On Vancouver Island, I considered the case of Harry and Meghan

One man told me that if Harry got a job in a warehouse then people would soon stop paying attention, says Andrew Buncombe

The couple have been staying in a quiet community on Canada's Vancouver Island (Getty)

At a certain point, people assume you have covered every story.

Floods and earthquakes and hurricanes – tick. Mass shootings (too many), coups (one), invasions (also, one) interviews with celebrities in the making (Take That), along with court cases and city council meetings when local media still had the resources.

Yet one subspecies, still a mainstay for large chunks of Fleet Street, remained unchecked for me – an overseas assignment about the British royal family. I’d written about the royals before, of course — even covered the funeral of Princess Diana — but never on foreign soil.

Thanks, then, to Harry Windsor and Meghan Markle, for turning their backs on Buckingham Palace and decamping to Canada’s Vancouver Island, a fabulous getaway for anyone seeking peace, and just a 30-minute flight from where I live in Seattle. Was I keen to go? Absolutely.

The Independent’s stance on covering the royal family has changed over the years. At one point, it only wrote about issues deemed to have constitutional implications.

In the current, digital age, such an approach makes much less sense. There is intense interest in certain royals, and in the figure of Markle, a woman of colour, with very much a mind of her own, stands a story of genuine importance and implication.

On Vancouver Island, we were keen to find out not just how the couple were getting on, but what the locals made of them too.

Almost without exception, people said the couple were very welcome. Yet they claimed to be horrified by the behaviour of the media – allegedly hiding in the bushes to take photographs of Markle as she walked her dogs with her son, Archie.

As the prince and his wife issued a legal threat about the alleged invasion of privacy, residents affected outrage about what was happening to their somnolent paradise. One store posted a sign to the door – “No press”.

Everyone needs to take a breath here and recognise the roles we all play. It’s easy to condemn photographers taking shots with long lenses. But they would not be doing so if there was not a massive market for such images. (The store with the “No press” sign had a stack of newspapers, including the Daily Express, which featured a front-page image of the couple.)

Markle and her prince also need to decide what they want. If they’re after truly independent lives, they cannot expect to make a living delivering lectures playing off those royal links. As one man said, if Harry got a job in a warehouse, people would soon stop paying attention.

Of course, the photographers have every right to be there. A little discomfort for the gentle folk of North Saanich seems a small price to pay to defend a free press.

Yet, I’d also love the tabloid media to leave them alone. Having long advocated for an elected head of state, and as a person who believes the entire royal family should quit “The Firm”, it’s perhaps unsurprising I would say that. While Markle is a fascinating character and the unprecedented step she and Harry took had fascinating, global implications, there are now many stories more deserving of our attention. Perhaps the tabloids should leave them to work out how they really do navigate this whole “doing it on their own” thing.

But I won’t hold my breath.

Yours sincerely,

Andrew Buncombe

Chief US correspondent