Happy Birthday, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor!

In a delicious twist of fate, a man born into velvet and ceremony now finds himself beneath fluorescent strip lighting. No balcony. No anthem. No gloved handshake. Just likely fingerprints, a custody desk and the slow click of a heavy door.

I used to work on Channel 4’s 24 Hours In Police Custody, so I know what those cells look like: the soiled mattress, the stainless-steel toilet, the scratchy grey blanket. They are aggressively ordinary. They don’t care about who your mum is.

On Thursday, six unmarked police cars and eight plain-clothed officers arrived at Sandringham to arrest Mountbatten-Windsor on suspicion of public misconduct over his alleged sharing of confidential material with Jeffrey Epstein.

And if the arrest of Mountbatten-Windsor tells us anything, it’s this: institutions can feel untouchable until they aren’t.

A sentiment echoed by the late Virginia Guiffre’s family who said: “At last. Today, our broken hearts have been lifted at the news that no one is above the law, not even royalty. For survivors everywhere, Virginia did this for you”.

I have never been a monarchist. Even as a child, I struggled to........

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