Anchors get giddy around the crown
Once in a lifetime
What three royal jubilees reveal about Britain
May 26th 2012 | from the print edition
-
A slideshow celebrating Queen Elizabeth's Diamond JubileeMiles Cole -
The finishing touches are applied to a new waxwork figure of the queen produced in honour of her Diamond JubileeREUTERS
1 / 13
BEFORE Queen Elizabeth’s Silver Jubilee in 1977, the villagers of West Hoathly in Sussex were placed under secret observation. A file was drawn up, noting their views on the monarchy, the country and the impending celebrations. The royal family was marvellous but these festivities had better not cost too much, said one villager, recorded as “Nurse, female, 50”, explaining: “People are not in the mood.”
West Hoathly was reliably monarchist, the file records, with anti-republican sentiment boosted by recent American elections (“Fancy having Jimmy Carter,” a villager shuddered). But still its Jubilee enthusiasts sounded a bit bleak. We’re due a celebration, said “Male, 53”—we’ve made it to 1977 without a nuclear war.
The files were commissioned by Mass Observation, a private social-research project that has studied the British since the 1930s. In all, 107 volunteers were recruited to record the Silver Jubilee. Their diaries and notes, together with complementary files on the 2002 Golden Jubilee, now form part of a vast archive held at Sussex University. On the eve of Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee—to be marked from June 2nd to 5th—the archives offer a remarkably evocative glimpse of the recent past.
The 1977 files describe a country that was tired and riven by industrial conflict. Its people talked of feeling a bit lost, and yet—from a distance of 35 years—they seem enviably grounded in a shared culture with deep roots. There was striking uniformity to their celebrations. Invited to have fun, people first grumbled then formed committees. It is remembered that at previous royal jubilees children were given commemorative mugs, prompting endless rows about paying for them. “The Vicar! He needs grinding up afresh, that one,” fumed a farmer’s wife in north Wiltshire, on learning that her Women’s Institute branch must buy mugs. “Not that I’m criticising him, of course,” she added hastily.
Celebrations in 1977 involved children’s food—sausage rolls and jelly, hot dogs and ice cream—and beer for the grown-ups. There were violent sporting contests, from tugs-of-war to free-form football matches. To conquer reserve, fancy dress was worn, often involving men in women’s clothing. From the West Midlands came news of an all-transvestite football game, with the laconic annotation: “all ended up in the canal.”
London displayed both patriotic zeal (flag-draped pubs in Brick Lane, big street parties in Muswell Hill) and hostility (cheerless housing estates, slogans declaring “Stuff the Jubilee”).
Scotland was a nation apart. A file reports “total apathy” in Croy. In Glasgow the anniversary was called “an English jubilee”. Snobs sneered along with Scots. At Eton College, a wooden Jubilee pyramid was smashed by old boys. At Oxford University, examinations were held on Jubilee Day, in a display of indifference.
The Silver Jubilee is not really about the monarchy, asserts a file from south Wiltshire: the day is about “people wanting a bit of fun”. A report from Wimbotsham in Norfolk, close to a royal estate at Sandringham, stands out for its focus on the queen’s 25 years on the throne. Locals held a service on the village green, praying for the monarch in “happy togetherness” under dripping umbrellas before a tug-of-war, races and tea for 700.
By 2002 and the Golden Jubilee, Britain comes across as a busier, lonelier, more cynical place. The royal family was “just showbiz”, sniffed a diarist from Sussex. There is angry talk of Princess Diana and how her 1997 death was mishandled by the queen. There are fewer street parties than in 1977, all agree. This is variously blamed on apathy, the authorities (whose job it is to organise events, apparently) and above all on health-and-safety rules. In 1977, in contrast, one Wiltshire village cheerfully let a “pyromaniac” doctor take Jubilee fireworks home to add extra bangs.
The 2012 Jubilee finds Britain changed again. Diamond jubilees being rare (the last was achieved by Queen Victoria in 1897), the queen is firmly at the centre of the celebrations. Local councils have received more than 8,000 applications to close roads for street parties, suggesting that 2002’s passivity is fading. The country is not returning to 1977 and its home-made fancy-dress costumes or Coronation bunting dug out of attics. Today’s shops heave with Jubilee cakes, disposable decorations and flag-emblazoned baubles, letting consumers buy patriotism out of a box.
After 60 years on the throne, a jubilee about the queen
Visiting Wimbotsham, Bagehot is shown elaborate plans: cake-baking contests, pony rides, a teddy bears’ picnic, a sports day, a pensioners’ tea. But there will be no tug-of-war (people might hurt themselves) and the face painters have liability insurance. Still, the festivities will dwarf those seen in 2002, locals say. The monarchy endured a “big lull after Diana”, suggests David Long, the driving force behind Wimbotsham’s Diamond Jubilee. As the queen grows older, she is “more highly thought of”. Linda Nixon, a Wimbotsham pensioner, credits Prince William’s royal wedding with reviving enthusiasm. Prince William and his brother Prince Harry are “like everyday people”, she says.
In the Mass Observation Silver Jubilee files, critics grumble about the monarchy costing too much or entrenching privilege. Supporters say the queen confers global prestige or offers a bulwark against constitutional meddling by politicians. In short, the debate is about the best way to organise society. In both Golden and Diamond Jubilee Britain, by contrast, the issue is whether the queen deserves to be respected, and whether the public can relate to her. In short, individualism is all.
Diamond Jubilee Britain seems to be a hybrid. As in 1977, an unhappy nation fancies being cheered up, and the monarchy fits the bill. As in 2002, a truculent nation demands a monarchy on its own, emotional terms. Is that sustainable? Perhaps not, but it promises to be a fine party.
Queen's Diamond Jubilee success thanks to royal rebranding
Her reign began with a coronation at Westminster Abbey, and she's now starting her 60th year on the throne.
Queen Elizabeth's husband in hospital with bladder infection
Queen Elizabeth II and British royals celebrate at Diamond Jubilee concert
PICTURES: Festive scene on the Thames for Queen's Jubilee
COMPLETE COVERAGE: Queen Elizabeth's Diamond Jubilee
They held a little Jubilee party at Buckingham Palace -- otherwise known as Buck House.
"Our house, in the middle of our street. Our house!" the band Madness sang from the palace roof.
And, the Royal House of Windsor seems to be in pretty good shape.
Queen Elizabeth -- the opinion polls say -- is more popular than she's ever been with approval ratings of over 80 percent. That's not an accident. There's been a royal rebranding.
"Well, I don't think the royals ever saw the House of Windsor being a brand," public relations agent Mark Borkowski told CBS News.
The royals faced a PR disaster 15 years ago when Princess Diana died, and they were slow to sense the national mood of grief. The royal brand had to modernize.
"They clearly looked at their assets, and they focused on those assets," Borkowski said.
Diana's children -- and the woman one of them married -- could provide the glamor and accessibility that was needed. With an aging grandmother, William and Kate and Harry could also ease the royal burden of public appearances.
"So what we're seeing is the emergence of an inner core of young, cool royals," Rachel Johnson, a society magazine editor, explained to CBS News.
Johnson thinks the kids bring star power.
"I mean, you know, rail-thin Hollywood types who are turning into the biggest celebrities in the world, and so that is inevitably sprinkling its fairy dust over the whole, all of them," she added.
With that kind of surrounding cast, great royal extravaganzas like this weekend's river pageant become even more of a spectacle.
The world -- and even jolly old England -- have changed a great deal in the 60 years since Elizabeth has been on the throne, and the secret of her enduring popularity may be that, while appearing to change with the times, she hasn't really changed at all.
"She doesn't have to do anything," Johnson said, "She is her job. She doesn't do her job."
No wonder her job rating approval is so high.
Analyzing Royalty’s Mystique
Matt Dunham/Associated Press
Workers unveiled a giant image
of Queen Elizabeth II on a building along the River Thames in London to
celebrate the Queen's upcoming Diamond Jubilee. More Photos »
By JENNIFER SCHUESSLER
Published: May 28, 2012
Next week, after the confetti from Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee celebration
has been swept from the streets of London, more than 100 scholars will
convene at Kensington Palace to ponder a phenomenon as puzzling as it is
familiar: the robust survival of the British monarchy in a democratic
age that long ago consigned similar institutions to the gilded dustbin
of history.
Multimedia
Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Queen Elizabeth II in her coronation crown in 1953. More Photos »
Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Queen Victoria in 1897, the year of her widely celebrated Diamond Jubilee. More Photos »
This three-day conference,
which will feature talks on subjects ranging from hats and monarchs to
the role of the Crown in a constitutional system, commemorates the 60th
anniversary of the Queen’s ascension to the throne as well as the
recently completed renovation of the palace.
But it can also be seen as an unofficial celebration of another
refurbishment: that of the study of modern monarchy itself.
Biographers and popular historians have never lost sight of royalty,
especially if madness, romance and scandal were involved. But until
recently the serious study of modern British monarchy — those kings and
queens who for the past two centuries have reigned but not ruled — was
covered in a thick layer of dust, if not disrepute.
“For many historians on the right, the monarchy was just there and it
was good, so there was no reason to study it,” said David Cannadine, a
professor of history at Princeton University and an organizer of the
conference. “For historians on the left, it was absurd and indefensible,
so there was no reason to study it.”
Many scholars trace the resurgence of scholarly interest to an essay by
Professor Cannadine published in 1983, in the wake of Queen Elizabeth’s
Silver Jubilee, lamenting the tendency to see the modern monarchy as
little more than a highbrow soap opera of minimal interest to a
profession that had turned decisively toward bottom-up social history.
Since then, however, scholars have gone into the archives and emerged
with serious studies of royal finances, ceremony, philanthropy and
political power, often linking this most elite of elites to the concerns
of ordinary people.
“The modern monarchy is not just a subject for biography,” said Arianne
Chernock, an assistant professor of history at Boston University. “It
has so much more use as a window onto broader cultural trends, attitudes
and the way people imagine themselves as citizens.”
Professor Chernock is currently writing a book about 19th-century
British perceptions of queenship, which, she argues, illuminate the
broader rising demand for women’s political rights. “From the death of
Catherine the Great to the election of Margaret Thatcher, no women were
technically ruling European states,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean
sovereigns aren’t doing real work. What does it mean to have a
hereditary position when so few women have any power?”
Britons debated the relationship between Queen Victoria’s femininity and
her sovereignty, while newspapers were filled with coverage of foreign
female monarchs like the rapacious Queen Ranavalona I of Madagascar
(who expelled British missionaries and legalized the slave trade there)
and Queen Pomare IV of Tahiti, whose struggles with the French were
depicted as struggles on behalf of the rights of the people.
Even the feminist trailblazer Helena Normanton, Britain’s first
practicing female barrister, who was called to the bar in 1922, was
obsessed with monarchy and queens, filling her files with elaborate
diagrams about their movements and activities.
“You get a profound sense that this fascination was linked to
Normanton’s own pioneering work,” Professor Chernock said. “Women are
taking comfort in the sense that they have this tradition of holding
power.”
The monarchy has also been taken increasingly seriously by historians of
the British Empire, who point out that even as the power of the Crown
declined at home during the 19th century, it was expanded abroad, where
Queen Victoria was often seen as a unifying figure as well as a defender
of minority interests.
She was far from a mere symbolic prop in the imperial drama, said Miles
Taylor, the director of the Institute of Historical Research at the
University of London and author of the forthcoming book “Empress: Queen
Victoria and India.” Instead, he argued, she took an active role in
drafting the 1858 proclamation bringing India under Crown control,
restoring religious freedom and guaranteeing its inhabitants the same
rights as other imperial subjects.
“From there on, Queen Victoria became seen as a sort of patriot queen,
separate from the British government, deified and invoked for her
generosity and sympathy,” he said.
Even today, said Maya Jasanoff, a professor of history at Harvard
University, constitutional monarchy may sometimes provide a more durable
framework for the protection of multiethnic rights than republican
democracy. She pointed to Prince Charles’s much-mocked declaration a few
years ago that as king he would like to be known as “defender of the
faiths,” plural.
“It’s pretty easy to understand why conservatives like monarchy: He or
she represents power, tradition, hierarchy, stability,” said Professor
Jasanoff, the author of “Liberty’s Exiles,”
a recent study of loyalists after the American Revolution. “But what
some people might find harder to understand is why liberals might like
monarchy.”
Research on the 20th-century monarchy remains a bit thin, scholars say,
partly because of lack of access to documents. The current queen’s
papers will not be available until after her death, and researchers
seeking material on subjects that are still delicate, like the House of
Windsor’s 1917 name change from the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, or
the abdication of Edward VIII, may not get an enthusiastic response at
the Royal Archives, which are private.
“I don’t see a lot of distinguished work,” said Frank Prochaska, a
professor of history at Oxford University and the author of “Royal
Bounty,” a widely cited study of the British monarchy’s transformation
over the past two centuries into a philanthropic powerhouse above the
political fray. “It’s going to be a while.”
But some scholars are finding angles on more recent royal history, if
not necessarily ones that will win them invitations to Jubilee
conferences. In “Capital Affairs” (2010), Frank Mort, a cultural
historian at the University of Manchester, argued that the neo-imperial
pomp surrounding Elizabeth’s coronation in 1953 was shadowed by fears of
declining sexual morals, spurred partly by immigration from the former
colonies.
Mr. Mort is currently writing about the abdication, which he argues is
too often seen “from above” as a drama of high constitutional principles
rather than from below, as a reflection of popular sexual politics. He
presented a paper on the subject in April at a University of London conference on “the royal body,”
which also featured work on paparazzi and other modern topics,
alongside papers like “ ‘Great Codpeic’d Harry’: Imagining the
Sexualized Body of Henry VIII.”
“Modern royal masculinity is relatively unstudied,” said Ina
Zweiniger-Bargielowska, a professor at the University of Illinois,
Chicago, who presented a paper at the conference on the role of George
V, George VI and Prince Philip in promoting national cohesion through
manly sport.
That may partly be because for the last two centuries British royal men
have more often been standing somewhere behind the throne rather than
sitting on it — a phenomenon that some scholars say may suit the modern
monarchy just fine.
Clarissa Campbell Orr, a historian at Anglia Ruskin University in
England and the author of several books on queenship, said that women
may be more comfortable with the constitutional monarch’s condition of
being rather than doing.
“A man who is a king, or a king in waiting, is always fretting,” she
said. “A woman is less likely to fret and more likely to just get on
with it.”
沒有留言:
張貼留言