The harm Prince Andrew does to the crown
Hereditary monarchy rests on consent. A sexual-assault case undermines that
PRINCE ANDREW does not deny that it is him in the photograph. But is it really his hand clasped around the waist of 17-year-old Virginia Roberts? He cannot be sure. In fact, he told the BBC in 2019, he had no memory of the picture being taken. It showed him in travelling clothes, he mused, but when in London he would wear a suit and tie, and he certainly didn’t go around hugging people. He had never been upstairs in the house of Ghislaine Maxwell, his socialite friend, where the snap was taken. And had it really been Jeffrey Epstein behind the camera? The prince hadn’t ever seen his friend take a picture.
This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline “A question of consent”
From the January 8th 2022 edition
Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents
Explore the editionDiscover more
British MPs vote in favour of assisted dying
A monumental social reform is closer to being realised
The slow death of a Labour buzzword
And what that says about Britain’s place in the world
Britain’s Supreme Court considers what a woman is
At last. Britons had been wondering what those 34m people who are not men might be
Can potholes fuel populism?
A new paper looks at one explanation for the rise of Reform UK
Are British voters as clueless as Labour’s intelligentsia thinks?
How the idea of false consciousness conquered the governing party