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Post by Wayne Hall on Jun 17, 2023 1:33:59 GMT -5
Victoria Hislop
The Queen and I
The popular author offers her personal experience of the royal family - and some thoughts she shares with others of her fellow-citizens
I never felt the need to wonder whether I supported the monarchy or not. Until last September. Throughout my entire life the throne was occupied by Queen Elizabeth. She was who I knew as the monarch. Millions of words have been written on the late queen. She was true to her duty, stable, discreet. Steady as a rock amid all the turbulence that afflicted Britain for over seventy years. A continuing diplomatic presence which rarely made any appearance in the news for any reason other than what pertained to her duties. She liked dogs, horses, and walking outdoors. Reliable and ethical. The grandeur of the royal family attracted tourists and millions of pounds to the United Kingdom, and the queen was exactly the same age as my mother. There was a resemblance between them, in fact, but the queen's jewellery was more splendid (and her coiffure much more luxuriant).
Queen Elizabeth's departure was dignified, occurring in the fullness of time, but there was nevertheless something unsettling about it. When I heard the news I was in an aircraft that was about to leave Athens for London and I consoled myself with the thought that I would have the opportunity to be there and mourn her death. I went, along with thousands of others, to Hyde Park for the funeral and afterwards I quickly went home to watch the funeral in Windsor on television. My personal respect for Elizabeth did not make me a proponent of monarchy per se. For me, being in favour of the monarchy simply meant admiring the queen.
After the death of Elizabeth a period began for me in which the monarchy was coming under scrutiny. If her successors were failing in their role as dignified and unifying personages my opinion was that there should be no place for them. If they gave the impression of a Britain that was antiquated and not up to fulfilling its mission then perhaps we should decide, through a referendum, whether or not we any longer want them. It is in any case entirely anachronistic for there to be a hierarchy which is based exclusively on inheritance. I do not believe in the divine right of kings or bluebloods and every special privilege that is granted to someone by birth is ridiculous and a mistake.
So, is Charles going to make it? And should Camilla be at his side? For me these were questions that demanded an answer. Of course, the alternative would be to have a president. But given our inability in recent years to produce very many good politicians, the idea of an elected president entails some risk. Let us suppose that someone of the stature of Boris Johnson sought the post. That possibility could perhaps mean something much worse than the monarchy.
Going back in time to 1981 I remember watching, from a taverna in Nafplion, on a black-and-white television,the fairy-tale wedding of Charles and Diana. I had just finished university and I was the same age as Diana: twenty-one. "Lucky girl," I thought. "She has solved once and for all the matter of her career."
Soon we all found out that that marriage was a parody, with tragic consequences, and what followed was conflict, sorrow, grief and death. And another funeral which everyone was watching - I was one of the many who left flowers at the gates of Kensington Palace. I wasn't necessary to watch The Crown to know that Camilla Parker Bowles was always somewhere behind the scenes during Charles' marriage. My view is that poor innocent Diana was wronged.
THE NEW ERA
So let us return to the present, where we have King Charles and Queen Camilla. Everything got off to a rather depressing start, with a very public display of temper on the part of Charles, when the pen he was using to sign a document in a public ceremony failed to work properly. It was demeaning for a grown man to behave like this. Camilla intervened and restored calm to some extent. It was her first appearance in that new role and made a big impression on people, showing that this woman is his life support, his "better half", to use a very British expression. As time passes their mutual support and love becomes ever more evident.
In his defence, it is generally accepted that Charles, through his early support for items on the green agenda for environmental protection, had foresight. He was ahead of his time. For decades he worked behind the scenes, through the Prince's Trust , to provide better opportunities for underprivileged youth. All this foreshadowed something positive.
On the occasions that I have met Camilla (this is what everyone calls her) it was always for something that had to do with books and reading. She herself all her life has been greatly involved with literature and ambassador for the National Literacy Trust, a philanthropic organization aimed at combating adult illiteracy, providing books for children and securing access to books for prisoners. She also established her own charitable foundation, The Queens Reading Room, to promote reading, and she regularly attends functions at which books are awarded as prizes, in order to make the presentations.
In the past she was present at functions at Buckingham Palace, and more recently at Clarence House (the rather more modest, but also more beautiful, residence next to the palace where she actually lives, together with Charles.
Camilla possesses a natural charm. She is good at remembering who is who, she is not at all snobbish, and the strict protocol that was in force for Elizabeth, seems to have been shelved.
Prior to my attending one of Queen Elizabeth's celebrated garden parties I was sent a list of instructions including "Address her as ma'am, to rhyme with 'jam'. Don't shake hands. Bow." None of that seems to apply now under the new regime. At least for the moment the atmosphere seems more relaxed. The last time we met, Camilla expressed some envy at how much time I spend in Greece - and I suggested that she should find time to do the same.
There is something else that made an impression on me. When she came into the room, to greet her guests and speak on the subject of her new philanthropic activity, he spouse was at her side, but not to steal the show: he himself did not speak. He was simply there to show his support for what his wife was doing.
The monarchy is in a transitional phase. It has contracted: the family who are unwilling to bear their share of the burden or who add no value to the royal product are losing their former privileges. I totally endorse that. Harry and Megan were required to vacate their quarters at Windsor, and Prince Andrew is under increasing pressure to do the same. These people are no longer performing their royal duties, so there is no reason for them to have titles or free accommodation. On the other hand William and Kate are proving extremely hard-working and popular.
The coronation of Charles and Camilla has not taken place yet (had not taken place at the time of writing) but my personal pendulum is certainly swinging in their favour. And I believe the same is true for most of the country. So, as they say at the coronation ceremony, Vivat Rex, long live the king - and the queen also!
Comment by W.H.
On the subject of the monarchy, I am not influenced by any family tradition of supporting it. Generations of my ancestors found ways of avoiding participation in the empire's wars, and later America's wars, with various subterfuges and for various reasons, and also not always avoiding punishment. I had one grandfather an active office-holder, at the local level, in the Labor Party, and another who thought "the Germans are our cousins". When employed on the administration of a provincial university in Australia I so much disliked the prospect of being required to be graciously submissive to her Majesty the Queen that I left town during her visit.
But other experiences prompted a shift in attitude: the dismissal of the Labor Party government of Gough Whitlam in 1975 and the republic referendum of 1999. The Whitlam dismissal was clearly initiated by the conservative party-political opposition and personally by the Governor-General, with support from the CIA. Not by the monarchy. The republic referendum was conducted in such an atmosphere of mass media hysteria that it would make anyone suspicious and ensure that the electorate's resounding NO was entirely predictable.
When media propaganda systematically displaces discussion from genuine issues to non-issues what can be expected? Was it really such an embarrassment that the 2000 Sydney Olympics would be opened by Queen Elizabeth? Is the distinction between being popularly elected and being unelected/appointed such a big deal when information available to the mass electorate is biased, distorted and censored beyond all imagining? Is manipulative divide-and-rule preferable to open authoritarianism?
As far as King Charles III is concerned, at the gossip level, I do not disagree with Victoria Hislop's female perspective, but my own viewpoint is, of course, male. I felt relief that Charles finally managed to do what was required of him and sire a male heir. His return to one of his former mistresses when she was married and by rights "off limits" seems to have been triggered at least in part by emotional distress over the assassination by the IRA of his mentor Mountbatten. That is no excuse, and Victoria Hislop is right to see Princess Diana as a tragic, and wronged, figure, not because of any inherent strength in the princess's own character - she seems to have been only too easily influenced by Prince Andrew's wife Sarah Ferguson - but, for me, because of something she said in an interview very close to the end of her life, when she was clearly aware of her impending doom but nevertheless offered an emotional profession of faith in the monarchy. That video can't be found anywhere as far as I can see, because it doesn't fit in with the mainstream narrative about Diana and also does not fit in with what up until now has been the monarchy's systematic refusal to play the victim or appeal for sympathy, opening the door even wider to the media's (and the academic establishment's?) habitual misrepresentation.
The Australian historian Jenny Hocking had to wage a court battle to gain access to letters exchanged between Queen Elizabeth (via her personal secretary) and the Australian governor-general following the dismissal of the Whitlam government in 1975. These letters "contain information which will undoubtedly shed light upon the active role of the Queen herself in carrying out an act which essentially amounted to a modern coup d'etat." "(The Governor-General) made history not only by sacking the elected prime minister but also revealed the scope and nature of the British Monarchy's very real powers in our modern age. These are bizarre god-like prerogative powers which those forces controlling today's globally extended empire would rather keep concealed from public view". The words are Matthew Ehret's (1), and they are off the mark. In fact what the Palace's effort to maintain secrecy evidently points to is a desire to conceal how little control the monarch exerts over "its representative" and the real forces hiding behind him/her/it.
In other words the monarchy is not doing its job, which is to embody objective reality, overriding politics and keeping journalists in their place. But is it humanly possible for a European monarchy to "do its job", or does the present-day respective power balance stymie any such possibility? Would it help to have a better-informed public? Is the popular television series "The Crown" helping to achieve something like that? In my opinion it is not. It is not part of any solution but is exacerbating the evil, reinforcing - duplicating - the journalistic virtual reality. If there is to be rectification of this, it must be in "the real world" activated by citizens who are simply being citizens, not professionals "doing their job".
1. Matthew Ehret "The Clash of the Two Americas: The Anglo-Venetian Roots of the Deep State" Vol. 4 p. 397. Matthew Ehret also misnames the Governor-General who sacked Whitlam, calling him Sir Philip Kerr, not Sir John Kerr.
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