ES News email The latest headlines in your inbox twice a day Monday - Friday plus breaking news updates Enter your email address Continue Please enter an email address Email address is invalid Fill out this field Email address is invalid You already have an account. Please log in Register with your social account or click here to log in I would like to receive lunchtime headlines Monday - Friday plus breaking news alerts, by email Update newsletter preferences

Forget about the name of our future king. There is another delicate question that hasn’t been answered.

Will the young Prince of Cambridge be circumcised? This royal tradition dates back to King George I, who imported the custom from his native Hanover.

Queen Victoria, convinced that the British royal family was descended from King David, had all her male offspring circumcised. The tradition continued through Edward VII, the Duke of Windsor and Prince Charles, who was circumcised by Jacob Snowman GP at Buckingham Palace in 1948. His brothers Andrew and Edward also underwent the same procedure.

According to Anthony Holden’s biography of Prince Charles, Snowman was summoned to the palace five days after the christening. The rabbi was the official mohel — a man qualified to carry out circumcisions — of the London Jewish community and he was chosen rather than the royal physician to perform the ritual.

Princess Diana was said to be opposed to the idea, and most royal observers believe she broke with 150 years of royal tradition by not having her sons circumcised at birth.

“I’m just back from playing poker in America,” a jet-lagged Holden told me this morning. “I haven’t written a royal book for 10 years. I was watching television and I thought: ‘Thank God I’m not part of that any more.’”

“It’s largely a question of medical fashion,” says royal biographer Hugo Vickers. “In my day they did. By 1980/2000 they didn’t.”

“It’s a deeply personal private matter up to the couple,” says Clarence House.