On several levels the "Prince Harry naked" story is occupying a prominent place in the media.
My first reaction was that this is a non-story - you could look at the Facebook page of almost any British person aged in their teens or twenties and see similar pictures.
Equally the issue of press freedom (the pictures have not been published in the United Kingdom) seemed to revolve more around the imminent publication of the Leveson Inquiry than any issue of reverential self-censorship.
However the story has featured on last night's Newsnight (BBC 2) and this morning's Today programme (BBC Radio 4) so it seems there must be a more serious aspect to the story that people are groping for.
It occurs to me that we may be seeing a manifestation of atavistic ideas about the line of succession in general and the third in line to the throne in particular. In the past monarchs had to be physically perfect, and disabilities of any kind tended to disqualify princes from succession. The middle-aged gushing of Vanessa Feltz on Newsnight yesterday, as well as more general hysteria on overseas websites, indicates that Prince Harry is physically flawless (and few people can visually survive candid naked snaps unless they are genuinely photogenic).
So in terms of the monarchy as "divine" (perfect people were a sign of divine blessing); the Royal Family as warlords (a military leader had to have a demonstrably strong physique); and the monarchy as a guarantor of stable government (princes in the line of succession had to be capable of reproducing) the Prince Harry naked story seems to be reviving ancient and long-dormant ideas about the role and validity of the monarchy.
And as a postcript to this theory, I noticed that Sam Wollaston in a Guardian television review of a Channel 4 documentary (The Queen's Mother in Law http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2012/aug/21/the-queens-mother-in-law ) felt obliged to jeer at the in-bred nature of royal families, as if the mental instability this produces is grounds for shame and disqualification - it is unusual that someone as left-wing as Sam Wollaston should (presumably unintentionally) express quasi-medieval ideas about the need for royal perfection, and it seems an especially insensitive thing for him to have said on the eve of the London Paraolympic Games in which people with mental disabilities have been readmitted after a period of expulsion.
My first reaction was that this is a non-story - you could look at the Facebook page of almost any British person aged in their teens or twenties and see similar pictures.
Equally the issue of press freedom (the pictures have not been published in the United Kingdom) seemed to revolve more around the imminent publication of the Leveson Inquiry than any issue of reverential self-censorship.
However the story has featured on last night's Newsnight (BBC 2) and this morning's Today programme (BBC Radio 4) so it seems there must be a more serious aspect to the story that people are groping for.
It occurs to me that we may be seeing a manifestation of atavistic ideas about the line of succession in general and the third in line to the throne in particular. In the past monarchs had to be physically perfect, and disabilities of any kind tended to disqualify princes from succession. The middle-aged gushing of Vanessa Feltz on Newsnight yesterday, as well as more general hysteria on overseas websites, indicates that Prince Harry is physically flawless (and few people can visually survive candid naked snaps unless they are genuinely photogenic).
So in terms of the monarchy as "divine" (perfect people were a sign of divine blessing); the Royal Family as warlords (a military leader had to have a demonstrably strong physique); and the monarchy as a guarantor of stable government (princes in the line of succession had to be capable of reproducing) the Prince Harry naked story seems to be reviving ancient and long-dormant ideas about the role and validity of the monarchy.
And as a postcript to this theory, I noticed that Sam Wollaston in a Guardian television review of a Channel 4 documentary (The Queen's Mother in Law http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2012/aug/21/the-queens-mother-in-law ) felt obliged to jeer at the in-bred nature of royal families, as if the mental instability this produces is grounds for shame and disqualification - it is unusual that someone as left-wing as Sam Wollaston should (presumably unintentionally) express quasi-medieval ideas about the need for royal perfection, and it seems an especially insensitive thing for him to have said on the eve of the London Paraolympic Games in which people with mental disabilities have been readmitted after a period of expulsion.
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