The Royals have frequently relied on the security services for information as to what various members of the family have been doing ... [they] have sometimes been horrified at what has been reported. Queen Victoria was speechless at the activities of her son [sic] Prince Albert Victor, the Duke of Clarence. Not only was he openly homosexual and frequently seen at scandalous clubs, he was even briefly suspected of being Jack The Ripper. His death in 1892 was officially from typhoid fever but it has been speculated that he was "removed" from the scene to avoid further embarassment to the Royal Family.

-- p13, Daily Express, 7th November 2002

Prince Eddy, or Albert Victor, the Duke of Clarence, was in fact Queen Victoria's grandson, second in line to the throne in 1890 to his father, the much more promiscuous Prince of Wales of the day, who later became King Edward VII, and elder brother to the man who became King George V. But who am I to blame someone in print about a little inaccuracy like that?

Apart from that one point, the above is pretty accurate as to the "known facts" and "speculations" of the case. The strange speculation about the survival of Prince Eddy at Glamis Castle until 1933 I first heard about through reading The Ripper And The Royals in 1998, after it was given to me by my dear friend Pete, friend of Joseph Sickert and scion of that rather large and remarkable Catholic working-class family from Bonny Street in Camden Town. To my surprise it was there too that I read, from another humble Camden author, the most convincing supporting evidence for the idea of Eddy's survival, at least that I have yet come across. But I do not consider myself an expert in such matters, as perhaps Paul Callan would.

The rest of the article was also well worth study, the best that I read last week about Paul Burrell's strange report of the Queen's concerns about Dark Forces likely to do him damage. In the light of three subsequent years of state-sponsored persecution of Burrell until two weeks ago, and the strenuous lack of Royal denials of any of Burrell's story in the last eight days, Callan was quite rightly in my view both Taking It Seriously and trying to make sense of it.