The NYT has a piece about how among the first purchasers of Jane Austen’s first novel was England’s Prince Regent, the extravagantly dissolute future George IV, whom the novelist despised. It’s a linked story to which mmoffitt can probably have recourse without the six-second flinch, since its focus is principally literary rather than political, and it treats people and events in a land across the sea two centuries ago. But then, there’s this:

The Prince Regent was known to have literary interests, if not necessarily of the high-minded sort. In 1788, the same year his father became incapacitated by mental illness, the prince secretly bought the newspaper The Morning Post, to stop it from publishing embarrassing information about his love life.

Boy-howdy, the jokes just write themselves, don’t they?

cordially,