Comment: why the Evening Standard will still run Saatchi's art column

 
20 June 2013

Photographs in the Sunday People, taken a week earlier, of the art collector Charles Saatchi with his hands around the neck of his wife Nigella Lawson at Scott’s restaurant have been much dissected.

Mr Saatchi, who accepted a police caution for assault, has said the pictures do not accurately reflect what was happening between the couple or the state of their relationship. His wife has not returned home since leaving at the weekend and is today photographed without her wedding ring. We can speculate therefore that she wishes to distance herself from the marriage but we do not know.

While this newspaper abhors violence against women, we do not see condemnation of an assault as a reason to intrude into the complexities of a couple’s marriage. Some people have called for us to drop Mr Saatchi’s regular column on photography, which appears today in the newspaper. Our view is that the police decided a caution was a proper response to the offence. It is overstepping our jurisdiction to go further. Should a person who has accepted a caution be barred from writing about art? Should the Saatchi Gallery be closed? Should he face total ruin? We decline to go beyond what the law considers appropriate. We believe that Mr Saatchi’s column is not relevant in its subject matter to recent events — and that it would be irrational and unjust to drop it just because it has been a wretched week for this marriage.

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