Phil Noble’s {photograph} of Andrew exposes the mundanity of monarchy | Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor

Fay Bound-Alberti’s evaluation of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor as a “ghost behind glass” (From good-looking prince to a ghost behind glass, Andrew’s face tells the story of his downfall, 20 February) finds a hanging, if unintended, visible precedent within the work of Joan Miró. In 1974, the Catalan artist created Sa majesté le roi (His Majesty the King), a towering determine constructed not from the normal marble or bronze of royal monuments, however from weathered wooden, scrap iron, and located objects.

Miró’s “king” was a deliberate act of irony – a “royal” determine stripped of its finery to disclose the mundane, on a regular basis supplies beneath. The complete idea of hereditary monarchy depends on the parable that these of “royal blood” are inherently “other”, but Miró’s work means that “majesty” is merely a hole meeting. The latest pictures of a diminished Andrew symbolize the identical “crashing down” of this idea. When the “handsome prince” is stripped of his symbolic armour, we’re left with the uncooked, unpolished actuality of a human being. Miró knew 50 years in the past what the British public is simply now seeing by means of a automotive window: that there’s nothing “special” in regards to the particular person behind the title – solely the scrap supplies of a typical humanity.
Dr Lalith Chandrakantha
Northampton

Is the Phil Noble who photographed Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor final week the identical Phil Noble who took a wonderful picture at a Liverpool v Manchester United recreation in 1999? Michael Owen is proven holding his head after a missed probability, with two teammates and a terrace filled with spectators doing the identical factor. The Premier League named it photograph of the decade, and Mr Noble is a gifted man.
Peter Lowthian
Marlow, Buckinghamshire