A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK I S there really no one in authority
in the office of any popular paper who realises the disservice that is being done to the Royal Family by the current mania for plastering the papers with pictures of the Queen and the Princesses wherever they move and whatever they do ? About the fact there is no question. A selection from the remarks I myself happen to have heard in the last few days are : " Bringing them down to the level of film-stars " ; " I'm sick of the Royal Family " ; " Do you suppose the Press have been given the hint to `build up' royalty ? " I don't suppose anything of the sort, but I am not surprised that the question should be asked. There have been one or two charming photographs published lately, particularly of the King and Prince Charles and of the reunion on Euston platform when the Princess and the Duke got back from Canada. But an 8 x 5 picture of Princess Margaret in a car in Paris, looking precisely as she looks in a car in London, of Princess Margaret dancing with a Gallic gentleman, looking precisely as she looks when dancing with an English gentleman, of Princess Margaret shopping in Paris just as she sometimes shops in London—all that may be well enough for the papers themselves, and it is satisfactory that they have so far got over the shortage of newsprint as to have ample space to squander on this kind of thing—but it is not, as I have said, by any means well for the Royal Family themselves. Have the Press chiefs ever beard why Aristides was ostracised ?
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