Letter: The monarchy will survive scandals

THE MARITAL problems of the Waleses and the Yorks do not amount to 'the death throes of the British monarchy' (Lynn Barber, 'How they came to be so ridiculous', 23 August).

Any institution that has existed for more than a thousand years, surviving civil wars, regicides, frequent periods of deep unpopularity and a fairly recent abdication, is not going to collapse simply because a daughter-in-law of the Queen has made a fool of herself, and not even Princess Diana divorcing the heir to the throne would seriously affect the monarchy's chances of survival.

The Royal Family may in future take more care as to which commoners it chooses to marry; and the Queen might even deign to pay income tax like the rest of us; but the inescapable fact remains that the monarchy will easily outlast its present subjects, because those subjects lack the desire to replace it with any kind of alternative.

Zaki Hashimi

London W14