Can you imagine the Queen going topless, asks RICHARD LITTLEJOHN.


No man would be comfortable with his wife’s naked breasts being plastered across the news stands and the internet. Well, not unless he’s married to a Page 3 girl.

So Prince William’s furious reaction to the publication of paparazzo pictures of Kate topless in French, Irish and Italian newspapers and magazines is entirely understandable.

The British Press has rightly taken the view that the princess had a reasonable expectation of privacy when she was sunbathing beside a pool at Lord Linley’s chateau in the South of France.
Reaction: The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, pictured on their official visit to the Solomon Islands, have moved to prevent further publication of pictures of the Duchess sunbathing topless

Even if any editor did ponder the wisdom of bringing the photographs to a British audience, the prospect of a Leveson-inspired lynch mob would quickly concentrate the mind.

Opportunist politicians would seize on the offending pictures to impose statutory and wide-ranging restrictions on the Press in this country.

Commercial considerations will also have played a part in the calculations as even papers which feature acres of female flesh daily have shied away from the prospect of a Twitter-generated boycott.

In this case, self-regulation has been tested and proven effective. But as the sn.