Good and bad blood
A top libel lawyer friend warns me to watch my words this week. Such is the PublicDlic outrage against the media over the Public.rincess Michael affair that judges and Juries will seize on the first available PPortunity to wreak revenge on any Journalist, however innocent, who comes before them. How long this gallant rallying t° the defence of the Princess will last is, in mV view, another question. If it turns out, Sheexample, that she did know more than i admits about her father, and that the than Nazi involvement was much deeper h an his defendants now claim, the tide of
public opinion, now running so strongly in her favour, could soon start running just as strongly in the opposite direction. In this respect it was rather ghostly to see Lady Grimond last week waxing very indignant on the television about the press attempt to visit the sins of Princess Michael's father on the daughter, since I remember her mother, Lady Violet Bonham-Carter, making similar charges against the press some 30 years ago for hounding Mrs Melinda Maclean for no better reason than her husband Donald's flight to the Soviet Union. When a few weeks later Mrs Maclean herself did a bunk to the Soviet Union, Lady Violet was left looking even more out of touch with reality than usual. While on this subject, I really do feel that people are carrying the point about chil- dren not being visited by the sins of the father a bit too far. For children do take after their parents, and there is such a thing as good blood and bad blood. A child who comes from a long line of heroes is a better bet than one who comes from a long line of villains, and the same obviously applies in reverse. Surely not even the Bishop of Durham would pretend that it made no difference whether Jesus Christ was the son of God or the son of the Devil.
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