I was rather indifferent until the day came. Funny thing the monarchy.
But come the day! What larks this wedding is! Will there be peeled grapes?
But come the day! What larks this wedding is! Will there be peeled grapes?
But 30 years since the last one...
The Duke of Cambridge! An auspicious title! The last Duke of Cambridge one of the great reactionaries said: They say I am against reform. I am not against reform. There is a time for everything. And the time for reform is when it can no longer be resisted.
Thanks to Delia Burnham I was asked on TV to discuss help commentate (dread word). ButI am very glad I decided not to burble on on Antena 3 in heavily accented Romanian about the wedding. What to say? Edward the Confessor bla bla, Prinny bla bla...
The King and Queen of Romania are in the Abbey with Princess Margarita and Prince Radu. The King of Romania of course met his future Queen at our Queen's wedding in 1947.
The service heavenly though I was at a cocktail party and I did not give it my full attention. Roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, pretty girls, Romanian champagne, the people one knows, all subsidised by the British tax payer poor chump. A very good sermon by Chartres who says in a Godless age personal relationships substitute for religion which is why marriages fail.
Why can't England always be like that? Book of Common Prayer, beauty, people brought together by patriotism and party spirit not partisan spirit.
A royal wedding should be a festival of stuffiness. This one is cool instead. Like a Richard Curtis film.
The new Princess smiles too much, looks Northern down-to-earth. Asked on TV whether she would be a good queen I said the individuals aren't important. The monarchy is what matters. ('Oamenii nu sunt importanti. Monarhia este ce conteaza.')
Satisfying and funny that the Guardian and Independent are as full of royal fervour as the conservative papers. The Guardian is supposed to be republican.
Personally I rejoice that the monarchy is not compatible with a meritocratic society, or equality of opportunity, or post-imperial guilt or separation of church and state or multiculturalism. But that's just me - the people in the street don't care about the arguments for and against the monarchy. It is associated with the great cause of cheering us all up.
The people in the mall may not care about the divine right of kings or social hierarchy but they do care very much about being part of an extended family = the nation, and a very long beautiful tradition = the nation. The royal wedding and the Pope's state visit showed the media class they misjudged the British people completely.
Stuart Maconie in the Daily Mirror says the new Princess is Middle England - as English as the Six Nations, gas barbecues, Ikea and Dire Straits. I have no knowledge of any of these four things. I always felt a foreigner in my own country and generation. England for me is R.S. Surtees, the Charing Cross Road, the Inns of Court, Trollope and Belloc and cathedral closes, Broadstairs, allotments, 1930s Rupert Bear Nutwood Green ribbon development, the countryside in Derbyshire and Dorset. None of this is very up to date except I suppose the countryside which is new every moment, assuming executive housing estates are not built are built over it. Even allotments (the unrevolutionary end result of Joe Chamberlain’s policy, in his red republican phase, of land reform – that truly IS English) are going to be sold off to property developers to make money.
The Duke of Cambridge! An auspicious title! The last Duke of Cambridge one of the great reactionaries said: They say I am against reform. I am not against reform. There is a time for everything. And the time for reform is when it can no longer be resisted.
Thanks to Delia Burnham I was asked on TV to discuss help commentate (dread word). ButI am very glad I decided not to burble on on Antena 3 in heavily accented Romanian about the wedding. What to say? Edward the Confessor bla bla, Prinny bla bla...
The King and Queen of Romania are in the Abbey with Princess Margarita and Prince Radu. The King of Romania of course met his future Queen at our Queen's wedding in 1947.
The service heavenly though I was at a cocktail party and I did not give it my full attention. Roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, pretty girls, Romanian champagne, the people one knows, all subsidised by the British tax payer poor chump. A very good sermon by Chartres who says in a Godless age personal relationships substitute for religion which is why marriages fail.
Why can't England always be like that? Book of Common Prayer, beauty, people brought together by patriotism and party spirit not partisan spirit.
A royal wedding should be a festival of stuffiness. This one is cool instead. Like a Richard Curtis film.
The new Princess smiles too much, looks Northern down-to-earth. Asked on TV whether she would be a good queen I said the individuals aren't important. The monarchy is what matters. ('Oamenii nu sunt importanti. Monarhia este ce conteaza.')
Satisfying and funny that the Guardian and Independent are as full of royal fervour as the conservative papers. The Guardian is supposed to be republican.
Personally I rejoice that the monarchy is not compatible with a meritocratic society, or equality of opportunity, or post-imperial guilt or separation of church and state or multiculturalism. But that's just me - the people in the street don't care about the arguments for and against the monarchy. It is associated with the great cause of cheering us all up.
The people in the mall may not care about the divine right of kings or social hierarchy but they do care very much about being part of an extended family = the nation, and a very long beautiful tradition = the nation. The royal wedding and the Pope's state visit showed the media class they misjudged the British people completely.
Stuart Maconie in the Daily Mirror says the new Princess is Middle England - as English as the Six Nations, gas barbecues, Ikea and Dire Straits. I have no knowledge of any of these four things. I always felt a foreigner in my own country and generation. England for me is R.S. Surtees, the Charing Cross Road, the Inns of Court, Trollope and Belloc and cathedral closes, Broadstairs, allotments, 1930s Rupert Bear Nutwood Green ribbon development, the countryside in Derbyshire and Dorset. None of this is very up to date except I suppose the countryside which is new every moment, assuming executive housing estates are not built are built over it. Even allotments (the unrevolutionary end result of Joe Chamberlain’s policy, in his red republican phase, of land reform – that truly IS English) are going to be sold off to property developers to make money.
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