Dear Prince Philip: The writer and broadcaster pillories the Duke of Edinburgh for dismissing the existence of 'real' poverty, and warns of a public less ready to take a charitable view of him and his offspring

Your speech last week - in which you said poverty is no longer absolute - took my breath away. When did you last go anywhere that they didn't paint the lavatory and put out flowers first? You're always shown the addicts who have detoxed, the soldiers who are still standing, the good, the quiet, the people who don't rock the royal yacht. The unsightly and imperfect are sidelined.

You plainly don't wan to know about people beyond your circle, but I expected you to scan a paper or two, or even watch the odd thing on television - you know, the box-shaped appliance that even the most discriminating among us use as an aide memoire to how the other half lives.

However, even surrounded by the media of a developed country, it is always possible to avoid knowing what you don't want to know.

With three million unemployed and a beleaguered health service, the traditional family breaking down and figures for children in care continuing to soar and the recession some way from being put behind us, one of the best things about people is their willingness to acknowledge that everybody isn't well off, or provided for, emotionally or physically. And if people see a need and want to organise to help each other, who are you to tell them that the need doesn't exist and that their efforts are wasted?

Do you discount any sentence containing the words deprivation or poverty as self-indulgence? Or dismiss any organisation with the words social or fiscal in its title which won't tell you that the status is quo?

The annual Regional Trends survey just published by the Central Statistical Office portrays Britain as one of the poorer states in Europe: only one area of the UK has an income above the European Union average.

And the Institute of Fiscal Studies demonstrated that living standards have fallen by a sixth since the beginning of the Eighties. The rich may be getting richer, but in real terms the poor are getting poorer.

Poverty is always relative. So was, and is, wealth. I suppose it depends on one's relatives.

Speaking of whom, aren't you married to the Defender of the Faith? Doesn't Christianity have particular teachings about charity? Isn't charity one of the few ways left of reaching out to people, without the terrible risks of an increasingly divided and violent society?

You are quite right to point out that charity has become business and is taking advantage of tax breaks. But from the point of view of many of your listeners, a member of a family which until last year paid no tax at all is not perhaps best placed to criticise. It makes Buck House look like a glasshouse. The proverb says: 'He that hath no charity deserves no mercy.'

Oh, belated birthday greetings, by the way. It's nice to have an example from the top which proves getting older doesn't mean necessarily getting wiser.

Your faithful servant,

Anna Raeburn

(Photograph omitted)