The Diamond Queen: Elizabeth II and her People

LIFE OF A GREAT READER

- Monarchy and the element of make-believe

Name of the book: The Diamond Queen: Elizabeth II and her People

Writer: Andrew Marr

Publisher: Macmillan

Price: Rs 650

Japan’s Prince Akishino says “it will become necessary” to have an age limit, or “retirement age”, for Japanese emperors. Bhutan’s new constitution already provides for the king to step down at 65. But driven by duty, dedication and determination, Britain’s Queen Elizabeth goes marching on at 85, recalling Farouk of Egypt’s prediction that the world would ultimately be left with five crowned heads — four in the pack of cards and one in London.

A veteran like Andrew Marr is too sophisticated to recount such a passé tale in this celebration of the queen’s diamond jubilee next year. But that just about sums up the message of his thoughtful, incisive and erudite, but also carefully selective, tome. If he permits some variation on the theme, it’s that future monarchs might not live in London, preferring Windsor Castle while Buckingham Palace is used for State occasions.

This defence of both the institution and the person — admitting the present incumbent doesn’t leave much space between them — is all the more effective for pointing out flaws in the style of devil’s advocate and for the admission that the author once harboured republican sentiments. He quotes the tart words of Queen Elizabeth’s tart sister that “every tart in London was getting in” to explain the abolition of debutante presentations and the Season. There’s a delightful story about George V’s sister telephoning her brother and beginning the conversation with “Hello, you old fool” only to have the Buckingham Palace operator cut in to say, “Beg pardon, your Royal Highness, His Majesty is not yet on the line.”

There aren’t too many such stories because Marr is not a gossip writer and his life of “Reader No. 1” who “has seen every significant secret Foreign Office cable or telegram, and much of the MI6 advice, about international crises and problems from the 1950s onwards” is really a justification of what others might derisively refer to as the “welfare”, “democracy” or “suburban” monarchy. This doesn’t amount to a plea for monarchy in general: it’s Elizabeth Mountbatten, to give her her rightful married name, who has made it indispensable for present-day Britain and, curiously, seemingly even more indispensable for a succession of hard-headed British prime ministers. Tony Blair may have been swept off his feet in the film starring Helen Mirren as the queen, but Marr confirms that in real life Harold Wilson and the queen made a meal of the weekly audience.

No one knows what she discussed with him or with any other prime minister. But the Reader No.1 tag suggests a serious person with an active mind and great resources of energy who is able to draw on her own vast experience to inform and advise. The queen read Bagehot as part of her training and Marr indicates that she takes seriously her right to be consulted, to advise and to warn. “Ministers express astonishment and wary pleasure at how much the Queen has thought about their dilemmas. Though she takes no decisions she can be a provoker of second thoughts and a catalyst for deeper thinking.” She also emerges as an astute tactician, not above setting her own senior staff to battle No. 10 when some innovation not to her liking is being contemplated.

But what does the royal family represent? Lord Stamfordham, George V’s secretary who helped reinvent the monarchy, projected it as “a living power for good”. Marr speaks of the queen as “head of our morality”. There is no admission that open adultery and fornication, contrived divorce and even doubts about the paternity of some who are high in the line of succession might have brought the royals closer to their subjects. Such earthiness is beyond Marr’s ken.

Instead, his early pages reveal how much the Ind. Imp. fantasy meant to the royal family. In Gone With The Windsors, a once popular spoof on the abdication crisis, Wally Simpson says to her lover, “But even if you have to give up the throne, can’t you remain Emperor of India?” The real-life Windsors took it hard having to drop the I from the R.I. that followed the monarch’s signature. Kaiser-i-Hind was far-fetched enough, but they wanted an even more exotic replacement. There’s nary a word here about Clement Attlee writing to Jawaharlal Nehru in 1947 suggesting that George VI be rewarded with some title from “India’s heroic age” after he ceased to be emperor. Presumably, Attlee did so with the king’s consent, if not his urging.

Perhaps an element of make-believe is inevitable with someone who “has great authority and no power”. Victoria liked to think of herself as a Stuart until Disraeli helped to reinvent her as a Mughal. The “Defender of the Faith” title is not only absurd but fraudulent. Pope Leo X bestowed it on Henry VIII for loyally defending Roman Catholicism but when Henry broke with Rome, he continued to use it (as his successors have done ever since), presumably to signify defence of anti-papist heresy. Prince Charles has threatened to carry inventiveness a stage further by revising the title to “Defender of Faiths”, including Islam. Luckily, there isn’t a Caliph of Islam any longer to object to trespass.

Nor were there any Windsors on July 17, 1917 to complain that the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha had pinched their name because George V was desperate to live down his German ancestry. But it’s said that in faraway Berlin, his cousin Kaiser Wilhelm heard the news and chuckled that he was off to the theatre to see The Merry Wives of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.

SUNANDA K. DATTA-RAY

Published on January 06, 2012

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1111230/jsp/opinion/story_14936354.jsp