John Crace Satirizes Prince William's Country Life Guest Edit

John Crace has published a satirical page-by-page "digest" of the special issue of Country Life guest edited by HRH The Prince of Wales, mocking everything from £30 million country properties to a fictitious interview with the Prince's cocker spaniel, Orla.

The parody, structured as an imagined contents list running from the front cover to page 257, opens with the observation that the issue's opening 60 pages are filled with photographs of garden sheds — "some at the very affordable price of £30m" — which turn out to be houses for sale. "We must never forget that poverty is often hidden in plain sight in the countryside," the sketch adds.

Crace, the Guardian's parliamentary sketch writer, attributes invented quotations to the Prince throughout, lampooning his wealth and tax status. On the treehouse at Highgrove, the fictional William recalls: "At first, it was just a very plain structure. Now it is a huge palace made of ancient oak with its own servants' quarters."

What does the satire target?

The digest takes aim at several recurring targets:

• The Prince's exemption from inheritance tax, referenced in the parody treehouse memoir: "as I do not have to pay inheritance tax, it will be pretty much everything that was left to me."
• The self-congratulatory tone of the Earthshot Prize interview with Sir David Attenborough, imagined on page 76 as a 1,500-word tribute in which the broadcaster supposedly thanks the Prince on behalf of "Country Life readers all around the home counties."
• The Duchy of Cornwall's treatment of tenants, via a fabricated letter on page 90 from "James Tenant" of Cornwall, whose complaints about a collapsed ceiling are "constantly ignored."
• Royal tax arrangements again, through fictional farmer Brian, quoted in a rural mental health feature: "knowing that the prince doesn't have to pay any tax on his income really cheers me up."

The sketch also invents an art appreciation of the Prince's favourite painting, "The Fox in the Snow," credited to "Charlotte RA," who declares it "by far the most important Christmas card released by WH Smith in the early 90s."

Later pages widen the joke to the Prince's family and associates. A mock interview with the Princess of Wales by Robert Macfarlane, stretching to an imagined 3,000 words, reduces her to repeating "I feel very connected to Nature" while Macfarlane invokes "the liminal spaces between the Land and the Underland." An imagined Aston Villa manager Unai Emery concedes the Prince "knows so much more about football than I do."

Even the royal dog receives a voice. "It's tough being a royal dog," the fictional Orla says on page 231. "All the other dogs always think you're a bit stuck up."

Crace closes with editor-in-chief Mark Hedges imagined receiving an OBE in gratitude, closing the issue on the note of courtier deference that the sketch has spent 257 pages puncturing. The column stands in a long tradition of British press satire directed at royal media appearances, and arrives as guest-edited royal issues of heritage titles continue to draw both celebration and ridicule.