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.
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.
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- Thomas Markle speaks out for the first time about he's heart surgery and the moment he first spoke to Prince Harry on 'Good Morning Britain'. Broadcast on ITV1,Image: 375263468, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: WENN does not claim any ownership including but not limited to Copyright, License in attached material. Fees charged by WENN are for WENN's services only, do not, nor are they intended to, convey to the user any ownership of Copyright, License in material. By publishing this material you expressly agree to indemnify, to hold WENN, its directors, shareholders, employees harmless from any loss, claims, damages, demands, expenses (including legal fees), any causes of action, allegation against WENN arising out of, connected in any way with publication of the material., Model Release: no, Pictured: Thomas Markle, Credit line: /Wenn/Avalon
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- Thomas Markle speaks out for the first time about he's heart surgery and the moment he first spoke to Prince Harry on 'Good Morning Britain'. Broadcast on ITV1,Image: 375263477, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: WENN does not claim any ownership including but not limited to Copyright, License in attached material. Fees charged by WENN are for WENN's services only, do not, nor are they intended to, convey to the user any ownership of Copyright, License in material. By publishing this material you expressly agree to indemnify, to hold WENN, its directors, shareholders, employees harmless from any loss, claims, damages, demands, expenses (including legal fees), any causes of action, allegation against WENN arising out of, connected in any way with publication of the material., Model Release: no, Pictured: Thomas Markle, Credit line: /Wenn/Avalon
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- Dua Lipa arrives at the 62nd Annual GRAMMY Awards held at Staples Center on January 26, 2020 in Los Angeles, California, United States. Where: Los Angeles, California, United States When: 26 Jan 2020 Credit: WENN/Avalon **WENN/Avalon**
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- Dua Lipa arrives at the 62nd Annual GRAMMY Awards held at Staples Center on January 26, 2020 in Los Angeles, California, United States. Where: Los Angeles, California, United States When: 26 Jan 2020 Credit: WENN/Avalon **WENN/Avalon**
I had been a huge Hyde fan until she jumped on the bash-Meghan bandwagon. Now like most of the little ladies’ lynch mob — as I have dubbed them for years in genuine awe of their capacity for self-righteous sadism — she will naturally start to back track decorously. This is the problem: there is no putting that toothpaste back in the tube. The entire UK press corps was just too vile to Meghan and simply too deranged for too long, to start playing sane now. They went too far.
I’ll accept it in this instance, because Caroline Graham and the Mail need to be aired out. Thoroughly.
Same here! I used to really enjoy Marina’s writing and then I guess that she just couldn’t help herself and started to write just like the rest of them. In the same vein, I remember when Hello had a Be Kind campaign, right around the time of the worst Meghan trashing, but that’s gone by the wayside and they’re just as bad as the rest.
Totally agree with you, Yankee Doodle & Harla. I used to enjoy Hyde’s snarky articles about folks that deserved to be taken down a peg or two. But when she started disparaging Meghan, I was gobsmacked by her truly cruel writing, I stopped reading her altogether. Maybe she realized she’d had gone too far down the murky rabbit hole with the rest of the gutter press, & is now trying to salvage her reputation…not sure I’d trust her again. She’s giving me whiplash, ugh.
Omg, this is priceless. As for Graham and Morgan’s inability to change course – to paraphrase JD Vance, “It’s hard to turn around the Titanic.”
I don’t think they wanted to change course. I think they knew that the royals (and law enforcement) had contained the story so that the truth and all the sordid details would never escape containment. It might have worked had Junior, for reasons of his own, not blown the whistle on Dad’s porn stash. Ah, the best laid plans!
That could be true. There’s a fair chance that the some of the press was assured, possibly by a courtier, that the truth would never come out and that the Met police would never remember any letter. The Met truly tried to take the recollections may vary stance. But Meghan messed that up by having a copy of the letter.
I think the “inability” comes in several ways. There seem to be a lot of things the BM know that they can’t talk about. I can imagine BP suppressing the letter and instructing the media to do the same. I can imagine the BM being locked into the “Horrible Meghan” narrative – it was like a perpetual motion machine, both lucrative and serving BP’s purposes. And I don’t have to imagine the uncomfortable questions if the planned narrative suddenly shifted from “Meghan is a terrible daughter” to “Tom Markle, WTF?” Because that’s what’s happening right now.
Caroline Graham behaved appallingly here and acted far outside the norms of actual, credible, ethical journalism.
“Mental” is a good way to describe it.
Was she so blinded by her hatred of Meghan that she buried the big story of Tom Sr.’s monstrous conduct? Did the Mail tell her to bury it in the hope that it would never come out? Just what the hell was the thinking process here???
CG seems to have functioned more or less as Senior’s “handler”. Preventing him from being caught as a child molester was probably part of her assignment. He was always presented as a sweet, harmless old man with serious health issues, all while being ignored by his cruel, heartless youngest daughter who could afford to take care of him in his distress.
The Mail and Piers and various talk shows have likely paid Thomas and Thomas Jr and Samantha hundreds of thousands of dollars, Tom Sr likely more like a million dollars, for access. They also arranged Samantha’s defamation case against Meghan in US federal court and the MAGA Floridian lawyers (who filed numerous Trump lawsuits to overturn the 2020 election, etc.) and if they didn’t pay those lawyers directly they certainly promised something. They banked that this would never emerge publicly.
Also the expenses perhaps for the move to and from the Philippines.
Yes. They invested a great deal of money in this man. It was always likely an OP.
Anybody who paid him for an interview helped him travel abroad for allegedly criminal activities, horrible to contemplate really!!
Marina Hyde’s embrace of misogynoir and classism also fits in the category of mental. Hyde makes relevant points about how a family rupture was weaponised by a racist and rapacious British news industry, but let’s be clear: Hyde and British media warped mindset about hierarchy and entitlement heavily influenced their perspective on what Meghan Sussex deserves and what she owes them for existing while having a Black mother.
I noticed Marina Hyde’s last paragraph in which she carefully writes about how wrong it may have been to cast Meghan as the villain “in THIS PARTICULAR part of the story.” Huh?! What the hell has Meghan done to be cast as “the villain” in any part of the story since she met and married Prince Harry?
Meghan Sussex refused to be a mute doormat for British Establishment and crumb maidens for the patriarchy like Marina cannot deal.
Ask yourself why Marina won’t redirect the focus to dysfunctional British media culture. If she were honest, she would be able to admit that.
Marina Hyde is taking a break from riding the Meghan-hating bandwagon, probably sensing that the tide is going to turn pretty pronto against all the so-called journalists that eagerly platformed the paedophile criminal Thomas Markle, starting with Caroline Graham.
Best to shoot first, eh Marina?
That said, of course for once Marina is right and is almost brave to call out Caroline Graham, who seems to be attempting a Houdini and escaping blame for encouraging Thomas Markle and the other two Meghan-hating Markles for years.
Not sure Marina will call out her ex Pissy Morgan, though. Or maybe he’s next?
As for that scumbag, all he’s got is an endless cesspit of insults that he hurls Meghan and Harry’s way full-time. He has no content, no info, no stories to break as he’s got nothing on them. All he’s got is screeching and jumping up and down when some other journalists break news about Meghan and Harry.
Losers, all of them.
Marina dated Morgan?! o.0
Jason Lee handed Piers his own *ss on his own show over this. Worth the watch. Or find clips so not to give any traction to Piers.
So I guess I’m the only one surprised about TM. I just assumed he was there for trafficking reasons. It’s usually the reason men go to SEA alone without it (sometimes even if it is) being business trip.
The full article is really worth a read, she takes an absolute shiv to Piers Moron, and the phrase “reverse ferret” is a gem.
Marina left the Guardian.
Left Oct 2, 2026. Yay! She’s a big reason why I quit subscribing. There are a couple of others I love to see go. So now I donate instead depending on how the Guardian cleans house.
I’m trying to justify keeping NYT after giving up on the Washington Post.
I stopped subscribing to the Guardian too — when so many of their panel of opinion writers started to bash Meghan for absolutely no reason at all, making fun of her, while supporting poor Bad Dad’s position as the wronged party.
If they only invested half as much time in criticising TOB and Wiglet, and e.g. the Midds.
While they have absolutely done valuable work helping uncover the opaque methods of financing the BRF in the Cost of the Crown series — or, just recently, Cotton Capital, the ongoing series about the Empire, the BRF and their involvement in and support of slavery — their treatment of the Sussexes is beyond the pale.
Not only did I stop subscribing to the Guardian, I stopped clicking on it altogether due to it’s piling on Meghan and Harry, mostly led by Marina the Hydra.
The Guardian’s coverage of the Royals and of most issues is smug and irritating, like they think they’re cool and everyone else on the planet sucks. For me they are the WORST hypocrites, claiming to be progressive while bashing every progressive icon out there.
The Guardian going bust or being bought by a right-wing billionaire will make no difference to the range of discourse out there – they already are the worse kind of populists: witless and hypocritical!
@Nanea Exactly.
The bigger reason why I am ready to cancel NYT is their partisanship whether to pivot 5 journalists to cover the BRF or more importantly, NYT’s election manipulation e.g. NYT running with headlines when Comey pulling a nasty on Hilary Clinton a few weeks before election— no due diligent reporting, but amplifying Comey’s idiocy. Don’t forget how NYT threw so much mud at Mamdani running for Mayor that many long time readers took note how partisan NYT reporting got.
NYT is so worried about US Senate flipping that it’s being all cute and coy with today’s article investigating democrats using LEGAL means to win in an Alaska senate race. That’s its big headline push early this morning- devoting its investigative creds behind the story. Well, how about investigating Jared Kushner and the Trump boys with pretty investigative graphics like it did with Hunter Biden, huh?!
NYT is owned by a few venture capital firms and they want a GOP control across the 3 branches. This is the only way NYT can keep their billionaire investors happy and pay as little to no taxes as possible while making more billions at the public trough.
The full article was awesome honestly. And I am glad someone is calling out journalists that cultivated a close relationship with that man to bring down his daughter. It’s mental and insane frankly. There’s no way Graham didn’t know what he was accused of. She chose to not report it. And I honestly think she didn’t do it in case Meghan did reconcile she be able to say well Meghan doesn’t care about her father’s sex abuse claims against him. Shows Meghan was 20 steps ahead of this mess.
Marina Hyde is a hell no from me. She’s making an obvious point. Slow clap.
I think we can all pinpoint the reason why Graham didn’t stop her dispatches from Thomas Markle’s bedside after she [most definitely] read the letter: she, and the rest of the media that has created an extremely lucrative cottage industry out of directing hate to Meghan knew about the allegations against him back in 2019. They may not have known that Meghan was informed but they knew themselves
Most times journalists in the British media are very reluctant to criticise their colleagues in the press and for Hyde to write this It’s clear that she and Graham are not friends.
Agreed 💯@Amy Bee she ‘s clear that her fellow journalist has crossed the line with her cultivation of T Markle.
Somehow, The Thomas Markle Allegations Will Be Meghan’s Fault https://share.google/ZSBTwCxxHRvHVyI6D
Unbelievable that C Graham didn’t read that letter when she ‘d invested years “grooming” rancid old coot to get anything Meghan related. Did she take advice from her boss about how they handled it as Prince Harry was taking ANL to court the following month? Okay she carried on regardless shilling for Meg to reconcile with his poor old dad but did she decide for herself or confer with her boss beforehand? I mean Graham did have a moral dilemma as well as a journalist one, didn’t she?
Graham embedded herself over eight years in his life without turning a hair and happily exploited his greed for money and a vindictive desire to punish Meghan for cutting him out of his life. She’s been using him for the Fail as part of their hideous campaign to ruin Meghan ‘s life and reputation and drive her into exile. Neither party ,whether reporter nor newspaper care about any of the Markles: they view them all as the dregs. So do they decide that any means was justified to expel Meghan from the RF?
Back in December 2025 Graham and the Fail are triumphant: Meghan has sent dad a letter and then she reads it and it is short and concise about child abuse allegations!
What to do? Were at any time Graham or the Fail revolted at reading the letter and concerned they ‘d championed a possible child abuser? Did that ever cross their minds for one single, solitary moment?
Or was it just how can they exploit and make money off that letter now?
Did they cynically weigh up that the letter was a MAJOR SCOOP for them to publish? Can you imagine being so cynical and opportunistic that you ‘d read a letter accusing a man of being a paedophilic abuser and think sensational headlines for days!? But they couldn’t blow up TMarkle victim image and cause sympathy and understanding for Meghan the eve of their court case brought by Prince Harry
and others .
So they continue normal practice of caping for TMarkle without hesitation or any moral consideration at all. Neither Graham nor The Fail have behaved ethically at any time in their hideous coverage of Meghan. T Markle is corrupt and eagerly sought out the media for money, vindictive desire to punish daughter and is willing to lie and say anything for publicity and cash. Fail just wanted to use someone they hold in contempt as a battering ram against his own daughter because they don’t accept a biracial woman as being good enough to be a member of RF.
T Markle, C Graham and the Fail are equally at fault as regards harming Meghan.
T Markle if investigators find evidence of paedophilic crimes should face a criminal trial.
Thomas reminds me Elon that never forgave his daughter for cutting him off (for different reasons). And decides to rage about her. Actions have consequences.