The Virtual Stoa

Over here.

Anyone see the Charles-Camilla biopic last night? Was it any good? I’m assuming the answer is, “No, it wasn’t”, but since these things occasionally reach great heights of excellence, I thought it worth checking. (Though I forget whether it’s the film of Diana: Her True Story or of Princess in Love which is the real classic - the one where Prince Harry’s clearly American, etc. Probably the former. Yes, I think it must be.)

It’s probably got to be the Harry the Nazi kerfuffle from back in January. Nothing quite as funny as Prince Charles’s views on education, I think, in 2005, but Harry dressing as a Nazi isn’t bad.

The story also produced this gem, from the mother of someone called Guy Pelly, who is apparently a friend of Prince Harry’s, which ought to win some award or other for crass stupidity:

“It certainly wasn’t disrespectful to dress as the Queen. No more than it would be disrespectful for a white man to dress as a black man. I myself went as a penguin. And you could argue that it was a good thing Harry wore that costume. After all it highlighted the whole debate about Auschwitz � and that’s a positive thing, surely.”

But if there were other Stories that Reflect Badly on the Royal Family in the year about to end, please remind me what they were in comments below.

Prince Charles doesn’t like Nicholas Witchell:

In response a question from the BBC’s royal correspondent, Nick Witchell, the prince said: “I can’t bear that man, anyway. He’s so awful, he really is.

Do you think that the Prince still holds it against Witchell that he once crossed a picket line to go to work?Hmm. Probably not.

Can it get funnier? Yes, it can. Yesterday gave us “Media Barred From Royal Wedding“, but what I liked in particular about that BBC page was the list of related “key stories” down the right-hand column, which nicely sets the tone: Royal wedding ‘legal’, Panorama: Lawful impediment?, Prince not feeling snubbed - aide, No best man at Charles’ wedding, Prince and Camilla change venue.

I’ve just spent a part of the morning at home reading the first hundred pages or so of Caroline Elkins’ new book, Britain’s Gulag, which describes, among other things, the “screening” of Mau Mau suspects in Kenya during the Emergency in the 1950s, which involved, among other things, the stubbing out of cigarettes on Kenyans’ bodies, savage beatings, hot eggs being inserted in rectums and vaginas, and suspects being forced to eat their own testicles after mutilation with pliers.

Earlier this week we could read in the newspapers about the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at the hands of British troops, not of the same level of savagery, to be sure, but intolerable nevertheless.

And now I turn up at my office and read on the BBC website that the Heir to the Throne — in whose mother’s name these degradations were carried out in both Kenya and Iraq — has been whining again:

Prince Charles claimed the British people “tortured” him over his relationship with Mrs Parker Bowles in a 1998 interview, it has been revealed.”I thought the British people were supposed to be compassionate. I don’t see much of it,” he is said to have told BBC journalist Gavin Hewitt.

Yup. No compassion at all. Certainly none from me.

Jamie weighs in. The best bit…

This in turn refers back to the issue of popularity. Prince Harry may turn out not to be popular with the punters in their role as citizens, but he certainly popular with them in their role as telly watchers and tabloid buyers. His older brother isn’t quite the same buffoon, but there’ll be a girlfriend sooner or later, and she’ll talk. And there’s the ongoing saga of their dad, the green-ink prince, their pheasant strangling grandmother and her hilariously obnoxious husband.So as far as the establishment which actually runs the royals is concerned, they don’t need a credible monarchy. They need an incredible monarchy, a have-you-heard-what-these fuckwits-have-done-now monarchy. Disrespect may eventually undermine them, but for now it keeps them going. It’s their reason to exist.

But the whole thing’s good.

Chris, in the comments below, points me towards the text of a splendid act of Parliament, which was passed in 1649, and which would give us a much more sensible constitutional framework than the rubbish nonsense we have at present:

Be it declared and enacted by this present Parliament and by the Authoritie of the same That the People of England and of all the Dominions and Territoryes thereunto belonging are and shall be and are hereby constituted, made, established, and confirmed to be a Commonwealth and free State And shall from henceforth be Governed as a Commonwealth and Free State by the supreame Authoritie of this Nation, the Representatives of the People in Parliam[ent] and by such as they shall appoint and constitute as Officers and Ministers under them for the good of the People and that without any King or House of Lords.

We’ve done it before, we can do it again.

I know I need to write a reply to the chap who blogs over at God Save The Queen who has objected to my post below about the aristos. He makes some bad points, as well as a few good points, and I’ll hope to find the time in the not-too-distant future to respond properly.

And I was puzzled by Dave Gwydion’s mention of “frogging” in a recent comments box, and am now illuminated by his own blog: “For a long time in Europe”, he writes, “aristocrats not only had special rights–which is, I suppose, the definition of an aristocrat–but that they had the right to humiliate commoners, including, for instance, the right to require the local commoners to get on their hands and knees and chase frogs off the aristocrat’s property.” Dave, like myself is an academic, and so cannot resist a healthy dose of bibliography, and he concludes, “For a good account of “frogging,” as it was known, see Marcel Garaud, Histoire general du droit priv� fran�ais: La r�volution et la propriet� fonciere [Paris, Receuil Sirey, 1958], pp. 102-9.” I’ll put that on the list for the next time I head into the Bodleian, though since term has started, that may be a while.

But the main point of this post was to respond to Adam H’s thoughts in a recent comments thread: “I’ve been wondering recently who might be head of state instead - some horrible Blairite, a winner of pop-idol,…? Perhaps the Republican movement should actually suggest and support someone non-moronic now so that you aren’t still left with unpowdered wigs (or something) when the Republic is declared?” The who-would-you-have-instead question was bound to arise, so let me have a crack at it now. First, anybody is preferable to the current lot. Or, rather, anybody we could reasonably imagine getting through a democratic selection procedure of any kind at all would be preferable. Second, and relatedly, I’m not sure republicans should say, “get rid of this lot and replace them with X”. That’d be for the people to decide once the queen’s been shipped off to wherever. But thirdly, and this is the Official Virtual Stoa Position, we wouldn’t actually need to elect a President at all.

As I said in this thread over at Matthew’s (and here I cut-and-paste horribly) I’ve been saying for a while now that the head of state should be the Speaker of the House of Commons, and the fact that the present incumbent’s pretty hopeless doesn’t put me off in the slightest.

If there’s H-o-S work to do, then the Speaker can do it and one of the Deputy Speakers can preside in the Commons, as they so often do. We could even have another Deputy Speaker, if necessary. But I like to think that there wouldn’t be much H-o-S work to do, anyway. All this visiting places and saying “What do you do?” is pretty stupid, we can send FCO ministers off on foreign trips, and so on.

Most people have to retire in their 60s; the country seems to have the view that the Monarch’s role is sufficiently undemanding that somebody can do it in their 70s, 80s, etc. without a problem. And Great Republics such as the USA combine the offices of Head of State and Head of Government. If someone as famously idle as GWB can combine the two roles, I don’t see why we can’t combine the Speakership of the House with a small head of state function. Furthermore, since the Speaker has a nice flat in the Palace of Westminster, we can do what we ought to have done bloody ages ago and turn Buckingham Palace into an art gallery (as the sensible French did with the Louvre all those years ago).

OK: problem solved.

More soon.

As I said, below, Matthew is reminding us that Harry might become King, and that this should give pause to monarchists. And yesterday I was busy endorsing his campaign to point this out again and again (see below for links). But after sleeping on the matter, I now suppose he is wrong, in fact, and that I’m wrong to endorse his campaign.

Because if Harry were to threaten to succeed to the throne, and if he were to be deeply unpopular among the elites in this country, then he wouldn’t succeed. It’s as simple as that. Edward VIII was pushed into abdication, after all, and it’s not too difficult to imagine circumstances in which the Cabinet, Parliament, media, top civil servants, even senior courtiers (what a word!), or permutations and combinations among them, would move decisively against the prospect of King Harry, but precisely in order to save the institution of monarchy, in which they are generally so heavily invested, rather than to undermine it.

The point, however, is to undermine it.

And that requires continually refocussing arguments away from the personal failings of these inadequate and objectionable human beings (fun though it is to dwell on these) onto the complex institution of the British Monarchy and the forces that sustain it, in order to create a world in which nobody can utter a word in its defence without the experience of deep embarrassment.

We’ve got a way to go, but we’re going to win this one in the end.

(Roll on the bourgeois republic!)

Matthew Turner is doing a splendid job reminding us again and again that defenders of the monarchy must willingly accept that under certain not implausible circumstances Harry will become King, and will appoint the Prime Minister, dissolve Parliament, give consent to legislation, waste half an hour of the PM’s time every week, encourage, advise, and warn, etc., the whole Bagehotian shebang.

I think I’m happy to make his solo a duet, with a couple of caveats: first, to emphasise that Prince Charles is still my most-detested royal by quite a bit; second, to note that I’d still dislike the monarchy, obviously, even if all the members of the royal family were men and women of unimpeachable virtue and all-round human excellence devoted to the common good; and, third, to remark that nothing’s really changed this last week: we knew, or could easily guess, that the royal family in general and Prince Harry in particular are full of stupidity, ignorance and objectionably right-wing prejudices: all that’s happened this week is that we’ve got a nice new peg to hang things on, and some juicy photographs.

(There are matters of principle here, which can be debated dispassionately, but there’s also a political campaign to wage, and what that needs right now is the the spread of an attitude of naked contempt for monarchy and its political, economic and social supports. That’s what this post is contributing to.)

I will also join Matthew by quoting this passage that he found in the Independent, because it bears repetition:

“If the boys had got what they wanted when they went into the [costume] shop, Prince William might have been photographed trying to look like a black man in primitive clothing, while Harry would have been posing in the death’s-head uniform of the Waffen SS.”

And I’ll also point you to this post of Matthew’s, which provides a good example of just how blinkered apologists for aristocracy can be.The Virtual Stoa says: The Royal Family is a disgrace, it should be a criminal offence to use an aristocratic title, the public schools should be closed down, high taxes on land ownership should be introduced with (among other things) the aim of getting a significant proportion of the upper class to emigrate.

And, if need be, we should suspend the relevant provisions of the Human Rights Act in order to force such measures through: aristocrats and their apologists (both secular and ecclesiastical) opposed the ideology of human rights every step of the way from the eighteenth through to the twentieth centuries; they of all people have far less claim on the protection of a generous and expansive rights regime than the rest of us.

Monarchy shames us all, or it bloody well ought to, and the sooner we are rid of it in this (so-called) United (so-called) Kingdom the better for all of us.

Perhaps Poet Laureate Andrew Motion should take the opportunity to write a poem about Prince Harry?

Anyone who never read his 21st birthday offering to Prince William should click here and enjoy.

I quite liked the headline in the Express today (I don’t often say that): “ARMY TO SORT OUT HARRY (That’s the British Army)”. But the point of this post is to send you scurrying over to my brother’s site to read a Harry-themed post that effortlessly combines William Shakespeare and the story of a man in a viking helmet. But you all read his blog anyway, so I don’t have to.

Listening to British radio in general, Radio Four in particular, and the Today programme in particular in particular has a tendency, even over a fairly short period, to induce various forms of self-loathing. This morning’s 8am news bulletin provided a splendid exception, with a lead story about Prince Harry dressing up as a Nazi, followed by the news that Mark Thatcher’s pleading guilty, followed, shortly after that, by an interview with Michael Howard at his lying worst on the subject of burglars and householders and the significance of the difference - which he never defined with any precision - between “unreasonable” and “grossly disproportionate”. So I arose in a very good mood to go and make the first cups of coffee of the day.

(In normal circumstances, I’d add Charles Clarke, on after Howard, to this succession of jokers. But, in fact, Citizens Windsor, Thatcher and Howard are more ridiculous figures than Mr Clarke, and, on this occasion, the Home Secretary was being sensible.)

The Guardian points out that the theme of the party Prince Harry attended was “natives and colonials”. I know he’s supposed to be thick, but can it really be the case that he can’t read more than the first two letters of each word?

UPDATE [12.20pm]: What’s going on? Mel P has something sensible to say, for the second time in the space of a week. Have I changed? Has she? Is it some New Year’s Resolution to stop barking like a lunatic on her blog and/or in her columns? As I say, what’s going on?

UPDATE [12.40pm]: Jamie, (in common with Melanie), has good things to say, too, but focussing on Harry rather than Howard.

Most entertaining story of 2004 involving the Royal Family?

Matthew Turner has found a splendid photo of life at Magdalen College when Edward, Prince of Wales was in residence. I’m quite glad it’s not much like that anymore.

The text of the book he’s scanning it from makes reference to the College beagles, which don’t seem to exist any more, though there are other mentions of them on the worldwide internetweb here and here (and possibly here, too, in a piece about a future leading South African Communist written by the estimable Allison Drew, though it’s ambiguous as to whether the beagles referred to are in fact the Magdalen beagles or some other pack).

I like to think that this story is something to do with making sure that Charles doesn’t escape with anything that’s rightfully the Great British Tax-Payer’s when he heads off for his long-promised, long-delayed exile in Switzerland.

But it probably isn’t.

To bring an end to this surprising burst of Saturday-morning bloggerage, I’ll just remind everyone here of what I posted over at Matt T’s yesterday:

Prince Charles is reported to have said a couple of years ago that “”If the Labour government ever gets round to banning fox hunting, I might as well leave this country and spend the rest of my life skiing.”

Good.

At times of royal scandal, anxious Britons scan the European papers, in the hope that they will stumble across the news stories that Fleet Street dares not print.

And for those who can’t read the major European languages, there’s always babelfish and the other Internet Translation Tools, which make everything far too exciting for words.

So, from La Repubblica of 8 November, read on — and, preferably, read aloud — as “The megaphone of the Windsor takes part on a subject of gossip and the prince refutes in Tv one love story with the butler…”

From today’s Guardian:

The prince’s secretary said he knew the allegation was untrue for “three principal reasons”. “Firstly, the Prince of Wales has told me it is untrue and I believe him implicitly,” he said. “Secondly, anyone who knows the Prince of Wales at all would appreciate that the allegation is totally ludicrous and, indeed, risible.

“And thirdly, the person who has made the allegation unfortunately has suffered from health problems and has made other, unrelated allegations which have been investigated by the police and found to be unsubstantiated.”

These aren’t especially good reasons (how stupid do you have to be to believe something just because it’s the Prince of Wales who tells it to you?). But they happily put me in mind of one of the best TV programmes, I’ve ever watched, the documentary, “Charles: the Private Man, the Public Role”.In its finest scene, Charles explains why it’s OK for him to travel to the Middle East and hobnob with the merchants of death at the ceremonial opening of arms fairs, given that he’s supposed to be such a non-political figure. On that occasion he too managed to come up with “three reasons”, which I think were roughly as follows (this is quoting from a decade-old memory, so apologies if I get it slightly wrong): (i) we make arms jolly well in Britain, (ii) if we didn’t sell them, somebody else would, and (iii) human nature being what it is, there’ll always be a need to sell powerful weapons to people. So that’s settled, then.

The whole film, in fact, is a marvellous symptom of the crisis in the House of Windsor at the time. Intended as a show to rehabilitate Charles after the Diana Panorama interview, and organised by a sycophantic (if not hagiographic) Jonathan Dimbleby, the programme in fact just fed out yards and yards of rope, with which the Prince hanged himself, repeatedly. The arms-fair discussion was followed by a shot of the royals processing into some banqueting hall with the President of Portugal or somesuch, preparing to get their snouts in the trough, as Charles’s voiceover solemnly described how valuable it was for Britain to have a royal family so selflessly devoted to duty. (Another priceless bit was on what a mistake the government was making when it took his yacht away.)

Incidentally, I see that since I linked to throneout.com below their server has been overwhelmed with visitors. (I’m not sure that my link was the chief reason for this.) They have a useful statement posted up there this morning, which raises important questions about the position of the royal family with respect to the law.

Here’s an anti-monarchist site I hadn’t seen before:

I mentioned Rene Delorm’s excellent book, Diana and Dodi: A Love Story, the other day. I’ve now got it in front of me, so here’s a representative passage:

At about half past ten, as the two of them sat on the couch sipping their pre-dinner champagne, Dodi signalled me.”I think we have the soundtrack of The English Patient“, he said. “The Princess would like to listen to it”.

I slid the CD into place, pushed the button and the hauntingly beautiful music began to swell, spilling over the decks of the Jonikal and surrounding two people who were rapidly falling in love. Looking out at the pair of them I felt that all was right with the world.

At that untimely moment, the telephone rang and I had to tell Dodi, “Sir, you have a phone call.” While he took the call inside, I stayed close to the Princess.

“Rene, have you seen The English Patient?” she asked.

“Yes, Madame, I saw it twice. It was a wonderful film, but I never noticed how beautiful the music was.”

“Well, that’s probably because the story is so beautiful and the music is in harmony with the images”, she said. “You get totally absorbed in the film, hearing but not noticing the music.”

She put her feet up on the nearest chair and was reclining almost horizontally as she sipped her champagne and waited for Dodi. Seeing that she was enjoying the music, I quietly retreated, and after a few minutes Dodi returned to her side… [p.75]

I may post some more of this fine book if I get bored over the next few days. It’s good stuff.

I took a short break from my reading in the Bodleian Library yesterday afternoon in order to pop over the road to buy Paul Burrell’s book, A Royal Duty at Blackwell’s. I’ve made a start, and I’ll probably read it all over the next few days. Yes, all the juicy bits were excerpted in the Mirror last week, and on Tuesday the Guardian published a handy guide to the contents of the book to save anyone having to take the trouble to buy it. Perhaps I wasted �17.99.

I am, however, rather gripped by the Diana literature, and have been reading in it for a surprisingly long time, and this does appear to be a must-own contribution to the genre.

I don’t think I’m obsessive. For example, although I own a copy of Closely Guarded Secret, the book by Diana’s bodyguard Ken Wharfe, I’ve never read it, because people tell me it’s very dull. (Which also means that I’m not sure why I do own a copy, but apparently I do.) And although in general I have a good memory for points of detail, when it comes to the Diana books it is mostly in-one-ear-and-out-the-other stuff. I couldn’t, for example, say much to distinguish the various aristocratic women with silly names who always flit through these books’ pages — people like Lady Sarah McCorquodale, Lady “Kanga” Tryon and the like, though on the whole I can remember which one “Tiggy” Legge-Bourke is (even if I’m not quite sure if that’s the right way to spell her name).

But I have read a fair few of the recent efforts — both Andrew Morton volumes (but, sadly, not his fawning life of Daniel Arap Moi); the peculiarly-named Lady Colin Campbell’s minor classic Diana In Private (typical sentence, from memory: “There weren’t many virgins in Charles’s generation; he fucked most of them”); Kitty Kelley’s The Royals (a great disappointment: it didn’t live up to the hype at all and should always have remained the hit-piece on Prince Philip it was originally intended to be); and last weekend I was lucky enough to find a copy of the original Sylvie Krin collection, Born to be Queen, whose episode on “Venetia Barkworth-Smythe” (I think that’s the name - I don’t have the book to hand) is quite admirably prescient, presenting in embryo just about all the beans that Morton was to spill over a decade later. (Irrelevant aside: always remember that Pythagoras didn’t like beans because they looked like human embryos: hence the Pythagorean bean taboo that contributed to his untimely death [Diogenes Laertius, VIII.45]).

The most delightful book in the DianaLit genre, though, is one that I don’t remember receiving much publicity. It’s Diana and Dodi: A Love Story, by one Rene Delorm. The book is an eyewitness account of the last few weeks of Diana’s short life: Rene was Dodi Fayed’s flunkey during his fling with Diana, and one of his main functions was to pop the CD of the soundtrack of The English Patient into the stereo on Dodi’s yacht again, and again, and again, in order to provide suitably romantic background music. It’s a very funny book indeed, though perhaps not intended that way. (There’s a very odd page about this book here: e.g., “How Much Titillating Info on Personal Vices? 2 - A Little”. There’s also an interview with Rene here, and an informative BBC page which contains a soundclip of Rene here.)

So I am looking forward to Burrell’s book, though not expecting it to be very good. Still, I doubt it’ll take up too much of my life.

I’m still waiting for more revelations about Michael “the fence” Fawcett, of course.

Oh, and if anyone does have reliable details of the story to which Melanie Philips is referring in this post on her loopy-but-fun blog, including the identity of the senior royal, do drop me a line. It all makes me feel a bit out of the loop.

We’ll be rid of them soon. I’m still optimistic that it’ll be in my lifetime.

UPDATE [2/11/2003]: The admirable Catherine Bennett has enjoyed Burrell’s book as much as I’m hoping to, in yesterday’s Guardian, and has some things to say about Camilla Parker-Bowles which strike me as being offensive, funny, and probably accurate. (Spotted via the Normblog).

I’ve always liked Catherine Bennett’s writing, ever since she wrote a definitive guide to the content, structure and style of ex-Tory ministers’ memoirs, which made me have one of those infrequent “I wish I had written that” moments. Here she is again in today’s Guardian with a very useful presentation of everything you need to know about the current wave of scandals breaking against the House of Windsor…