Sweden’s Crown Princess Victoria was allegedly sexually harassed by Jean-Claude Arnault, the French photographer at the centre of the crisis roiling the Swedish Academy.

According to the Svenska Dagbladet newspaper, three sources said they witnessed Mr Arnault groping the then 27-year-old Crown Princess's bottom at an event put on by the body, which awards the Nobel Prize for Literature.

The Swedish writer Ebba Witt-Brattström, one of those present, told The Telegraph that Mr Arnault had approached Victoria unexpectedly.

“He came lurking from behind and I saw his hand land on her neck and go downward. It was all the way down,” Ms Witt-Brattström said.

Victoria's female Adjutant, a uniformed aide, had then leapt to her rescue, she said.

“She just flew herself on Arnault. She grabbed him, and ‘whop’, he was gone. The Crown princess turned in surprise. I guess she had never been groped. She just looked like ‘what?’”