The Prince of Wales has done it again. Hundreds of locals campaigned against the erection of uncompromisingly modern buildings opposite Sir Christopher Wren’s Royal Hospital in Chelsea. Yet it was the Prince’s appeal to the site’s Qatari owners that is credited with ensuring the withdrawal of the scheme.

Lord Rogers of Riverside, the offending architect, has spluttered about “an abuse of power”. Claiming that the Prince has acted unconstitutionally, he is demanding the formation of a committee of experts to pronounce on whether the Prince can ever again get involved in such contentious matters.

Rogers may not regard historical setting as relevant to his own designs but he ought to accept that the past produces the precedents in any debate about what royalty can and cannot do. This bodes ill for those who believe princes should be seen and not heard.

Far from confining himself to a career of ribbon-cutting, Prince Albert rarely kept his nose out of British cultural life. Indeed, he was generally admired for his inveterate busybody behaviour. His enthusiastic backing for the 1851 Great Exhibition was just one project in which his intervention was decisive. He supported Joseph Paxton’s Crystal Palace design. Bold and innovative, it was not remotely what traditionalists had in mind. Elsewhere, however, the Prince Consort was interested in historicism and as much a partisan in the battle of styles as his great-great-great-grandson.

Advised by his artistic consultant, Ludwig Grüner, Albert actively promoted polychromatic decoration and particularly admired Italianate classicism. It was not entirely coincidental that these preferences were widely adopted in Britain from the late 1840s onwards.

In 1841 he chaired the Royal Commission tasked with deciding what art should adorn the rebuilt Palace of Westminster. Although professional artists were called before it, Albert refused to have them sitting on the commission, in part because he did not want them lauding it over the laymen whose views he regarded to be no less important. For his part, the Prince particularly wanted to encourage the art of fresco making. And historically themed frescos are what Parliament duly got — to the dismay of some contemporary arbiters of taste.

However, it was in the homes of the humble that Albert hoped to have the greatest effect. He funded Henry Roberts’s design for “Model Houses for Families”. Ultimately, the results looked a bit twee and failed to transform the Victorian affordable housing market, although twee would surely have been preferable to the multi-storey slums that did rise instead.

Art, architecture, housing for the poor — what were Albert’s professional qualifications to speak out on these issues? If Lord Rogers’s strictures had been heeded, he would never have done more than smile and wave.

Times Recommends

• Resist urge to throw voters red meat
• Slay sacred cows and be candid
• We cannot let these 100 deaths deflect us