Time's whirligig, as one surly underling told another, brings in its revenges. For the Royal Family, 2002 went bad faster than an over-hung widgeon. In September the Prince of Wales emerged as a nuisance letter-writer, badgering Government ministers with green-ink missives about the Human Rights Act and the hunting ban, and moans that Cumbrian farmers got a worse deal than blacks and homosexuals. In November the Princess Royal got a criminal record after her pet pit bull gored a child (the dog escaped the chop thanks to the Princess's top-dollar brief). Even Prince William, once the press's golden boy, was reported to have dispatched flunkeys to buy him porno mags from the local newsagent. Then came bruits of rape within the precincts of Buckingham Palace, and reports that the Royals' London flophouses doubled as totters' yards for laundering swag ('Del Boy Royals' was the Sun's unimprovable headline). All this knocked the gilt off the 'Golden' Jubilee.

LRB 23 January 2003 | PDF Download