Blame Prince William, not Kate, for the royal photo blunder

The Princess of Wales has owned up. In a statement on X/Twitter, she revealed that she was the phantom photoshopper: ‘Like many amateur photographers, I do occasionally experiment with editing. I wanted to express my apologies for any confusion the family photograph we shared yesterday caused. I hope everyone celebrating had a very happy Mother’s Day.’

This Mothers’ Day photograph of the Princess of Wales and her children was intended to kill the rampant speculation about her absence from the public eye over the last few weeks. Instead, the photograph itself has now been ‘killed’ – in the parlance of the international news agencies that pulled it. These agencies have, understandably, a zero tolerance policy for manipulated photographs. And they weren’t happy with the clearly visible editing of the image.

The photo was taken by Prince William, to whom I want to shout: ‘You had one job!’. This I feel quite frequently now when it comes to our future king, usually about the more important aspect of his remit.