The Monarchy with David Starkey

ladies and gentlemen it's a great pleasure to be back again talking about something serious as opposed to the University of Cambridge but name of the molecule my current work in both media terms let's to say television and my academic work is looking at the institution of monarchy now that seems in a sense a contradiction in terms least on this side of the Atlantic monarchy and the British monarchy in particular tends to be seen as merely gossip column material we know fuller for Princess Diana's studies which I know is taken very seriously in some universities but not Cambridge now what I want to do is something very different in the television series I'm looking at the history of the monarchy of England subsequently Britain from the beginning and I was going to say till the end but that would slightly anticipate things in other words form the anglo-saxons right up to the present day and the strange good to down the ruling of the House of Windsor and the reason I do this is twofold particularly the monarchy is the only English institution which is actually continuous with the possible exception of the Church of England but as I shall describe later the Church of England has achieved the nearly impossible and eradicated Christianity from the church so it's a very it's a very strange thing and really in its present tortured avatar doesn't really have much resemblance to anything like the medieval church or still less the anglo-saxon Church so the monarchy is the one continuous lens through which you can actually look at the history of England and the history of Britain and that seems to me to be very important the other way around turning as it were the telescope round in the other direction is that monarchy I think is also a universal this is a very dangerous thing to say in a republic and I apologize for it but human beings seem essentially to be hardwired for monarchy almost all institutions are Menaka chol starting very obviously with the University of Cambridge we live we live under the reign of a kind of benign Catherine the Great two enlightened despotism if it hasn't yet turned into despotism modified by riot or by epigram all the sorts of things that it was in the in the 18th century but Allison they were we are a rebellious lot so but he extends much further than that if one looks for example at America what you have is a monarchy full stop you have an elective monarchy but then so does the Roman Catholic Church and the Roman Catholic Church to say nothing of America is the world's only surviving genuine absolute monarchy in which whatever a pope in whatever condition of physical health gets up and thinks his doctrine is doctrine if you're foolish enough to believe him so now the American presidency is a more complex animal I was used to say when I was trying to explain the American Constitution to my students and incidentally the monarchy is not the only borrowing the whole structure of American federal government is closely modeled not on that of Rome whose fancy dress it where's Angela whose architecture it invokes and eagles rather improbably at floors it is instead based on obviously England of the 18th century systematized rationalized and crucially eventually democratized because why or history has gone in such a wildly different direction from that of England and Britain herself but if you look for example at the Senate the Senate is merely an elective House of Lords to begin with you were indirectly elected remember the Constitution amendment providing for direct election to the Senate is only poor post first world war but if you actually look at the senators each one of them rejoices in a quasi no - status - per state the kind of Duke of Minnesota or you know movie they have effectively life ten years mm-hmm they have like the British peerage access to loot and pillage and reward and reward their followers occasionally one or two of them get found out and there's a process you know present well what is that eventually there are processes of course going right up to the president itself of impeachment which is taken straight from the medieval English Constitution they process that that Clinton narrowly escaped of trial before the Senate with the House of Representatives acting as prosecutors whether the House of Representatives they are simply the Commons that presiding officer is called the speaker what is even more bizarre to American ears the administrative officer is a person whom you cannot pronounce the sergeant-at-arms now nobody has any idea on Capitol Hill why the house is run by the sergeant-at-arms it's simply because the sergeant-at-arms is the representative official of the colonies and as I is the is the administrative official the Disciplinary official of the Commons in England so the president is a monarch I used to say until Reagan was elected he was simply thought to the third without a wig but you know then Reagan came along and the joke the joke felt almost as flat as his hair was bufang you also have a court as all monarchs have courts America is ruled by a cabinet chosen purely by the president and the key officers do not sit in the cabinet the key officers are genuine quarters the roads of the night those dark things wander around in the back stairs of power just as they do in Downing Street in London where we of course have two monarchs we have Queen Elizabeth the second this artificial frail monarch and the real monarch King Tony the first with of course had the much darker creatures of the night like Mandelson and Alastair Campbell who would do credit to the Thomas Cromwell's to be the thugs of the late Middle Ages and exercised power in that same dark concealed fashion and of course these elective monarchs have consorts we have Queen Sherri the last time she appeared in public in Britain her dress was described because it's now the material of of not simply couturiers but-but-but-but serious political analysis her dress this evening reception was described as a striking confection off the shoulders without sleeves worn with long bejeweled gloves with a tight high bodice too flared skirt and the whole modelled on the costume of ladies of the French aristocracy in the 18th century nobody of course explained to her what happened to the French aristocracy in the 18th century but still still you get the idea so monarchy is in other words what I'm trying to say monarchy is a universal it's something that's serious it's there virtually every organization be it to state be it a company be at a university theater school is run essentially Menaka CLE and one of the reasons we so misunderstand our politics is that we take serious be decent veil of constitutionality that hangs over this brute fact so the study of monarchy which has been completely neglected academically is one that is really seriously worth making it's worth making even if you are looking in terms for example a business history business history has of course a very brief life the continuous documentation of the corporation is less than a hundred years old the documentation of monarchy which I would argue is a strictly analogous form of government is about two thousand years old and if you look at at some of the other monarchies like for Allah he Drake stretches way way back it will be worth the analysis of power power control power distribution by replication looking at this much broader pattern but what I want to do with you this afternoon is to come down from these areas and realizations and look in particular of the history of what becomes the British monarchy that's another decent constitutional fiction the monarchy is the monarchy of England the ordinal numbers of sovereigns are the ordinal numbers of the sovereigns of England for example when Queen Elizabeth the second succeeded in 1952 there was the most terrific who are in Scotland because they've never been equivalent we know Lizabeth the first of Scotland so pillar boxes were blown up because e2 appeared on them which Scots didn't recognize the coronation is the English coronation the olds of the English oaths the relationship with parliament is the relationship with the Indus Parliament so the lineage then is it's very very long lineage but what I want to do is to look at it at exactly the moment when all the conventional textbooks tell you it becomes unimportant I am a great believer that you stand things on their head but one of the key things in academic study is to look at things hard and to try shaking them around a bit you know looking at them from all perspectives taking nothing for granted and this applies just as much in art subjects as in the Natural Sciences so what I really want to do is rather than having complacent analysis of the residual constitutional importance of the British monarchy which I would argue is negligible none of any significance whatever I want instead to look at why we still have a monarchy why the thing survives at all because of course Britain in the last century or so the last one hundred and hundred twenty years since the 1880s 1890's has undergone arguably the most radical social transformation in Europe it is certainly undergone a quite extraordinary process of social transformation so why has the monarchy survived at all to put the question the other way around what does it actually do many people have asked few have answered you will this afternoon here that were something unique you will hear an attempt at giving a serious answer to that question now the issue of survival of the monarchy loomed very very large in the minds of those advising the sovereign in the last two decades of Victoria's reign in the 19th century traditional accounts of British history of course stress victorious popularity they stress the middle-class nature of the monarchy of Victorian dollar but it's respectability and so on they gloss over completely the fact that the high-water mark of English republicanism is the 1870s when you actually had at least one over Republican sitting in the cabinet mm-hmm something never repeated in the twentieth century and the advisors of Victoria were desperately concerned that her invisibility her withdrawal from public view to say nothing of gossip which turns out almost certainly to be true about her relationship with John Brown was besmirching the public reputation of the monarchy and a group of people arise who talked about these dark figures at court Backstairs intriguers but intriguers for once with intelligence arise will recognize that the monarchy is in danger in the late 18th century in the late 19th century the late 1800s it is at risk and what they do is to come up with a quite extraordinary series of reinventions we talked this morning about the University of Cambridge and transformation and change and how change happens as one looks at very big causes and very small causes now obviously the background to the changes the background to the at-risk nature of the monarchy in the late 19th century was the fundamental shift in British politics which follows 1867 the second Reform Act and the beginning of mass democracy a popularly elected House of Commons rather than a selection process within the political elite which America of course with its voting turnout dropping towards the 50% is rapidly replicating you know they'll eat simple squabbles amongst itself leaving the poor and dispossessed outside exactly as the unreformed House of Commons did and all that aside but the great threat to the monarchy is the advent of genuine popular rule because the monarchy is the aristocratic institution par excellence and what we're doing throughout the 19th century if shifting away from narrowly aristocratic government how is Maliki actually to survive this change well the Austrians is got to adapt it's got to change it itself has got to transform but how on earth do you have the paradox of a democratic monarchy happen it is an extraordinary paradox and yet Britain England is the first country to bring about this formula with extraordinary success which is why the monarchy despite the disasters the mishandling is the folly of the thirty years is still there let's look a at how the process is conceived and to be at how it's done and see who did it the key figure as I said one of these creatures of the night is an extraordinary man called original Debrett vai count issue issues entry in DnB is quite astonishing it lists all the offices that he refused beginning with the Viceroy of India the Secretary of State for war the position of effective chief of the general staff is a staggering list he was the supreme operator but he preferred the dark issue is very unusual for other reasons he is of course an Etonian very strange creature kings and whatever he's also half French his mother is French which makes him even stranger and in the world of late Victorian England he is bisexual with an extraordinary passion for Eton sixth formers including allegedly his own second son with whom he was passionately in love all of this in Victorian England these separate lives these parallel lives so he is a man peculiarly aware of the theatre of human existence his entire life is theatre is a show is a performance like monarchy itself and he has redeemed at handling this he is in fact seriously interested in the theatre and he is a he is an aficionado of the stage-door actors actresses who know whatever we needn't investigate too much but he's also wide read highly literate and deeply aware of French history and he knows they're about to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the French Revolution only whatever it is two years 1889 I will be the hundredth anniversary two years after Victoria's Golden Jubilee when she actually celebrates her anniversary of coming to the throne he is determined that England will not have a French Revolution that there will not be tumbles and England now you may think I exaggerate read his papers this is the concern is how do you damn what he sees as an irresistible type remember we think of democracy is a nice word actually many of the world's nastiest regimes have been democracies in other words what we like is liberal democracy democracy trammeled by rules by the rule of law by the rule of property most democracies aren't like that if you look at the Greeks if you look at Aristotle and more particularly Plato democracy there is a defective form of government is essentially the rule of the poor over the ridge the majority over the minority and Risha is determined as somebody who is rich the minority powerful not to suffer and the key role of monarchy is going to be the management of the process of transformation from an aristocratic society to a democratic society that's the polite way of looking at it it could also be argued it is about the subversion of democracy the management of democracy the substitution if you like to go back to the Greeks again at Plato's cave of satisfying pretty pictures which keep the common people happy if you like monarchy is the opium of the British democracy so let's look at how issue goes about doing this I've already mentioned the key events the key events are the celebrations of Victoria's accession the building and of 1887 the Diamond Jubilee of 1897 these are stage-managed by Asia like an impresario they are plan they're designed they have a purpose they have scripts they have rehearsals but the key thing about them is they are utterly different from preceding royal ceremony I mentioned England being aristocratic you all in this room most of you the overwhelming majority of you having spent time at Cambridge are actually familiar though you don't know it with what eres to traffic ceremony looks like it's just like academic ceremony its shambolic I don't know well I don't know what your degree day was like my degree day at the only memory that I have of when I took my BA is the fact and this of course was a male vice chasuble possibly happen but Allison but might be my only memory is the size of the hole in the Vice Chancellors sock it was rather a leashed matted gray wool with this sort of you know bluish white flesh protruding physically his name was grave it was very appropriate I mean it was some nickname toughest or for the classicists here in other words you look at typical possessions too high table ground the gowns that are milled you that de tattered that are worn conspicuously off the shoulder gowns wall over leather jackets over denim over everything that's not appropriate isn't it no iris to traffic ceremony is just like that because it's carried out within a group who know but it's carried out amongst the cognoscenti and the archetypical example aristocratic ceremony and the lost undiluted example of it was Victoria's own coronation the thing which was being celebrated in 1837 and it's very extraordinary the ceremony after all lasts at least three hours it involves complex movements by an elderly gentleman wearing long robes and they did it without any rehearsal the Archbishop of Canterbury was as blind as a bat forgot his spectacles and started off with the prayer book upside down he then continued to what was all the most sacred moments of the coronation where the coronation ring is placed on the Queen's fourth finger he did manage to see the handy got the right thing they had the ring in the other hand and he started to put it on then he encountered resistance and with this blind and stupid absence continued pushing butchy butchy and queen victoria described in her wonderful diaries and letters it was as much as she could do not to scream at this moment of solemn ceremony as the ring was forced over one joint indeed neck the next what had happened was they married they had measured her little finger rather than her fourth finger and he took some hours of soaking in ice water and the combine tugging other ladies in waiting to get the thing off afterwards but that wasn't the culmination of absurdity it was at the moment of homage when the Puritans strict order of rank beginning with the Royal Dukes and ending with mere Barons built up the multitudinous steps of the throne in these long heavy velvet fur-lined robes balancing you know the whole caboodle of Coronets and whole thing to kneel in front of the monarch place their hands exactly what you do when you take your degree at Cambridge you do realize we're performing feudal Hammad's when you go down on your knees who raise your hands and the vise transferring closes your hands in his or hers that is feudal homage anyway the peerage does this came finally to the last group of the peerage and one of the least important members of the peerage a barrelful Lord Rahl ro ll ER o or wrong and he was very old and probably rather drunk and certainly blind and as he came to mount the steps he got to the penultimate step and then fell rolled down the steps of the throne not to be defeated he got up again stopped and to immense cheer slipped again and by this time the honey of the congregation is not quite right the word the audience was was wild with enthusiasm and he made a third attempt and was about to fall back when the Queen leaned forward and the maids leaned forward everybody else just about got through it and the boozed foreigners were told afterwards this was in fact an inventing if it's not is it is absolutely true why can you get away with this in the same way you can get away with Don's and mildewed and tattered gowns because everyone's in the know but what happens when the great unwashed are admitted when you turn royal ceremony inside out so instead of it taking part place within the Abbey which was sealed off to which it was entry only by ticket holders to which the common folk will not admit it you turn ceremony round and you deliberately make it a performance for the new masters of the nation the common people suddenly you can't have mistakes these people are used to performance these are the days of the late Victorian Edwardian theatres of varieties the direct ancestor of Hollywood spectacular they know show looks like so you've got to put on a good show and if you look at Victoria's Jubilees to a lesser extent the first at 1887 but dramatically for the second the Diamond Jubilee of 1897 these are modern British ceremony so suddenly this is the ceremony that we brits do so well there are lots of soldiers and impossibly tight jackets by the way the regiment's competed to how tight their bottoms were and how much they stuck out in a hole marching up and down and beautiful at a time perfectly played music everybody doing the right thing if it looks like Rory taenia it's because it is it looks like access will be the meal spectacular it is because it did direct ancestor it is a popular performance and it works brilliantly it makes a monarchy a public show a spectacle but in the 1920s when they'd actually got used to Hollywood spectacular led to the fight that the British Royals were labeled the only true film stars that we've got its performance its stardom its celebrity now that represented a huge shift in the public perception of the monarchy and you can see the sequence you have first of all the beginnings of democracy then you've actually got to alter the monarchy as performance they're longer to an aristocratic coterie but to a much much wider a much wider audience and the less understanding and an infinitely less tolerant one but in fact democracy the beginning of the mass electorate was something that was relatively easily surmounted there came a few years later a much more radical chunk the great year of transformation we were talking about actual years this morning the great hero of actual transformation of the British monarchy is 1917 right the year of the Russian Revolution it is the yer when monarchy throughout Europe tattered and mist of began and inevitable fall that swept away the three great empires of Russia Germany of Austria and cut a swathe through the remaining crowned heads but not the British the British reaction to 1917 is fascinating the first thing is that it was the king not the radical liberal Prime Minister Lloyd George who refused the Czar and his family refuge in Britain that despite the fact that they were his first cousins because George exactly like Asia was terrified terrified of revolution terrified at this time not of democracy but actual red revolution there are repeated mutineers most of them relatively minor in the army some very significant in the Navy at this time there is of course a huge war being fought with gigantic casualties the monarchy is frightened and the response is not simply fear the refusal to admit Nicholas and Alexandra it is also really surprisingly reinvention now George the fifth is the least likely candidate for thinking new thoughts you could imagine ladies and gentlemen he collected stamps now of all the forms of human activity philately seems to me to hit the absolute basement if there any philatelists in this room cover yourselves in shame go out your collections and give the proceeds to Cambridge Oona and and you will be enter the human race but he not only Georgia v not only collect stamps he is obsessed with meteorology the first thing he does every morning is to measure the temperature and note the wind direction in this monstrously tedious diary of his written on lined paper and and then stored around hand but George is in fact extraordinarily shrewd not clever but shrewd and he realizes the two things that have to be done the first is of course that as part of this transformation we haven't yet quite had to go so far at Cambridge you change the name if anything the name of the royal house of britain at this point was something like Saxa colbert goethe which is kind of inconvenient if you're fighting the Germans and so what you do is you literally repackage the thing you rename it and they did it in a completely modern fashion though market-tested alternatives and the one they come up with of course finally Windsor is just so good it's a little touch of Shakespeare you know Merry Wives of Windsor novelist the rest of it it's a very large touch of medieval myth room and chivalry with the Garter whose headquarters are at Windsor and then finally I think it was already associated with you know sort of woods of Windsor sweet smells touches of lavender you know that about that faint sense of the English countryside all carefully packaged up for Americans and so it is a brilliant choice of name and that's the thing that people traditionally focus on of the changes of 1917 but they think immediate that seems to me to be it although it's important it's only as it were the outer wrapping the change of the core the thing which is so crucial and it will not surprise any anthropologists in the room is in marriage customs marriage customs are absolutely central to understanding strange tribes like Royals and up to that point the rules of the marriage of the British monarchy have been good by two factors the first following the Glorious Revolution of 1688 89 in which have been another extraordinary change up to that point from the Reformation every in other words from Henry the eighth's to to William and Mary every pneumonic had changed the religion of the country until finally people got a bit fed up with this and thought it'll be much more logical if instead the monarch had to change his religion the suit laughs of the country would make things much easier so you introduced the rule that no Roman Catholic can be either and sovereign or indeed Kamaria sovereign of Britain and that means then the first rule the first rule is a kind of endogamous rule you've got to marry within the group of European Medicines the second rule is also in bigamous but comes from a different culture from the beginning of the 18th century hence the saxe-coburg-gotha business the British monarch is in fact a German Prince and German arrastra aristocracy had much much stricter rules than the English aristocracy they practiced what the French call day whole shots that is to say if you marry outside your own social rank it is not a full marriage it's a morganatic marriage and your children cannot inherit so not only does a British monarch have to marry a Protestant you have to marry a serene highness the trouble is because while the few German princely families are Protestant you will find yourself usually that you've got one and a half women that a royal prince can marry and half of them are mad it is very very difficult which is why certain lobs deeply obscure dynasties like Tek constantly crop up in the marriage pattern now the problem of these marriages is of course that they are effectively arranged marriages as a much arranged as Indian or Pakistani typical marriages nowadays you pretend that their love affairs sometimes they change into love affair like Victoria and Albert but you can't really present them like that what in fact George does in 1917 is something staggering he says from this moment he actually notes it in his diary that strange schoolboy around handwriting between the stamps and the weather and the temperature and and and and the fact that the weather was on seasonably cold there in all of its there on the page he said this isn't so much like the die of Adrian Mole this was an historic day he says because today I published an order-in-council that my children could marry English men and English women now that changes everything in other words they can marry subjects they can meet people in reasonably natural social intercourse in the London scene and fall in love with them and marry them and they don't just that and the most important of these marriages which takes place within the following five years is the marriage of the Kings second son the future Georgia the sixth to the Future Elizabeth bowes-lyon Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother and that wedding is presented just like Diana's there are the new popular press with the new easy availability of photography new women's magazines you have shots of the interior for house in Piccadilly you've got shots of the house in which she was brought up you've got interviews with her nanny you've got reports on what the truth so will be like you've got gossip from their friends and the whole thing is blown up into a national love affair and this also has the other crucial effect it transforms the monarchy from this rather remote institution into an object of popular fascination especially if has to be said with women and and also means that the royal family becomes the key thing the British monarchy becomes the royal family and the royal family becomes the great British royal family the symbol of unity now why do I say that because remember these are Diamond distant days divorce which I'll return to in a moment wasn't heard of it was infinitely rare and the one thing that everybody have what ever class particularly not the upper class who had a bad record even then and gotta for the immensely elaborate processes of divorce but what the monarchy the middle class and the modest working class could agree on was the importance of marriage it was a cement it was a unifier and the British monarchy survives and thrives now not as the apex of the social pyramid not as a bettering aristocratic institution but as a representative sort of lsaps middle-class family it is brilliant it's also achieved at quite enormous cost its achieved at the enormous cost of the suppression of the movement for divorce law reform there is a completely new history of 20th century England to be written in terms of resistance to divorce law reform the necessity for divorce law reform was recognized right at the beginning of the 20th century by the Liberal government and we've set up a divorce law commission which was blocked and you'll all be pleased to know that the blocking was done by Oxford it was done it was done by phalanx and of clergy and Canon lawyers from all cells centering around that Anson who was the who was the worthy of our souls and the future Archbishop of Canterbury Cosmo Gordon Lang and they block divorce law reform and the key thing to understand is that the monarchy not only becomes a representative of the great British family it becomes the center of a new kind of national religion the national religion is of course centered on the Church of England now I made abusive remarks about the absence of Christianity in the Church of England but if you go into an old-fashioned Church of England you up towards the altar but indeed if there is an altar you will be struck by the almost complete absence of Christian symbols and the only presence of union jacks and regimental flags what the English are doing there is worshipping themselves and nasha Westminster Abbey of course is the National sign but it's not filled with Saints heaven say guys at Mutants there and it's it's it's filled with the great it's filled with the secular great in other words this Shinto this is worship of the national spirit English into the worship of national spirits through the King Emperor who is the centerpiece of this but it also has a single article of faith it's not you know love the Lord thy God when they love thy neighbor as thyself it is thou shalt not get divorced there is a single moral test which is avoiding divorce and the monarchy is deployed struggling effectively as the institution that keeps this together and a whole series of other features of national life the Church of England is one of them the new BBC is another this is the key figure along with caught up with Cosmo Gordon Lang and fascinatingly enough they're both anglicized Scots the most dangerous breed that exists and as we as we see from our present government and Reeth imposes this test virtually within the BBC the chief engineer is forced to resign because he gets divorced and of course well known is the fact you can't be presented at court if you're divorced you can't enter the Royal Enclosure at Ascot if you're divorced you can't enter into society if you're divorced and line deploy is this absolutely brutally the fascinating thing of course is that language gay there are official lives have changed there's being this transformation in our understanding of sexuality since the 1960s but if we look at Lang's official life published and in shortly after his death in 1946 it describes two scenes that I'd like to have in your mind of this great bastion of family morality the first is the moment when he is inculcated into the Church of England at the constant the oxford training variant all goes back to it and the Oxford Training College the Church of England clergy coming from a background of the Scottish man's he wasn't of course used to seeing clergy in Kasich's and he enters dinner take the run the dining room where the assembled and the assembled postulants and the man in charge the Bishop of Lincoln are all seated at dinner in Kasich's and he's clearly very nervous he is seated next to the Bishop of Lincoln in charge of all of this and the Bishop of Lincoln has a kindly so recognizes the young man's anxiety and I am now quoting from the official life firmly grasping his thigh the bishop said to the young lang that young man I see you are disturbed by the company but don't worry these young men are not as holy as they look and I squeezing harder and the naughtiest of them all the scenes at the back of the arcade occipital rolls which were again quite extraordinary as the archbishop after a major speech or major sermon with set alert is described giggling and relaxing in the company of his two favorite chaplains on the back seats but this man is the orchestrator of the family monarchy he creates the coronation particularly the coronation of George the sixth as the grandest most formal show in comparison with the coronation of Victoria it has 11 rehearsals it has infinitely but why is George the sixth the second son on the throne at all because of divorce that is to say his older brother Prince David the man who briefly reigns as Edward the eighth wanted to marry a twice-divorced American the only sin that was worse than being American was being divorced and they understand that was worth and those two was being twice divorced mrs. Simpson now everybody thinks that there is some rule which says that a British monarch cannot be divorced or marry a divorcee there is no such rule it was simply this tremendous orchestration of the morale of the monarchy into the defense of middle-class morality that's the only reason that the abdication crisis happens and of course the result of the application crisis is that you put on the throne the most muddled model couple of all George the sixth and Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother it works it works brilliantly when they're succeeded by queen elizabeth ii who begins her reign by saying is interesting she doesn't say she wants to continue this 1500 year tradition of the British monarchy she's no interest in history at all when I took around an exhibition of her great ancestor Queen Elizabeth the first the only thing she could do when she stood in front of a picture of Queen Elizabeth was to summon Phillip and that mine it was like half the things in the exhibition but still housekeeping view tip of history in the service view of history was simple she said she wanted to be like her father George the sixth and her grandfather George the fifth and she was until the disaster of Diana until the moment at which the idea of the monarchy as the defense against divorce the monarchy as the protector of the family exploded but of course the British family had already gone we had embraced the American ideal of divorce - we have this problem then the molecule which survived and thrived adapting itself to democracy and becoming the representative institution so representing the British family suddenly at the end of the 20th century found itself Robert of a role nothing to do nothing for it to stand for and the only reason that it survives now is arguably the most important force in human nature in the same way as most important force in physics inertia ladies and gentlemen thank you very much we have about ten minutes for questions if you'd wait and we have microphones available if those with microphones could stand up and come forward oh they're the microphones at the side there are they if you could come to the microphones are on either side of the auditorium there and ask your question and then everybody will be able to hear it first question please stun silence right so the microphone is just by you my understanding was the most important principle in physics is entropy which is constant change but in general what do you see for the monarchy in the next 20 years I think it's impossible to predict the future because I am a historian and historians are not very good at doing that and the monarchy survives at the moment because all alternatives are even worse if you look at the prospect of president Tony Blair the most ardent Republican in Britain instantly is converted to you know a brown-noser of the House of Windsor and if if new mayor had retained the kind of popularity which he'd had in 97 I think the future of the monarchy would look very dim but at the moment I mean even Charles will publish survived it'll be difficult I mean for it genuinely to survive what you will have to do is to find a new purpose but remember and again this is something I think that Americans don't often register more than half European countries Western European countries are monarchies including many of the most democratic and prosperous France of course is a republic and a catastrophic one so this is going back to your point about constant change and five five republics and two molecules and kill empires are the three monarchies because Charles attempts is so different from lure the 18th and then the the monarchy de gea and Louis Philippe and but the really successful European countries the Netherlands Sweden now Spain and so on they are all monarchies but in all of those countries it's very easy to identify what the monarchy does in exactly the same way that it was easy to identify what the British monarchy did for most of the 20th century in Spain the monarchy is the emblem of renewed democracy in the Netherlands it is the key emblem of passionate small nation nationalism if you look at the Dutch football team it does not wear the national colours it was Orange the colours of the House of Orange exactly the same is true in Sweden where they looked as though the monarchy was going to disappear in the 1970 of the monarchy and the Swedish Constitution survives by a single word there's one word in the Swedish Constitution it was deliberately designed says that the monarchy could be amputated with the least problem the most interest interesting example is Belgium where apart from Catholicism chocolates and child abuse the only true Belgian institution is the monarchy and otherwise the country is totally split down the middle between the Vallon the French speakers and the Fleming's and then what so the monarchy is Belgium now none of this was true before 1946-47 so that's the period where you get you in a funk of Egypt saying soon the will only be five kings of the world throw in a pack of cars on the King of England the moment the British monarchy reaching this process of adaptation now it's been taken over and unfortunately there's nobody in Buckingham Palace with the brains of Reginald Brett or cosmo gordon lang there really isn't sir could you go to the microphone what's the Princess Diana assassinated and if not why not just applaud maybe that maybe the British Secret Service sensibly felt she was doing such a good job of self-destruction they would have you know given her a little bit of rope to hang herself and instead an alternative method occurred but no of course she wasn't the thing is like so many historical events what you see is what you get but her behavior of course was was completely destroying her popularity least on on the other side of the Atlantic the extraordinary affair with with our fired son and so on the increasing erratic nosov her general behavior no there's no need there was no need in fact if she hadn't died can we met in Princess Diana 45 and showing the signs of substance abuse which is undoubtedly what we would have seen she wouldn't have been a pretty sight so she has a great dying young is a huge advantage it's a really smart career move you know it doesn't begin with James Dean at the one of Henry the eighth's Queens who is most successful is Jane Seymour she does what none of the others were able to do she produces a song and then she dies 13 days later and you know at which point she becomes the perfect wife if you look at this you see look in the Victorian novel The Good Wife is the dead wife you know you go to heaven you wear white your husband had children pray to you every night and you can never put your foot wrong so dire it was a very smart career move when a smart career move she probably planned it but diana is again a phenomenon that really is worth taking seriously not in the kind of Neel feminist approaches of many American Historians it's what happens when modern celebrity a monarchy collide with each other there's always been an element of celebrity in monarchy going right back to talk a little bit about it this morning Erasmus is reaction to Henry the eighth he describes them in recognizable terms of celebrity Henry the eighth's himself as I hope to show in my new biography published by HarperCollins in 2009 that's some vast cost I trust and Henry himself is obsessed with the idea of Fame but the problem is modern celebrity is something very different modern celebrity is about a kind of intestinal exposure a turning of the human being inside out and its natural conclusion is death or flirtation I like Elizabeth Taylor a long-delayed flirtation with death and and it's very sick and that's not what you want from the public institution I think we've time for just one last question um yes certainly the gentleman is actually about to hog the microphone yes sir it's where did Harry get that disgusting shirt and should he have been allowed to go to Sandhurst under those circumstances without some sort of delay at least we're referring of course to the to the not of the Nazi fancy dress that the young prince was stupid enough to wear I think there's something very important to remember Harry is a second son second son's are expected to behave badly they have no other function they're there to provide they're there to provide a kind of entertainment it was monstrous that he wore it it showed it reflected no good whatever on eatin that a young man would be so idiotic to do that but he's a not very bright deteriorate subject to this hideous light of publicity a future artillery officer no doubt I think you'll do very well in the army the army the army they all made unlike came but is very good at taking really bad material and knocking it into shape and he does it very successful ladies and gentlemen thank you very much

Channel: Cambridge University

Views: 25,656

Keywords: Monarchy, David Starkey, cambridge, Cambridge in America, Cambridge University, History, Education

Id: _73naInUoZ0

Length: 51min 43sec (3103 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 09 2009