Transformation of a princess into something rich and rare

CAN it only have been last week that I despaired of World Cup cultural asphyxiation? How foolish. How utterly lacking in insight about those things which really stir the human pulse. Namely, "a vulgar Royal car boot sale" - as one paper announced yesterday.

The sale, of course, was at Christie's, London, and the boot in question apparently contained the late Princess Margaret's personal effects. The same princess whose early death in February 2002 was greeted in print by a then-broadsheet newspaper thus...