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Features Australia

Royal activism in the spider web of secrecy

What are the implications for Australians of having a letter-writing, activist, trainee monarch?

4 April 2015

9:00 AM

4 April 2015

9:00 AM

The ‘black spider memos’, coming to prominence on the day Richard III was buried, conjure up images of hunchback spiders scuttling ink across secret letters, hatching plots of tyranny and betrayal. In reality, Prince Charles’s letters to Government Ministers (the nickname being due to his spidery handwriting) are more likely to be pedestrian and worthy attempts at advocacy, unlikely in themselves to shake the monarchy to its core.

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Anne Twomey is a Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Sydney.

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