From: Rt. Hon. Earl Forsooth K.G.

Montmorency Castle

Rutland

The Editor
The Sun

Sir,

I notice that your disgusting rag has again been traducing His Royal Highness Prince Henry Charles Albert David, commonly known as Prince Harry. This time it is over what he wore at a private fancy-dress party on the excellent theme of ‘Colonials and Natives’. In your issue for 13 January 2005 a large front-page headline reads ‘Harry the Nazi’, which is grossly impertinent. Next to it is placed an unauthorised photograph of His Royal Highness wearing slacks and a short-sleeved shirt, both beige, with a swastika insignia on his left arm.

In The Sun Newspaper Online on 16 January you compound your offence by writing that ‘Prince Harry’s not the brightest star in the royal firmament’, which again is disrespectful. You go on to say he is to be given a tutorial on the Holocaust by the Chief Rabbi, Dr Jonathan Sacks. This cannot be true. I happen to know that Dr Sacks is an honourable man, who would not dream of committing such presumption.

You have got this matter completely out of proportion. There is a long tradition of wearing this kind of costume at fancy-dress parties, and Prince Harry is a stickler for tradition. He hired the costume from a shop which had it in stock, and no doubt frequently hired it out to customers. Why should the fact that one of these customers happens to be Prince Harry make any difference? He is surely entitled to a private life? Indeed it is one of his human rights to have one. My chap Vencible tells me that Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which is part of our law, says that everyone has the right to respect for his private life and that this applies to Prince Harry as much as to any other British citizen.

You suggest the incident makes Prince Harry unfit to be admitted to the Royal Military College at Sandhurst for training, yet Vencible tells me he has seen photographs in the Daily Mail for 15 January 2005 of a fancy-dress parade at Sandhurst where cadets are dressed as Nazis. One young man, with fake Hitler moustache, is giving a Sieg Heil salute with arm raised. Another cadet wears jackboots and a Nazi SS uniform with swastika armband. So much for Sandhurst.

The Sunday Telegraph for 16 January reminds us that The Producers, currently playing to packed houses in London, features a spoof musical Springtime for Hitler where the cast are all dressed in Nazi uniforms. Prince Charles and his partner Camilla Parker-Bowles recently attended a performance of this and laughed along with the rest of the audience. What signal did that give Prince Harry? asks the newspaper. It adds that dressing up as Nazis belongs to a long British comedy tradition, starting with Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator and continuing with shows like Dad’s Army, ‘Allo ‘Allo and Fawlty Towers.

I myself served in the Grenadier Guards throughout Hitler’s War and I remember that we mocked the Fuerher’s idiots, as did the whole British people. It was jeering at him as Lord Haw-Haw that neutralised the effect of the traitorous William Joyce and his pitiful propaganda broadcasts.

So get real, if I may borrow a phrase frequently used by my grandchildren when visiting the Castle. In an earlier age, I may say, you would have been hung from the Castle battlements if any of my ancestors had got hold of you.

Yours faithfully (to the Crown),

Click here to see Prince Harry's response