, the Mail’s former royal correspondent, went so far as to make Princess Diana’s former butler Paul Burrell godfather to his child. When Paul Burrell’s trial collapsed, Burrell sold his sensational story to another close contact at the Mirror, and Kay was inconsolable. The “close friendship” was promptly sundered.

Even by these standards, though, I remember reading the Mail reporter Caroline Graham’s dispatch from Thomas Markle’s hospital bedside of last December and thinking: oh man, this is very, very weird, and extremely, extremely mental. The story was headlined: “’I don’t want to die estranged from Meghan. I want to meet my grandkids and Harry’: Thomas Markle speaks to the Mail’s Caroline Graham from his hospital bed in this world exclusive interview.”

But why was Graham there? Well, according to her own report, despite having “met through work”, she and Thomas had become the closest of friends. Thomas Markle had moved to the Philippines – for reasons I can only delicately describe as “unclear” – and, after experiencing problems with his leg, was in hospital and had been told he would lose it. His first message was to Caroline Graham. Or as she put it: “He had chosen to break the news of the amputation to me before his own family.”

Highly normal. As Graham also put it: “We speak most days and I consider him something of a father figure.”

So to cut a long story short, Caroline Graham dashed to his bedside. Indeed, it was while she was sitting with him – filing stories about the experience all the while – that Meghan was being lambasted for not getting in touch with her father in his hour of need. Eventually, the duchess released a statement making clear that this bizarre arrangement was something of a roadblock. “Given that a Daily Mail reporter has remained at her father’s bedside throughout, broadcasting each interaction and breaching clear ethical boundaries, it has been exceedingly difficult for the duchess to contact her father privately, despite her efforts over the past several days.”

Nonetheless, a letter from Meghan was eventually delivered to the room. Thanks to last Friday’s extraordinary revelation that Thomas Markle’s own son had reported him to the police after allegedly discovering child sexual abuse images on his computers, we now know rather more about the situation. And we now know rather more about the contents of the letter. In it, Meghan says, she informed him that her close protection officers had passed details of sex offence allegations against him to her, and explained that it was for that reason that he would never meet her children.

I know what you’re thinking. That would have been a pretty good WORLD EXCLUSIVE for Caroline Graham to have filed, considering she admits Thomas Markle read the letter in front of her. And yet Caroline this weekend forced herself back into print to assure readers that she never even asked about the contents of the letter, “out of respect for Meghan’s privacy”

To which the only conceivable reply is: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Sorry, what?! Do me a favour. The one thing precisely zero syllables of Caroline Graham’s output could ever be said to be rooted in is respect for Meghan’s privacy. Furthermore, what kind of journalist flies halfway round the world, files batsh-t dispatches from an amputee’s bedside that cross multiple moral red lines, yet doesn’t even ask her close friend / father figure what was in that momentous letter?

The question now is how much of this grim and toxic situation amongst the Markles could have been foreseen by the sections of the media that cast Meghan as the villain in this particular part of the story. My feeling is: quite a bit of it.

[From Marine Hyde’s blog]

When the Thomas Markle news came out last week, one of my first thoughts was “when did Caroline Graham know?” Because like Marina Hyde insinuates, it’s pretty likely that Graham read Meghan’s 2025 letter to Thomas. And that starts a line of inquiry – why did Graham continue to position Thomas as the wronged party, why did she continue interviewing him, why didn’t she back away from all of this? I suspect it was the same for Piers Morgan and all of the rest of the Thomas Markle defenders: they were in too deep, they had too much invested in using Thomas to attack Meghan, and they couldn’t figure out a way to reverse course.

#CarolineGraham of the Daily Mail visited Thomas Markle in USA, Mexico, Thailand and the Philippines. She had access to his phone, computer, letters. In her own words, Thomas was like a father to her. #stophateforprofit https://t.co/SGEh1T7NNq

— ÈFŪRÛ II ® ™ (@realfranzprusse) October 25, 2026

Photos and screencaps courtesy of Avalon Red and Good Morning Britain.