18 FEBRUARY 1949, Page 5

Quite apart from this particularly flagrant case, the way in

which the newspapers, with hardly an exception, pursue Princess Margaret, who is 18, with camera and paragraph whenever she is seen in public with anyone masculine under 4o is an outrage which the papers themselves ought to agree in condemning. Failing that, I wish someone whose voice would carry universal weight would say vigorously what ought to be said. Such intrusion into the private life of members of the Royal Family is indefensible. It might conceivably be argued that the marriage of the heiress presumptive was in some degree a matter of special public importance, but that is in no way true of Princess Margaret, and the implicit suggestion that any man who happens to accompany her to the theatre may become her future husband is as gross an offence against decent taste as can easily be imagined. If the Newspaper Proprietors' Association decided that this sort of thing should stop it would stop. If it does not so decide, responsibility for conduct of which none of its members would be guilty in his private life goes back to the Proprietors themselves.

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