Earlier this week my dear friend the writer William Shawcross left a message on my answerphone. I am sure he will not mind if I repeat it. ‘Hi, Stephen, it’s William, your old friend. How are you? I have just heard some wonderful rumour today that you are going to use your entire column to denounce Associated Newspapers for its contemptible torture of both the Prince of Wales and George Smith. If this is true, I am so pleased. Congratulations, old bean.’ This message, it can be fairly said, is delivered in tones of jocular irony.
Nor do I think that Boris Johnson, the editor of this magazine, will mind if I repeat what he said to me on the same subject. ‘I must say,’ said Boris, ‘that I think the behaviour of the Mail on Sunday has been absolutely contemptible. But I don’t suppose you will want to say that, because you take the Daily Mail’s shilling.’ This is a reference to a column I write for that newspaper.
So here is a friend and my editor assuming that I share their views about the Mail on Sunday’s treatment of Prince Charles but am too craven to say so. It is not altogether flattering. I find myself sorely tempted to attack the Mail on Sunday simply to prove to these two that I am not the wimp they evidently think I am. The trouble is that I do not think I do share their view of what it is permissible to write about members of the royal family. William, of course, is the staunchest monarchist in England. All the same, the Mail on Sunday is by no means off the hook.
The Shawcross-Johnson view, which I suspect may be shared by a majority of The Spectator’s readers, is that the MoS intended to run a scurrilous story about Prince Charles which even it did not believe.
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