Deference to royalty in this country is enforced by a judicial and popular savagery which is always there but only occasionally glimpsed. The glimpses are instructive. In 1937 the diplomat Geoffrey Dennis wrote a Coronation Commentary for Heinemann. This was a reasoned defence of the monarchy - then in a very rocky state. Dennis repeated, and deprecated, the widespread gossip that Mrs Simpson had been the Duke of Windsor's mistress before marriage and that England's recently abdicated king sometimes drank too much. A writ was served and the action heard before the Lord Chief Justice, who declared in court that 'these particular libels, a jury might think, appear almost to invite a thoroughly efficient horse-whipping.' Author and publisher escaped the lash and merely had to pulp their book and pay huge damages. The episode served notice on the book trade to tread very carefully in matters royal, which they duly did.

LRB 14 June 1990 | PDF Download