Philip Pullman is right about the Oxford comma

It was with regret that I read that Albert, retired King of the Belgians, has finally had to admit, following litigation and then a DNA test, that an artist called Delphine Boël is his natural daughter. It is not that I wish to take sides in the dispute; it is simply that there is a soft spot in my heart for Albert, King of the Belgians. I am always interested in the drafting of constitutions, including their very first words. The US Constitution famously begins with the words ‘We, the people’. When the draft constitution of the European Union — later transmuted into the Lisbon treaty — was first published in 2004, I noticed that its first words were ‘Albert, King of the Belgians’. The reason for this is that the constitution, like other European treaties, required the endorsement of the heads of state of all the contracting parties, and Albert came first alphabetically.