The Royal Box, which seats approximately 80 people at the south end of Centre Court, is reserved each day for members of the Royal Family and a host of illustrious guests invited by the Club Chair Deborah Jevans. 

On Day 4 of The Championships, His Royal Highness Prince Michael of Kent was in the front row for a day of stratospheric local excitement as Briton Dan Evans attempted to halt the time-defying progress of seven-time Gentleman’s Singles Champion Novak Djokovic. 

The continuum of historic royal presence was represented by newspaper editor Geordie Greig, whose grandfather, Louis Greig, a Chairman of the AELTC (1937-1953), was also a close friend of King George VI and partnered him in the gentlemen’s doubles at The Championships 1926.

Greig was accompanied by ceramics queen Emma Bridgewater, who was made a Dame in the 2025 King’s Birthday Honours. It’s fair to say that no kitchen is complete without a shelf of Bridgewater’s quintessentially British line of pottery (currently offering a tennis half-pint mug, adorned with rackets, trophies, balls and strawberries).

From earthenware to the Earth itself. It may be hard for diehard tennis fans to acknowledge during the Fortnight but Centre Court is but a speck in the cosmos – located at latitude and longitude coordinates of 51.435° N, 0.2144° W on Planet Earth, to be precise – and the All England Club is underpinned by a deep commitment to making a positive impact on the wider economy, society and environment.

Many of Thursday’s guests were notable for contributing to the global good, including David Fein, Vice Chair of Earthshot, the prize launched by Prince William to search for innovative solutions to the world’s environmental challenges; and Rita El Zaghloul of the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People and winner of the Earthshot Prize (in the Revive Our Oceans category).

From his eco-green Lloyd Loom wicker chair, David Mooney, CEO of the London Wildlife Trust, could happily survey the greenest of grass, amid Grounds horticulturally designed to promote biodiversity.

Weather has been a hot topic in SW19. Tackling the subject on a consequential level are Rachel Kyte, UK Special Representative for Climate; Sir James Skea, Professor of Sustainable Energy at Imperial College and Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Chris Stark, head of the UK’s Mission for Clean Power and former CEO of the Climate Change Committee & The Carbon Trust.

Feargal Sharkey, former lead singer of The Undertones, is an environmental campaigner of note. Should he wish to revive his musical career, he need look no further than Jannik Sinner, third match up on Centre. Earlier this year, the No.1 seed duetted with fellow Italian and tenor Andrea Bocelli, releasing a song called Polvere e Gloria, which means Dust and Glory.

A potential crowd-puller for you, Emily Eavis, co-organiser of Glastonbury Music Festival?

Other VIPs from the world of entertainment included actress Celia Imrie (of feelgood films Bridget Jones, Calendar Girls, Nanny McPhee, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again fame). Her presence always promises a happy ending, but for which players?

Imrie was joined by Irish actors Niamh Cusack and Finbar Lynch, and blockbuster performer Rory Kinnear. The last mentioned played M’s Chief of Staff in four James Bond films and thus might have had a good banter over the Afternoon Tea egg and cress sandwiches with Baroness Manningham-Buller, who served as Director General of MI5 between 2002 and 2007.

As for survival experts, hats off to the adventurer Bear Grylls (main picture, centre), who would do well to sit still for the duration of three matches. Happiest when shinning up spires, scaling peaks, traversing oceans or jumping out of hot air balloons, the former Chief Ambassador of World Scouting lived up to his own mantra for young people: “Trade screen time for green time”. 

It was good to see Lindsey Burrow enjoy a restful day in the cathedral of tennis. The widow of Rob Burrow, the former Leeds Rhinos rugby league player who died of Motor Neurone Disease last year, has continued to fundraise for MND, including running two marathons in two weeks earlier this year.

And to toast Betty Stove, a week after her 80th birthday. The Dutch Grand Slam doubles expert received a warm welcome nearly half a century on from the 1977 Championships, in which she reached the finals of the ladies’ singles, the ladies’ doubles and mixed doubles finals, but finished runner-up in all three.