18:30

Here’s a quick dispatch from my colleague Robert Booth:

Meghan Markle has described as “disheartening” and “discriminatory” some of the media coverage she received as Prince Harry’s girlfriend because it centred on her racial background.

In an interview to mark their engagement announced on Monday, Harry also said the couple were “totally unprepared for what happened” in terms of the coverage, which forced him to take the rare step last year of attacking the British press for introducing “racial overtones” into the reporting of his relationship with an American actor.

Markle, whose mother is African American and father is white, said the extent of media interest had been “a learning curve and said “I did not have any understanding of what it would be like”.

“At the end of the day I am proud of who I am and where I have come from and we have never put any focus on that, we have just focused on who we are as a couple.”

The couple, who will marry next spring in what a royal source said would be a “happy church wedding”, revealed how Prince Harry proposed at Nottingham Cottage in the grounds of Kensington Palace on “a standard typical night in for us” while they were roasting a chicken for dinner.



Markle said it was “just an amazing surprise, it was so sweet and natural and very romantic. He got on one knee . . . I could barely let you finish proposing. I said ‘can I say yes now?’”



“Then there were hugs and I had the ring in my finger and I was like can I give you the ring? She goes – oh yes the ring.”

