GRIF MAG

Everybody Loves Raymond premiered on Sept. 13, 1996

NEED TO KNOW

• The CBS sitcom ran for nine seasons, and the cast earned multiple Emmys for their hilarious portrayals of the Barone family

• Since the series wrapped on May 16, 2005, the original cast members have gone on to have successful careers

It's hard to believe fans said goodbye toEverybody Loves Raymond21 years ago.

The beloved CBS sitcom premiered on Sept. 13, 1996, and wrapped on May 16, 2005, after nineEmmy-winning seasons. The live-studio comedy starredRay Romanoas Ray Barone, an Italian American sports columnist living on New York's Long Island with his wife Debra (Patricia Heaton) and their three kids. Much of the comedy came from the multi-generational family dynamics, as Ray's nosy parents lived right across the street.

Although fans have missed the Barones' weekly antics,Everybody Loves Raymondlives on with all 210 episodes available to streamon PeacockandParamount+— a binge undertaken by Romano in April 2024 when he watched and rated all the episodes for the first time since the series finale in 2005.

"I got on a little kick there.I hadn't seen the episodes," the actor told PEOPLE. "They took on a new look to me. I was appreciating them more. I was very hard on them back then … But you see, when you're removed from it a little, I felt like an audience member. And then I said, 'Let me rate them.' I rated them, and I was hard on some."

Only a handful received a 96, the highest score theNo Good Deedstar was willing to give on his scale of 1 to 100.

By December 2024, Romano had completed them all, telling PEOPLE, "I forced myself."

"I was able to say, 'You know what,we did something pretty good,' " he said.

The castreunited for a 30th-anniversary specialthat aired on CBS in November 2025, which both Romano andRaymondcreatorPhil Rosenthalsaid was years in the making. The cast agreed, however, that they "didn't want to do a reboot" of the show, per Ramone.

Whether you're a newbie to the series or a longtime fan, here's what theEverybody Loves Raymondcast is up to now.

Ray Romano as Raymond Barone

As sportswriter Raymond Barone, Romano kept the laughs coming through interactions with his overbearing parents and put-upon wife Debra.

The role earned him one Emmy and a handful of nominations, though he's admitted that not every episode was award-worthy.

"When you do 210 episodes, you're going to have episodes that you think are brilliant and you're going to have episodes that you think, 'Wow, you know what? We kind of missed it on that one,' " he told PEOPLE of hisEverybody Loves Raymondrewatch. "Then you're going to have episodes that are very good, great, and somewhere in the middle, you know what I mean? That's just to be expected when you're cranking an episode out every week."

Following Romano's run on the hit show, the Queens-born actor remained a fixture on TV, appearing onMen of a Certain Age,Parenthood,Vinyl,Get Shorty,Made for LoveandBupkis.

He starred alongsideLisa Kudrow,Linda CardelliniandLuke Wilsonon Netflix's dark comedy seriesNo Good Deedin 2025 andjoined season 2 of Netflix'sRunning Pointin 2026.

On the big screen, Romano voiced Manny in theIce Agefilm series (asixth franchise installment is in the works) and appeared inThe Big Sick(2017) andMartin Scorsese'sThe Irishman(2019). Before appearing in 2024'sFly Me to the Moonand 2025'sThe Best You Can, he wrote, directed and starred in 2022'sSomewhere in Queens,oppositeLaurie Metcalf.

Romanoshares four children— daughter Alexandra, twin sons Matthew and Gregory and son Joseph — with wifeAnna Romano, whom he married in October 1987.

Patricia Heaton as Debra Barone

Heaton portrayed Debra, a hard-working mom who couldn't see eye to eye with her in-laws, though she had a soft spot for her brother-in-law Robert (Brad Garrett). She won back-to-back Emmys for her performance in 2000 and 2001.

AfterRaymondwrapped, Heaton joined actorKelsey Grammeron Fox'sBack to Youbefore finding a new home on the small screen as an overworked mom on ABC'sThe Middle, which also lasted nine seasons, from 2009 to 2018. She reunited with Grammar for a guest arc on theFrasierreboot in 2024.

Heaton later starred as a mom pursuing medical school on CBS'Carol's Second Act,whichinspired the title of her 2020 book,Your Second Act: Inspiring Stories of Reinvention. She previously released a 2002 essay collection,Motherhood and Hollywood: How to Get a Job Like Mine, and a 2018 cookbook,Patricia Heaton's Food for Family and Friends.

She's also starred in films, includingMoms' Night Out(2014) andMerv(2025), and hosted the four-part podcast seriesThe Christ, billed as an "Easter Audio Epic," in 2026.

Heaton has been married to British actorDavid Huntsince October 1990. The pairshare four sons: Samuel, John, Joseph and Daniel.

Brad Garrett as Robert Barone

As Raymond's slightly less beloved big brother, Robert, a New York City cop, Garrett earned lots of laughs with his "woe is me" attitude and comebacks to his mom and dad, with whom he lived for much of the series.

Like his costars, Garrett, who's also known for his stand-up, scored several Emmy nominations and took home three, plus a green dial telephone he snagged from the set.

"I wanted to steal [the phone], and they were like, 'What are you doing?' And I'm like, 'Nothing.' It was really lame," he told PEOPLE in June 2023. "They said, 'Would you like that phone?' And Rhonda, who was the head of props, gave it to me, and so I treasure it."

FollowingRaymond, Garrett appeared on'Til Death,The Crazy Ones,I'm Dying Up Here,Single Parents,High DesertandNot Dead Yet. He's also done a fair amount of voice work for Disney, including 2010'sTangledand 2025'sElio, and starred inMusic and Lyrics(2007),Cha Cha Real Smooth(2022) andSaturday Night(2024).

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Afterfinalizing his divorcefrom his first wife, Jill Diven — with whom he shares two kids, Maxwell and Hope — Garrettwed actress IsaBeall Quellain November 2021.

Monica Horan as Amy MacDougall

Monica Horan joined the cast slightly later as Robert's girlfriend and later wife, Amy MacDougall. Like sister-in-law Debra, Amy couldn't win with her future in-laws, sparking a bond between the two over the sheer absurdity of the Barones.

Following the show's end in 2005, she appeared onEnlightened,The Bold and the Beautiful,The MiddleandBetter Things.

Horan marriedRaymondcreator Rosenthal in April 1990. They share two kids, daughter Lily and son Ben.

Peter Boyle as Frank Barone

Peter Boylehad quite the career in the years before starring as Frank onRaymond,appearing inJoe(1970),The Candidate(1972),Young Frankenstein(1974) andTaxi Driver(1976), as well as on and off-Broadway.

Though he never won an Emmy for his work as the patriarch onRaymond, fans adored him as the deadpan, slightly cranky dad of Ray and Robert. Off-screen, he was nothing like his character, as Romano told PEOPLE in April 2024, "He made me feel welcome. He made me feel part of the club."

Shortly afterRaymondwrapped, Boyledied of multiple myeloma and heart diseasein December 2006. He was 71. Boyle was survived by his wife, Loraine Alterman, and their two daughters, Lucy and Amy.

Doris Roberts as Marie Barone

As the overbearing Barone family matriarch,Doris Robertswas the queen of laughs, doting on her sons, berating her two daughters-in-law and bickering with her husband.

Roberts earned four Emmys for her work on the series and, like Boyle, had a long list of credits beforeRaymond, including the showsAngieandRemington Steele.

Before shedied at age 90in April 2016, Roberts steadily worked, reuniting with Heaton for a few episodes ofThe Middleand delivering comedic relief in 2006'sGrandma's Boy.

Roberts was married twice. She and Michael Cannatta were married from 1956 to 1962 and had one son, Michael Cannata Jr. Then, she tied the knot with novelist William Goyen in 1963, and they were together until his death in August 1983.

Sawyer and Sullivan Sweeten as Geoffrey and Michael Barone

Twin brothers Sawyer and Sullivan Sweeten starred as the Barone twins, Geoffrey and Michael.

The boys were cast on the series when they were just 16 months old and appeared on 142 of the 210 episodes. When the show ended, the Texas-born brothers chose to remain out of the spotlight.

Sawyerdied by suicidein April 2015. He was 19.

"Sawyer was more than just a brother,"Madylin Sweeten, who portrayed Ally Barone onRaymond, told PEOPLE following her brother's death. "He was a strong and selfless friend. When confiding in one another, Sawyer always had the kindest words of encouragement. He will live on in my head and those shared moments forever."

In 2019, four years after his death, the Sweeten family restored two old theaters anddedicated them in Sawyer's name.

Madylin Sweeten as Ally Barone

Older sister to Sawyer and Sullivan, Madylin played the Barones' daughter Ally, appearing on 206 episodes. She has continued to work since the show ended, with recurring roles onGrey's Anatomy,Lucifer,Dirty JohnandAbbott Elementary.

Madylin married actor Sean Durrie in August 2018,per her Instagram. They welcomed their son River in April 2025, sharing a photo of his tiny feeton Instagramat one week old.

In honor of their brother, Madylin and Sullivan work with the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline and create annual T-shirts in Sawyer's memory, with proceeds donated to suicide prevention causes,Entertainment Weeklyreportedin November 2025.

"I just think it's so important in any conversation that we're having about Sawyer," Madylin shared during theEverybody Loves Raymondreunion special, perEW. "We're very passionate in our family about suicide prevention."

Although the actress told PEOPLE she "struggled with alcohol" in the wake of Sawyer's death, she was three years sober at the time of the theater dedication in his honor in 2019.

If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health challenges, emotional distress, substance use problems, or just needs to talk, call or text 988, or chat at988lifeline.org24/7.

Read the original article onPeople

The most startling stat about the fight betweenRonda Rousey and Gina Caranomight have surfaced the day before bout takes place, Saturday, May 16 at the Intuit Dome in Inglewood, California.

It was a day earlier, on Friday, after the official weigh-in whenCarano took to Instagram.

“Ok. Vulnerable post but here we are," she wrote. “I just weighed in at 141.4 lbs. Since Sept 2024 to today, May 15, 2026, I have lost 100lbs. It hurts to say that and share but I am going to share it because I worked so damn hard every week for over a year and a half to shed this weight. It did not happen overnight."

If the weight loss happened steadily, that’s five pounds a month for approximately 20 months.

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At her old weight of 240 pounds, the 5-foot-8 Carano would have weighed only 17 pounds less than the 6-foot-4Francis Ngannoudid at the weigh-in Friday for his heavyweight bout against Philipe Lins.

Both Rousey and Carano were required to weigh no more than 145 pounds for their fight, the main event on the 11-fight card. Carano did that with ease and do did Rousey, who came in at 142 pounds.

“If it wasn’t for having this incredibly challenging goal in fighting@rondarouseyI most definitely wouldn’t have reached this," Carano wrote. “I was pre-diabetic, had trouble simply walking in September and have been on the path to recovery to turn myself back into an athlete since then."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY:Gina Carano credits Ronda Rousey for shocking weight loss

CAIRO, May 16 (Reuters) - A senior Hamas official told Reuters on Saturday that the chief of the group's military wing had ‌died, a day after Israel said that it had carried out ‌airstrikes targeting him.

Earlier, witnesses in Gaza City said that mosques had announced Izz al-Din al-Haddad's "martyrdom". ​He is the most senior Hamas official killed by Israel since an October U.S.-backed ceasefire deal that was meant to halt fighting in Gaza.

Hamas has not publicly confirmed Haddad's death.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a joint ‌statement with his defence minister ⁠on Friday that Haddad had been targeted, though they did not say if he had been killed.

Netanyahu and Defence ⁠Minister Israel Katz said Haddad was an architect of the October 7, 2023 attacks launched by Hamas militants that precipitated Israel's ongoing assault on Gaza.

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Haddad, who ​became ​the group's military chief in Gaza after ​Israel's killing of Mohammad Sinwar ‌in May 2025, "was responsible for the murder, abduction, and harm inflicted on thousands of Israeli civilians (and) soldiers," they said.

Israel and Hamas remain deadlocked in indirect talks to advance U.S. President Donald Trump's post-war plan for Gaza that is meant to end more than two years of fighting.

Medics in Gaza ‌on Friday said that at least seven ​people, including three women and a child, were ​killed and at least ​50 injured in air strikes targeting an apartment and a ‌vehicle. It is not clear if ​Haddad was one ​of the dead.

Israel has escalated its attacks in Gaza in the weeks since halting its joint bombing with the U.S. in Iran, redirecting ​its fire back on ‌the ruined Palestinian territory where the military says that Hamas ​fighters are tightening their grip.

(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi, Writing by Alexander ​Cornwell,Editing by Louise Heavens, Kirsten Donovan)

The historian Andrew Lownie looks in pretty fine fettle for a 64-year-old man with an absolutely brutal work regimen. His day job, he reminds me as we meet in his unexpectedly plain sitting room in Westminster, is as a literary agent. But he is now possibly better known for his side-hustle as a biographer; most recently he producedEntitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York, an explosive and meticulously researched book on Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and his ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson.

Lownie says he wrote the book, which has just been updated for itsforthcoming paperback edition, around his agenting duties, which meant lots of early mornings, evenings and weekends, plus the odd snatched day off for important interviews.

“Fergie’s actually sat in that seat,” he says, pointing to the small leather armchair I’ve just settled into. He is dressed in a suit and tie (he’s not a man easy to imagine in jeans); beside us on the mantelpiece are works of art – and a rather plaintive commemorative mug from Andrew and Fergie’s wedding, in 1986. When he was working on the book, he says, he invited the former duchess to meet him – and she came by, seemingly in an effort to nudge the biography in a more positive direction. In that, as in many things, Fergie failed.

Was it strange, finding the woman he had uncovered so much about, suddenly in his house? “Yes,” Lownie says. He alleges several eye-watering details about Fergie in the book: that she frequently failed to pay her staff, that she continued to associate with Jeffrey Epstein years after publicly disowning him, that she once spent £25,000 in a single hour at Bloomingdale’s. Even so, Lownie airily admits, he was “charmed by her. You know, she’s very charismatic. She’s like a Labrador, a bundle of energy. These are the two sides to her.”

Around us is some of the evidence of Lownie’s industry: scruffy boxes filled with Freedom of Information requests, tome after tome about the Royal family, acres of press cuttings. Lownie used, he says, only around 10 per cent of the material he collected. It took him two years just to read it all and to compose a list of names to approach, which eventually numbered some 3,000 people. Of those, just 300 agreed to speak to him – “but”, he points out, “that’s probably about 250 more than most books”.

Andrew’s ‘possible sexual assault’

Many in the publishing world admire Lownie’s completionism, his Pied Piper ability to coax apparently slight but telling anecdotes from an extraordinary range of sources. One of many marmalade droppers in the new edition ofEntitledare comments from an armed police officer who used to work at Heathrow, and who recalls Andrew meeting a British Airways crew member on a plane, spinning her around when she tried to shake his hand and bending her forward “so that his groin was clearly and firmly in contact with her backside”. The police officer judged that the then-prince’s action amounted to a “possible sexual assault” but no action, of course, was taken.

At another point in the updated edition, Lownie returns to his theme of Fergie’sMarie Antoinetteattitude to food, reporting that her chef was ordered to “make a sizeable cream cake” every day. If it wasn’t eaten, the cake was thrown away – and a fresh one baked the following day regardless.

The book itself begins, as with all of Lownie’s books, with a question – in this case, whether Andrew and Fergie really were, as they used to be described, “‘the happiest divorced couple ever’. I thought, of course, that was a myth.” In general, Lownie admits, he is drawn to “what I call rogue royals, the bad boys. They’re more fun.” Still, when he started on Andrew, he was warned off it. “Everyone said ‘You’re crazy, he’s so boring, no one’s interested’.”

It turned out, of course, that people are very interested in Andrew – including various members of America’s Congress. “I was lucky it was part of the news agenda,” he says. WhenEntitledwas first published, “though it got a bit of attention, nothing happened. If there hadn’t been the Epstein releases, it would have just died a death.”

Why Epstein’s death may not have been a suicide

Lownie sets out persuasive evidence that suggests that Epstein may not have died by suicide – a position long dismissed as an outlandish conspiracy theory. “I think the thing with the Epstein revelations is we all say, ‘Oh conspiracies don’t happen, it’s all cock-up’. Then you suddenly realise that there is sort of a conspiracy here. This is all carefully planned and it’s sort of supranational.”

When the news ofAndrew’s arrest on suspicion of misconduct in public officebroke in February, and the press had a field day, a quiet minority of people felt some empathy for the former prince. Does Lownie?

“Well, he’s basically under house arrest. His reputation has been trashed. I mean, that look of absolute terror on his face when he came back from the police station. So, of course anyone who’s human will have sympathy – and have sympathy for Sarah Ferguson.”

‘Andrew’s still quite cocky, he’s not very remorseful’

But, Lownie points out: “they brought all this on themselves. And actually, I had a contact who’s close to him, saying he’s still quite cocky, he’s not very remorseful… I mean, he is so nasty to people.”

Earlier this month,a man pleaded not guilty at Westminster magistrates’ court for using threatening words towards Andrew, while he was out walking his dogs near his home in Norfolk. Lownie estimates that although he does have some protection, if he were to be, “I don’t know, in his car with one policeman and five cars turn up and ram him, and they try to kidnap him – I mean, yes, he is vulnerable.”

In the book we learn that, post-disgrace, Andrew is mainly spending his time watching golf on a vast television and playing on a flight simulator. Now 66, he’s also reportedly sinking many hours into playing Call of Duty; a royal source told Lownie that the former prince “prioritises gaming over work, health and hygiene”. It is hard not to feel a pang of melancholy at this desolate image: the former war hero and pin-up, now gaming deep into the night, all alone.

There is something, Lownie believes, profoundly “sad” about Andrew. “He talks about himself being a loner. And he’s always been kept apart from people. At school, he had separate accommodation because of security. He always had a separate wing on the naval bases. He didn’t drink. I think he kept himself apart, possibly because he thought he might be betrayed. … There is something that is not quitethere. So of course one feels sorry for him, but at the same time he is responsible for his own actions.”

For many, feeling sorry for Andrew is a stretch too far – but it is easier, I venture, to feel sympathy for his and Fergie’s daughters. I mention to Lownie that I’d watched him promise, in a YouTube video last year, that he was going to reveal much more detail about the girls’ activities in the paperback edition. But the book has relatively little about them. How come? “Lawyers,” he says darkly.

Still, Lownie says he feels that the Royal family needs to develop a proper strategy for how it deals with Beatrice and Eugenie. “There’s a slightly schizophrenic approach at the moment. One moment, the daughters arevery publicly not coming to Ascot– the next they can come. They can come to Sandringham – no, they can’t. It’s a bit cruel. I think it’s almost as if they can’t decide what to do.”

Beatrice and Eugenie should give up their titles

Lownie believes that the princesses should give up their titles and keep a low profile. But, he claims, their professional lives – Beatrice is a strategic adviser for the company Afiniti, and Eugenie is a director at the art gallery Hauser & Wirth – are dependent on their association with the Royal family. “Their jobs rely on that access that they give as royals. I mean, it’s never Beatrice Mozzi who’s going off to conferences – it’s always Her Royal Highness. And that’s part of the problem – they want the trappings, the perks, without any of the responsibilities.”

The hardback ofEntitledshot to number one in the bestseller charts, and the paperback is bound to do similarly well. Does it feel good to be at the peak of his career, at 64? “Well, I can only get better,” Lownie jokes. “No, I mean, I’ve watched so many authors over the last 40 years and there’s sometimes a book that catches on because of timing – and then you retire back into obscurity.”

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For all the book’s success, for many – especially in the Establishment – Lownie is deemed a menace. He is perceived as targeting the Royal family, and even sometimes accused of undermining the very fabric of the country, by revealing such damning information about them.

He has, he admits, paid a social toll for his work: there’s been a bit of “cold-shouldering” from his acquaintances. But he is, he insists, a royalist, and he genuinely wishes for the Royal family to continue to reign over us for many decades to come – he just happens to think they need to be held to account.

“I don’t think anyone should be given a pass just because they’re a member of the Royal family. There’s not a two-tier justice system here,” he says. “My father was a judge and Scottish, and I think there’s quite a strong Presbyterian element to this that drives me on. The monarchy depends on trust and respect from the public, and it carries moral authority. It brings the nation together… and that compact is undermined by people who seem to have their noses in the trough.”

It also undermines, he points out, “the reputation and the good work of all the others – the Prince Edwards andPrincess Annes, who get on with it day by day.”

As for the accusations that he is a scurrilous muckracker, Lownie seems exasperated by them: “There are a lot of, I would say, slightly jealous royal writers. Because clearly [the book] has changed the narrative. A lot of them who produce the sanitised stuff don’t like an outsider coming in and disrupting.” Someone has warned him, he adds, that publishing his Andrew biography would be like riding a tiger: “and ithasbeen like riding a tiger. And, you know, I prefer not to.”

Lownie lives in his Westminster townhouse with his wife and their two grown-up children; Alice, who works in publishing, and Robert, a journalist. What do they make of their father’s book? “I think they’re probably slightly embarrassed by it,” he says. “I think they also think I’m probably a bit of a media tart.”

Well, is he? “I hope not,” he says, looking rather worried. “I’ve been in the shadows for the last 40 years as an agent supporting writers, and that’s where I feel happiest.”

He maintains a frequent presence in the public eye – speaking on TV, radio, YouTube, podcasts and so on – as he feels an obligation to publicise the book, and also because he feels “more and more strongly about the need for more royal transparency. Really, that for them, that they do need to modernise. The old system of just hoping the problem will go away isn’t going to work. If they want to survive and want to restore trust and respect, they have to adapt. … And if they really want to restore respect, it’s not by us operating with censorship like Stalinist Russia or China. It’s actually by having openness and behaving well.”

The King’s recent trip to America –during which Charles seemed to charm Donald Trump to his core– is a good example, Lownie believes, of “just how effective” the Royal family can be. “I think we’re very lucky that Charles is clearly a highly cultured, compassionate, clever man.” After all, he says, “We could have got Andrew. I mean, if Charles had been killed in a skiing accident, we might well have had him as regent at least.” How would that have shaken out? A smile. “It would have been a disaster.”

William ‘is quite controlling, quite secretive’

Lownie is cautiously optimistic about how William will fare as king: “From the things I’ve heard, he is more prepared to move to this more European-style monarchy – fewer people with titles who are not working royals, look at the Crown Estates – but at the same time, he’s not declared the tax that the Duchy pays. His father did. And he is quite controlling, quite secretive, quite suspicious of the media.”

He is less ambivalent, however, about Catherine, and agrees with those who see her as the monarchy’s shining hope.The Princess of Wales, he reckons, is a “nice middle-class girl” – and “they’re far better royals than the royals themselves, and I would argue it’s the same with Sophie and Camilla”. Catherine is also, Lownie believes, “very tough – shades of the Queen Mum. And I think as an outsider, she gets it in a way I don’t think the royals do.”

Lownie sees himself as an outsider in the Windsor world, but there are striking parallels between him and the other Andrew: both are around the same age (Lownie is 64 and Mountbatten-Windsor is 66), both went to private schools in Scotland (Lownie to Fettes, Mountbatten-Windsor to Gordonstoun), both were involved in the military (Lownie as a naval reserve). Lownie remembers Andrew coming to play rugby at Fettes, and remembers hearing the stories about him, even then.

And Lownie has said that his wife, Angela Doyle, a house historian, was “brought up” with Ferguson, that they were neighbours: “So I knew quite a lot of the stories. For example, the story which no one has picked up on, Prince Philip and Susan Barrantes [Ferguson’s mother] being lovers. That all came from family information.”

Still, observing the teetering piles of royal material in Lownie’s house, you would imagine that he had been obsessed with the family since he was a boy. But in fact, it took him years to get to the royals. After founding his Andrew Lownie Literary Agency in 1988, he launched his writing career with a biography about the Scottish writer John Buchan in 2003, followed byStalin’s Englishman, a book about the spy Guy Burgess in 2015. He had long had a sense, he says, “that it’s not a proper job, being a writer” and that while various members of his family had done it, “they always had other jobs”.

It was only when he was writing about Burgess that he realised there was a good book to be done on Lord Mountbatten. “I had no interest in the royals until then,” he says. “I’d probably never read a royal biography in my life.”

Now Lownie is in the early stages of a new book about Prince Philip, which is so far shaping up to be a good deal more positive thanEntitled, he says. He clearly loathes the idea that people think he’s on some mission to wreck the Royal family’s reputation to such an extent that the whole edifice collapses altogether. “I don’t want to get a reputation for doing aTom Bower,” he says.

And he is still recovering, he says, from his five-year legal battle to gain access to the diaries and correspondence of Lord and Lady Mountbatten that became his bestselling bookThe Mountbattens: Their Lives and Loves(2019). He was successful in his fight to open up the archive – but was forced to cover his own legal costs, paying around £400,000 from his own pocket.

Entitled, he says, “will hopefully get me back to where I was five years ago. So [Andrew’s] kind of been my saviour.” In the rush to stump up the money for the legal bill, he even had to use money he’d inherited from his late mother that had been earmarked to pass to his children.

The doorbell rings, and Rob, Lownie’s son, appears to let in the photographer. Lownie calls out to him: “Are you embarrassed by my book?” “Not in the slightest,” his son calls back.

As to the claim that he is harming the country by publishing such damaging information about the Royal family, Lownie clearly finds the idea faintly ridiculous. “The role of historian and journalist is to tell the truth. We can’t sugarcoat it just to protect them,” he says. “If they have nothing to hide, they have nothing to fear.”

The updated paperback of Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York by Andrew Lownie is published on May 21. Lownie will be appearing on the Daily T podcast on Sunday, May 17; you can watch episodes of The Daily There. You can also listen onSpotify,Apple Podcastsor wherever you get your podcasts.

LONDON (AP) — The British government faces weeks of uncertainty as embattledPrime Minister Keir Starmerprepares for a leadership challenge from the popular mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, who can’t formally launch his bid until he finds a way back into Parliament.

Burnham’s path to Westminster is far from certain. He will first have to overcome a strong challenge from the anti-immigrant Reform UK party in a special election for the parliamentary seat that was vacated to make way for him.

British government borrowing costs rose Friday and the pound weakened on investor concern about continued disarray at the heart of government. The pound has dropped 1.4% against the U.S dollar this week.

Weeks of speculation aboutStarmer’s future broke into open rebellion within the governing Labour Party on Thursday as Burnham declared his intention to seek the top job and two other senior members positioned themselves for their own bids. The pressure to replace Starmer increased after Labour posteddisastrous results in last week’s local elections,losing votes to Reform UK on the right and the Green Party on the left.

Housing Secretary Steve Reed on Friday appealed to party members to step back from the brink of adivisive leadership contestthat he said would prevent the government from tackling issues like thecost of living crisisand bolster the prospects of Reform UK.

“This weekend people just need to take a breath, look at what’s gone wrong this week, and come back next week ready to do what we said we’d do — country first, party second — and focus on delivering the change we were elected to deliver,” he told the BBC.

Cabinet resignation adds pressure on Starmer

That plea came after a week in which political jockeying overshadowed everything else in Westminster.

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After dozens of Labour members publicly called for Starmer to step down, Health SecretaryWes Streetingon Thursday became the first Cabinet minister to resign. While praising Starmer’s “courage and statesmanship” in international affairs, Streeting said he had lost confidence in the prime minister’s leadership because of missteps on domestic issues.

“Where we need vision, we have a vacuum. Where we need direction, we have drift,” Streeting wrote in a stinging resignation letter.

“Leaders take responsibility, but too often that has meant other people falling on their swords,” he added. “You also need to listen to your colleagues, including backbenchers, and the heavy-handed approach to dissenting voices diminishes our politics.”

Streeting stopped short of putting himself forward as the best candidate to lead the party at the next general election, suggesting Starmer should step aside to allow a “broad” field of candidates to debate the future of the party.

That seemed to be a nod to Burnham, a former Cabinet minister who left Parliament in 2017 to run for mayor of Greater Manchester. Burnham has been looking for a way to return to the House of Commons so he can challenge Starmer for the top job.

Josh Simons, a Labour lawmaker from Northern England, provided that opening on Thursday by resigning his seat explicitly to open up a seat for Burnham. But that was only the first step for Burnham. Before he can return to Westminster, Burnham must win a special election to represent Makerfield, a community where Reform UK posted strong results in last week’s local elections.

Burnham acknowledged these challenges on Thursday when he announced his candidacy for the seat.

“I truly do not take a single vote for granted and will work hard to regain the trust of people in the Makerfield constituency, many of whom have long supported our party but lost faith in recent times,” he said in a statement.