I have just read that according to the Ministry of Justice there is still a law on the statute book dating from 1848 which declares that to call for the abolition of the monarchy in print can be punishable by a life imprisonment. Even to ‘imagine’ overthrowing the Crown could in theory carry such a sentence.

This is in a country which boasts of its ‘freedom of speech’! But as the poet and artist William Blake once wrote ‘Every Body hates a King’. The same might be said of the so-called ‘aristocracy’ which England got rid off in the 17th-century. I therefore say ‘Long Live the Republic’ and I dare the authorities to give me a life sentence!