1936 And All That?

The Abdication Crisis, you say? Well, at 35 years until his death, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor had one of his family's longer-lasting marriages. Meghan Markle's first marriage was civil, like Wallis Simpson's second, whereas her first had been in the Episcopal Church, so that it was possible to see the Church of England's point.

82 years later, however, Ms Markle is to be married next summer either in Westminster Abbey or in St Paul's Cathedral, by the Archbishop of Canterbury, according to the Book of Common Prayer on which the Royal Family still insists, and in the presence of the Queen, all apparently without ever having been baptised. That is the real theological problem here.

The Abdication Crisis was perhaps the most notable outing for the very hard line that male homosexual clergy, on both sides of the Tiber, characteristically take on the subject of divorce, and most especially of divorced women. Cosmo Gordon Lang and his circle were victorious, because, detached from the Magisterium, they had to fight.

Evangelicals are usually, although not always, a little easier-going on divorce, perhaps because they tend to be the marrying kind themselves. But they might usefully employ their current ascendancy in the Church of England to ensure that its parishes no longer sponsored those who allowed adolescent male genitals in the showers at the Girl Guides. Girlguiding UK, indeed.