From an interview with David Starkey:
“I didn’t realise that she had no interest whatever in her predecessors. Her history begins with her great grandfather. …
Nobody with two brain cells would dream of reading all the Christmas broadcasts – I have done, and it’s quite fascinating, because her frames of reference to the monarchy, despite this 1,500-year history, are entirely her father and grandfather … There is a reference to Elizabeth I. It was in the second Christmas broadcast when – I remember vividly – there was all this talk about a second Elizabethan age. And Elizabeth turns to this in her broadcast, and says ‘Frankly, I do not myself feel at all like my Tudor forebear, who was blessed with neither husband nor children, who ruled as a despot and was never able to leave her native shores.’” …
What’s left, he argues, is a moral vacuum – and a position for Prince Charles to step into, if he so wishes. The accepted tone in which to talk about Charles is of course mockery so the way in which Starkey hails him as a possible saviour of the monarchy, and an active force for good in Britain, is initially a shock. “I was astonished at my own conclusion,” he says, “completely astonished.”
Peter Hitchens: “Speak out Charles, our teenage politicians never will”
The present Queen is undoubtedly very nice. But she has badly damaged the throne by failing to speak out when she might have done – especially against the surrender of our independence to the European Union, which undermined her own position.
And it is a myth that she has remained carefully neutral. Far from it.
Tags: Monarchy
I am glad that David Starkey speaks out in favour of Prince Charles. I watched the BBC documentary on his 60th birthday and he appeared as a man with many passions. And he knows there is no time to be wasted, therefore he seems to be on the run and pushing other people to become active.
Perhaps if Lady Elizabeth von Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg took a greater interest in the monarchy’s history she would realise that Lady Elizabeth Boleyn (de facto Queen Elizabeth I during the de jure reign of Queen Mary II, aka Mary Queen of Scots) is not her “predecessor” at all, and that her “royal” house was introduced to this country in order to prop up the Act of Settlement.
Aymez Loyauté!
A pity, though, that Prince Charles talks to plants, and the causes he chooses to support tend to be really stupid.
The Royal family bring very little if any benefit to the country but I feel that the only reason why we haven’t got rid of them is the highly symbolic status they have