A neighbour, only slightly younger than the Duke of Edinburgh, and a firm supporter of the monarchy on the rational basis that the alternatives look worse, was very surprised when I told him of the Duke's appointment as Lord High Admiral. We both agreed that to make a 90 year old the head of a once great navy in which there are presently more Admirals than ships smacks of "Ruritania", and seems particularly inappropriate at a time when the monarchy is trying to create a more modern image, with a Royal Prince and presumably future King, marrying a commoner and working as a helicopter pilot.
I think I would struggle to explain the appointment to my grandsons.
Some lines from Gilbert & Sullivan spring to mind: .. now I am the Ruler of the Queen's Navy
Now, landsmen all, whoever you may be
If you want to rise to the top of the tree
If your soul isn't fettered to an office stool
Be careful to be guided by this golden rule
Be careful to be guided by this golden rule
Stick close to your desks and never go to sea
And you all may be Rulers of the Queen's Navy
Stick close to your desks and never go to sea
And you all may be Rulers of the Queen's Navy
Lord High Admiral
That Wedding: Britain at its battiest
As a non royalist, and one of the majority of the people in the UK who neither watched the Royal Wedding on television nor attended a street party, I was interested to read an account of the event in Britain's best newspaper.
Dominating the front page was a rather mocking article by Matthew Engel:
"On one level, the event was absurd: yet another wedding in a family whose marital failure rate has lately been much worse than the national average. But it was also a demonstration of what Britain - and only Britain - can do. Only these royals can turn a domestic rite of passage into a piece of global theatre."
and
"The service was rather more God-centred than is now generally the case at British weddings, and at an hour and a bit, a touch long for modern tastes, especially for the early birds inside the abbey, some of whom had been there for nearly three hours before the ceremony began."
and, after the ceremony,
"Then half-a-dozen planes flew overhead ("That's the whole RAF," said someone). "
and speaking of the crowds who thronged the route to Westminster Abbey:
"They might just as easily have been here to celebrate a sporting triumph or protest against the Government. But though the British are a touch short of bread, they have been granted a most glittering performance by the glorious and long-running circus that is royalty."
In the middle of the same newspaper Simon Schama put the event in historical context: after the first world war and the fall of the Berlin and Petrograd autocracies, their relatives in London, newly renamed as the thoroughly English "House of Windsor", reinvented themselves and embraced the new world of mass entertainment. Royal celebrations became far grander than before, and "Royal Weddings, unseen in Westminster since the 14th century, became a feature of the calendar." So the young Prince and his bride never had any chance of the small wedding in an Oxfordshire village which was apparently their first choice.
Finally on the back page of the newspaper the Lex Column provided a wonderful tongue in cheek article extolling the business acumen of the mother of the bride: a descendant of labourers, messengers and clerks, she got her foot on the first rung of the ladder of business success by marrying into the minor gentry; she then invested heavily in public school fees (Marlborough) and a flat in Chelsea, sent her daugher to the same University as the Royal Prince, and even sent her beforehand to Chile, which the Prince himself had visited a few months earlier, "to give them something to talk about".
The article concludes, "This is a union of souls made possible by textbook planning: spotting an opening, then pursuing it with resourcefulness and determination. It belongs in the McKinsey Quarterly as much as in the pages of Debrett's."
The family internet business has not surprisingly flourished in the wake of its Royal connections. So, whatever the future holds for the House of Windsor, that of the House of Middleton looks assured.
And what is Britain's best newspaper? The Guardian perhaps, with its tradition of nonconformity and anti-establishment liberalism? The Independent, whose stance on major issues so often chimes with its title? Whilst these are indeed fine newspapers, the one of which I speak is none other than the Financial Times. I found it interesting also that Bagehot, writing in that other bastion of free market orthodoxy, The Economist, declares himself a compassionate republican, and thinks it is time to set the Royal Family free .
Anyway, all the best to the happy couple in the strange lives on which they are embarked.
The King's Speech
It is urprising how many people I know went to see the much heralded King's Speech as soon as it was released. Even non-Royalists, in whose number I count myself, could not be failed to be moved by the performance of Colin Firth as the painfully stammering future King.
The film did nothing for the reputation of the Prince of Wales/Edward VIII, who came over as a rather cruel cad. He and Mrs Simpson were clearly the bad guys in this story.
The one complaint I had was the role of Winston Churchill, played by the ubiquitous Timothy (Wickes: It's got our name on it) Spall. Anyone who saw the film and knew nothing about the history of the period would assume that Winston Churchill was a great supporter of the Duke of York during the abdication crisis. In fact this was the reverse of the truth. One of the greatest misjudgements of his political career was to speak in support of his friend the Prince of Wales in the House of Commons at the height of the crisis. It would I suppose have been bad for the American market had Churchill been portrayed as being on the wrong side!
A few weeks before seeing the film I picked up a Souvenir of the 1937 Coronation of Our only lawful liege, George the Sixth (picture above). In it there is much mention of The Empire, including a map showing India, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, and all points in between. I was surprised though that in his speech on becoming King, George VI used the more modern British Commonwealth of Nations rather than British Empire. He also used the quaint biblical word my helpmeet to refer to his wife, played in the film incidentally by the delightful Helena Bonham Carter. 
The inhabitants of the Empire were listed as follows: 365 million Indians, 70 million whites, 42 million blacks, 7 million Arabs, 7 million Malays, 1 million Chinese, 1 million Polynesians and 2 million others! One gets the impression that relatively few of the non-whites would have been at the Abbey to witness the Coronation. The United States though sent a special mission, which included General Pershing, who had led US Expeditionary Forces in the Great War.
I particularly loved the advertisements:
for Ovaltine, The National Beverage for Health: May this year of rejoicing take us appreciably nearer the national ideal of a Fitter Britain;
for Mansion Polish, Brilliance for the Happy Occasion: In the home, also, the housewife will desire to maintain a spirit of brightness befitting the happy occasion ..;
for Marconi, Only All-Wave Radio can bring you this year's great exchange of Empire Broadcasts ..;
for Cadbury's Bournville Cocoa a more demotic appeal,the Food Drink of the People, suitably positioned on the back page;
a page showing wholesome women wearing the unrevealing underwear that was the order of the day and that one could imagine was worn by the new Queen herself:
and from Drages of Oxford Street an advertisement extolling the virtue of buying furniture on installments : Miss Everyman: I had somehow thought that Payment-out-of-Income was associated with the cheaper, shoddier kinds of furniture.
Overall a fascinating glimpse into what now seems an archaic world.