Opinion By Yasmin Alibhai-Brown
We’re always told the Queen hasn’t put a foot wrong. Really?
I never cease to be astonished by those intelligent and talented people who unthinkingly genuflect to the monarch and her clan
July 21, 2022
A new royal biography has landed! Another one to add to the tall pile published in the past decade. It’s by Tom Bower, a veteran profiler, firmly of the right, married to Veronica Judith Colleton Wadley CBE, previously the editor of the Evening Standard, now Baroness Fleet.
She backed Boris Johnson in the London mayoral elections, and he made her a peer. So, you get the picture. This power couple embody Tory elitism and are righteously loyal to the monarchy.
In his clumsily titled Revenge: Meghan, Harry and the War Between the Windsors, Bower informs readers that the Queen was relieved, glad even, when informed that Meghan would not attend Prince Phillip’s funeral. Not half as relieved and glad, I bet, as Meghan, who was heavily pregnant at the time and probably in no mood for a reunion with the backward Windsors.
Tripe and trite
Another “juicy” Bower disclosure: at the funeral Harry gave a nervous “sideways glance” at his brother, as they walked towards St George’s Chapel, separated by their cousin Peter Phillips.
Tripe and trite, in my opinion. Sam Kushner, an American journalist, an admirer of Meghan, has accused Bower of misrepresenting his views. But royalists will love the tome. These adulatory books are a key part of the propaganda that keeps this rotten royal edifice standing and well maintained.
I never cease to be astonished by those intelligent and talented people who unthinkingly genuflect to the monarch and her clan. Actress Vanessa Redgrave, a lifelong leftie, sank right down to the feet of Prince William in 2010 at a Bafta ceremony. He was 27, had achieved practically nothing. This week, Helen Mirren said that she’d written to Her Maj before playing her in the film, The Queen. She wanted to express sympathy for what she had been through when Diana died. (Really? Queen Elizabeth stayed in Balmoral till public opinion compelled her to show up.) The monarch did not reply.
Inconvenient truths
In this Jubilee year, it has become obligatory to declaim that the Queen “has not put a foot wrong”. She has. Many times. She embodies an extraordinary history and I respect that. But those millions of her loyalists either don’t know or don’t care to know inconvenient truths about the Windsors and the establishment. Their faith is fierce and blind. It is idolatry.
In 1968, a TV film was made of the “ordinary” lives of the Windsors. It was watched by 45 million people. In 1972, the Queen wanted it banned because it let “the magic out”. David Attenborough, the BBC2 controller, agreed and obliged.
In 1995, Wendy Berry, who worked for Diana and Charles penned The Housekeeper’s Diary: Charles and Diana Before the Breakup, a vivid account of their disintegrating marriage. She was 68 and a royalist. Charles had the book banned. It was published in the US.
The Firm has tried to stop further broadcasts of that infamous BBC interview with Diana. The ethics of the interviewer Martin Bashir are questionable, but the Princess knew what she was doing. So, we may watch Charles confessing to his adulterous relationship with Camilla but not his wife talking about her pain? Yeah, that’s freedom of speech British style. And guess what? BBC director general, Tim Davie, this week promised never to broadcast the interview again.
Protected from scrutiny
There’s more. This July, The Guardian revealed that “personalised exemptions for the Queen in her private capacity have been written into more than 160 laws since 1967, granting her sweeping immunity from swathes of British law – ranging from animal welfare to workers’ rights”.
Working royals are exempt from Freedom of Information requests. Much of their tax affairs are protected from scrutiny. Their wills can be secret forever. They do not have to follow the rules you and I have to.
Now Camilla, the third person in that marriage, is on a charm offensive. And the Queen’s subjects are, as ever, falling for the “magic”.
Will this ever end? Will we ever be a real democracy? Not in my lifetime.