Royalty

Today

Robert Hardman

King Harald’s death could revolutionize Norway

Affable, unflappable and imposing (he was a 6ft 2in ex-Olympian), the late King Harald of Norway was also blessed with good luck for much of his life. The first notable dose of good fortune occurred at the age of three, when his mother managed to spirit him and his sisters out of their home country hours before the Nazi invasion – and away to safety in the US. He returned to a nation so devoted to its monarchy that the children of postwar Norway pooled their pocket money to help buy his grandfather, King Haakon VII, a royal yacht. The Norge remains in service to this day, funded by an uncomplaining nation. Compare that with Britain’s royal family, who had to wave farewell to their yacht Britannia back in 1997 after a long and toxic political squabble.

harald

Thursday

Tessa Dunlop

How Charles III became the richest monarch in modern history

From our UK edition

Valentine Low is an old-school royal journalist; less muckraking reporter, more Establishment eye (the Times for 15 years) across our nation’s oldest institution. It is his disarming charm (I’ve had the pleasure of televised royal parley with him) that has guaranteed him access to the great and occasionally ghastly in the higher echelons of British society. His previous book, the innocuously titled Courtiers, published just at the point of the Sussexes’ scandal-ridden departure, skipped nimbly over accusations of bullying and impropriety and became a bestseller. Expectations were high for Power and the Palace. The publisher insisted on an NDA. I waded through tranches of 19th-century history in the knowledge that Low’s gilt-edged gossip would not eventually disappoint.

Thursday

Hermione Eyre

Why you didn’t want to get on the wrong side of Cecil Beaton

From our UK edition

‘Remember, Roy, white flowers are the only chic ones.’ So Cecil Beaton remarked to Roy Strong, possibly as a mild put-down to the young curator. But it was a curious put-down to make because Beaton broke his own rule happily, buying mountainous armfuls of speckled yellow, pink and scarlet carnations at Covent Garden and longing to fill his borders with Korean chrysanthemums and purple salvias. This small exhibition at the Garden Museum enjoys the sweet-pea surface of Beaton’s creations, while giving a flash of the glinting secateur that also made up such an important part of his personality. Beaton’s ability as an image-maker was astounding. Those famous photos of his Cambridge days with the Bright Young Things are still outrageous, a mad foray into camp pastoral.

Thursday

Hermione Eyre

Fascinating royal clutter: The Edwardians, at The King’s Gallery, reviewed

From our UK edition

The Royal Collection Trust has had a rummage in the attic and produced a fascinating show. Displayed in the palatial gallery adjacent to Buckingham Palace, and described on headsets in the reassuring tones of Hugh Bonneville, are public tokens and personal treasures of two generations: Edward VII and Queen Alexandra, and George V and Queen Mary. Frocks, clocks and diplomatic gifts; purchases and mementoes that give the illusion that the royal family might be, after all, not so unlike us. There’s an unusual tea set, with odd, red photos: as princess, Alexandra took family snaps and had them printed on to these porcelain teacups in 1892, more than 100 years before Moonpig.

Tuesday

Philip Hensher

Whether adored or despised, Princess Diana is never forgotten

From our UK edition

What happened to the condolence books? They swiftly multiplied, that mad week in September 1997. The original four at St James’s Palace had to be increased to more than 40. People queued for hours and often spent many minutes composing their contributions. That’s not even to mention the thousands of similar books organised by councils, embassies and private businesses. The official set were ‘offered’ to the Spencer family. Perhaps they are at Althorp. Edward White’s Dianaworld, about the phenomenon of the former Princess of Wales, shows an indefatigable resourcefulness. It is not really about the woman herself but about the effect she had on people who never laid eyes on her.

Tuesday

Nicky Haslam

Cartier used to be a Timpson’s for the rich

From our UK edition

In the fall of, I suppose, 1962, my friend Jimmy Davison and I, window shopping on Fifth Avenue, bumped into the glamorous Venezuelan playboy-grandee Reinaldo Herrera. Jimmy asked where he was going. ‘I’m just nipping into Cartier. They’re fixing my skis,’ Reinaldo replied. Autres temps, autre moeurs. I doubt anyone today uses the world’s most famous jewellers as their local Timpson’s, though I suspect Cartier’s unrivalled in-house craftsmen could still run up a supple sapphire USB cable if requested. I doubt anyone today uses the world’s most famous jewellers as their local Timpson’s Because that was partly the firm’s point. Apart from the staggering banque-busting biggies, they, almost uniquely, made the most exquisite smaller things.

Thursday

Nick Cohen

English civil law has become a luxury good beyond the reach of most of us

From our UK edition

In March 2020, Charlotte Leslie, a former Conservative MP, and widely regarded as a thoughtful, friendly woman, had her life turned upside down. The threat of professional and financial ruin hit her, and stayed with her until a few months ago, solely because she had offended a wealthy man. Leslie was the director of the Conservative Middle East Council. Mohamed Amersi, a businessman worth hundreds of millions of pounds, appeared from nowhere and announced that he wanted to become the council’s chairman. Leslie politely showed him the door. The next thing she knew, Amersi had set up a rival Middle East organisation to liaise between the Conservative party and the oil-rich states of the Gulf.

Wednesday

Andrew Lownie

The Duke of Windsor had much to be thankful for

From our UK edition

Once a King is trumpeted as ‘game-changing’, a ‘trove of never-before-seen papers which shed fresh light on the maligned Duke of Windsor’ and will ‘turn on its head long-accepted stereotypes’ about him. These are bold claims, but do they stack up? ‘The lost memoir of Edward Vlll’ actually consists of an early draft of the Duke of Windsor’s self-serving memoir, A King’s Story (1951), which Jane Marguerite Tippett found in the papers of the former king’s ghostwriter Charles Murphy in the Boston University archives. Far from being lost, the papers have been known to historians for 20 years and largely ignored in favour of more important collections elsewhere, not least the Murphy papers at the Virginia Historical Institute, of which Tippett seems unaware.

Tuesday

Alexander Larman

How to tour London like a royal

The next time you arrive at London’s Heathrow Airport, you might be forgiven for wanting a welcome fit for a king. Yet under the now nearly three-month-old reign of King Charles III, there is a persistent rumor that Buckingham Palace, that symbol of the British monarchy since its acquisition by America’s favorite monarch George III in 1763, is going to pass out of private hands and into public ones. There has been talk of its being turned into a giant permanent art gallery and museum, showing off treasures from the Royal Collection Trust. There's even chatter of — and I can hear the gasps from here — its being transformed into a five-star hotel. You, too, can pay an exorbitant amount of money to sleep where kings and queens have trod.

Thursday

Michael Hall

The art of the monarchy

From our UK edition

Elizabeth II spent virtually all her life surrounded by one of the world’s greatest art collections. Even when she was a child, and the likelihood of her inheriting the throne still seemed remote, visits to her grandparents at Buckingham Palace involved looking at pictures, since George V enjoyed showing her the Victorian narrative paintings that hung there, such as William Powell Frith’s ‘Ramsgate Sands’. Nobody knows exactly how many works of art there are in the Royal Collection, but at the end of Elizabeth II’s reign nearly 300,000 objects had been catalogued online, probably just under a third of the whole.

Dan Hitchens

The political cunning of Elizabeth II: BBC1’s The Longest Reign – The Queen and Her People reviewed

From our UK edition

In all the tributes to Her late Majesty’s constancy, dignity, wisdom and devotion to duty, not enough has been said about her political cunning. But BBC1’s The Longest Reign: The Queen and Her People made a compelling case that Elizabeth II knew just how to tilt the balance. When she toured the new towns of the 1950s (see image), waving at the crowds with their little Union Flags and taking tea with the young families on the just-built housing estates, she was giving her wordless blessing to the welfare state.

Damian Thompson

BBC radio has excelled itself over the past week

From our UK edition

Listening to BBC Radios 3 and 4 over the past week has been like meeting an old friend who, after decades of squeezing into age-inappropriate designer clothes, has suddenly reverted to a sensible wardrobe. It’s a pity that it took the death of our beloved Queen for this to happen, but I’ve been enjoying it while it lasts – because, like the miracle drug that Robin Williams gives his dementia patients in the film Awakenings, this dose of sanity will quickly wear off. Radio 4’s long-prepared tributes to Elizabeth II were, by the BBC’s standards, remarkably impartial. Even Saturday’s Today programme rose to the occasion.

Wednesday

Jeremy Clarke

Why I love Her Majesty

From our UK edition

I’ve often wondered whether Her Majesty the Queen glances through The Spectator from time to time. And if she does, I wonder whether her kindly eye lights on this column. And if it does, I wonder what she thinks of what she reads there. ‘Philip, there’s a man here writing about going to the Cheltenham Festival and messing his pents.’ ‘Very easily done at Cheltenham, my dear. I’ve often wondered why nobody has written about it before.’ Or, ‘Philip here’s that man again, the one who messed his pents at Cheltenham, assisting the ferret-judging at a country show. It’s frightfully interesting. The judge takes so long to judge each class, they drive a car into the tent so that he can judge them in the headlights.

Taki

In praise of Greek royalty

From our UK edition

New York Prince Pavlos, heir to the Greek throne, turned 55 recently and I threw a small dinner for him. Pavlos is a hell of a prince, father, husband and businessman. He’s tall, good-looking, a gent in every way, intelligent, hard-working and has never put a foot wrong. Neither has any member of his immediate family. Compared with them, the rest of European royals seem wanting, but then I’m prejudiced. The Greek royals are Danes, and the oldest reigning clan of Europe. Unlike another royal family whose name escapes me – it is the Platinum Jubilee issue after all – the Hellenic one has had no divorces, no scandals, and if physical looks mattered, the Greek royals would be the ruling family of Europe. At present Pavlos comes to the dojo after work and trains hard.

Thursday

Philip Hensher

You can make anything up about the royal family and it will be printed as fact

From our UK edition

There are quite a few things that Tina Brown doesn’t know: what ‘jejune’ means; when Louis XIV came to the throne; what the passive voice in prose is (not ‘recollections may vary’); what members of the aristocracy are called (Lady Romsey becomes Lady Penelope Romsey) or what members of the royal family are called (the ‘Dowager Duchess of Gloucestershire’ puts in an appearance).

Thursday

Robert Hardman

Will the end of monarchy in Barbados spark a chain reaction?

From our UK edition

As of this week, the Queen is down to 15 thrones, after the royal standard was lowered in Barbados in the early hours of Tuesday morning. A presidential flag now flies there. Elizabeth II still remains, by some margin, the host with the most in terms of square miles per head of state. Presidents Xi, Biden and Putin do not come close to the Queen of Canada, Australia and Papua New Guinea plus a chunk of Antarctica, little old Britain and all the rest of her realms and territories. Depending on how much ocean you include, she remains Sovereign of somewhere between an eighth and a sixth of the Earth’s surface. So, at 167 square miles, Barbados may have been a mere blip in the portfolio. This is a significant moment, though, all the same.

Wednesday

Alexander Larman

Donald Trump: monarchist?

From our UK edition

As the Harry and Meghan carnival rumbles on, the Queen has found an unexpected source of support: Donald Trump. During an interview with Nigel Farage, Trump said of Meghan: ‘I’m not a fan of hers. I wasn’t from day one…she is trying do things that I think are very inappropriate.’ Meanwhile, he painted the Duke of Sussex as her plaything: ‘I think Harry’s been used and been used terribly. I think it’s ruined his relationship with his family, and it hurts the Queen…I think some day he will regret it.’ If Trump doesn't like Harry and Meghan, there's no doubting his affection for the Queen.

Thursday

James Delingpole

Did any of this actually happen? The Crown, season four, reviewed

From our UK edition

‘We have to stop it now!’ says Princess Margaret (Helena Bonham Carter), smoking another cigarette, obviously. She’s talking about the impending royal wedding between her nephew Charles and a pretty but gauche young thing called Lady Diana Spencer. Spoiler alert: none of the family will listen. Yes, The Crown is back on Netflix for its fourth season, and naturally I skipped straight to the episode that will be of most interest to everyone: the royal engagement and its aftermath. Why is this subject so grimly, pruriently, enduringly fascinating?

Saturday

Dot Wordsworth

The disconnected language of ‘connectivity’

From our UK edition

Facebook recently told readers of the Sun that satellites could ‘bring broadband connectivity to rural regions where internet connectivity is lacking’. Sajid Javid in happier days not long ago told the Telegraph that HS2 would ‘create greater North-South connectivity’. Connectivity seems an unnecessarily abstract way of expressing it. E.M. Forster didn’t attach the epigraph ‘Only connectivity’ to Howards End. It was not the Countess of Huntingdon’s Connectivity. No, the novelist, with the epigraph ‘Only connect’, wanted to connect ‘the prose and the passion’ and the Countess wanted her Connexion to be precisely whatever she said it was at any one time, whether Methodist, or Calvinist or dissenting.