Vol. 19 No. 8 · 24 April 1997
pages 24-25 | 2550 words
Ghosts in the Palace
Tom Nairn
The first British election ever without the Monarchy: is this not how it’s likely to be remembered? The Italian phrase for it is better than ours: perdere la bussola, the loss not merely of bearings but of the compass itself. Queen Elizabeth II will still be around for the vote, I know, but as little more than an accusing spectre. Within less than half of her own reign the glamour of Monarchy has vanished. All that the Crown now accomplishes is to counterpoint and somehow exaggerate an ambient unreality: the new, motherless country left behind by its moral decease. Through Queenly spectacles the past looks at the shattered glass of Britain present, with a gaze already cold.
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Letters
Vol. 19 No. 12 · 19 June 1997
From K. Sinclair-Loutit
Writing on the monarchy (LRB, 24 April), Tom Nairn has directed his gaze from outside the Palace inwards towards the Royal Family. Any examination designed to assist in the formation of policy must take in the view from inside the Palace looking outwards towards the world inhabited by people like Nairn and myself. A monarch’s frank view of the plebs is rarely subject to explicit communication but most fortunately today I am able to share a direct royal input. In 1936 I met a specialist in agit-prop who, at the peak of his career in the Communist Party of Great Britain, had developed techniques to enliven the Jubilee carriage drives of Queen Mary and King George V to the town halls of Greater London, where they received loyal addresses from the mayors. On these state drives the Sovereign’s route was adorned with flags, and banderoles were strung across the streets so that the Royal Visitors and their subjects could read such loyal messages as ‘God Bless Our King and Queen’. This agit-prop specialist had devised ways by which, at the pull of a string, these banderoles would unwind and convert the loyal messages into others, such as ‘25 Years of Hunger and War’. But, as I learnt from a direct source, these messages in no way disturbed the King and Queen, indeed they would have missed them had they been absent. My authority lies in a statement made by His Majesty which was inadvertently broadcast by the BBC. It went virtually unnoticed because the key to its meaning was known only to a few. The BBC field crew had failed to cut off the mikes during a royal visit to Stepney. On leaving the Town Hall, the King had said to Queen Mary: ‘I’ll Lay you two to one in half-crowns there will be more than three on the way back.’ His Consort’s reply, also relayed by the BBC, was short. ‘Taken,’ Her Majesty said.
K. Sinclair-Loutit
Rabat
