An Unforgettable Easter for the Brits
April 26, 2011
The Real Royals Say I Do and Britain in Jubiliant Mood
by Roger Cohen (April 21, 2011) @www.nytimes.com
LONDON It has to be said that the British monarch and newspaper columnists are
No wonder shes so popular. Even in an age when the royals are busy putting servers to work (Facebook and Twitter are their new domain), this head of state retains a strand of mystery from another age. Britain has no written constitution yet excels in constancy.
I resisted. I did. I ignored all the amblers in the parks saying, What are you doing for the wedding? I averted my eyes from the bunting along Regent Street, the stands outside Buckingham Palace, the commemorative china. I was not, whatever the pressure, going to write a column about the royal wedding.
Its hard to say when I buckled. These are not things one likes, as a small-r republican, to talk about. Perhaps it was a businessman friend, after a conversation with colleagues in Bombay, telling me all India cares about is the wedding. Perhaps it was radiant Kate from Central Casting with the touch of whimsy in her hats. Or was it The Evening Standards screaming headline, Kate to Say I Do Live on YouTube, that tipped the b! alance?< /p>
Bread and circuses, the Romans noted, are what people need. Circuses, it seems, are what they need most. No nation can script a feel-good moment, a global fantasy, quite like Britain, where class is the sediment of centuries. In the age of Celebrity Apprentice, the British royals are the time-honed pros.
Theres been a nod to straitened times. Kate will forsake a horse and carriage for a car. Prime Minister David Cameron, who flew the budget airline easyJet for a recent break in Spain Michelle Obama, take note was to wear a lounge suit in his ongoing campaign to prove hes not what he is: an Eton-educated toff. That was before vociferous complaints led Downing Street to say hed don tails.
America is entranced. As Hamish Bowles, who will cover the wedding for Vogue, told me, Theres something mesmerizing to Americans about the idea of a society structured with this impenetrable citadel at the top. A U.S. society whose self-defining myths include the myth of classlessness needs the spectacle of class at work.
So Kate, at some level, is a 29-year-old Cinderella, the commoner ushered into the citadel, the pretty girl who now has her own coat! of arms (three acorns separated by gold and white chevrons.) Shes played her hand well. As Bowles noted, Theres something of a kind of poised and manicured Upper East Side girl about her, with classic dress sense. A KM dress has iconicity: understated, pared-down, a dramatic solid color. And then, of course, theres the hat.
In fact, the Cinderella thing is wrong. Shes Marlborough-educated to his Eton-educated, a partner in a moneyed elite. Theyre a modern couple: they met at college, broke up, and, as the dyspeptic father of the groom, Prince Charles, noted, Theyve been practicing long enough. Hes got a real job. Hes not found himself in the wrong company, like his Azerbaijan-attracted uncle Prince Andrew, or in the wrong inner-Fascist attire, like Prince Harry. In short, far from fairy tales, they seem grounded and real.
I think thats what the Brits like as well as the chance, with Easter and then the wedding, to take an 11-day break on just three days leave at multi-billion cost to the nation. In fact they like the couple so much they want to skip Charles (who may be in his 80s before he gets the top job) and go straight to William. That wont happen. On abdications the royal view is: been there, done that, didnt like it.
Of course, King Edward VIIIs decision to quit has been much aired in the movie, The Kings Speech. And there, as a little girl, is the present queen! Shes met, as monarch, with every prime minister since Churchill 12 of them. Another sharp contradistinction with columnists is she really knows whats going on.
In truth, thats what made me snap: her ever-presence. Just to remind myself of the British miracle, I strolled through Westminster Hall, its magnificent timber roof arching over the flag-stoned expanse that has seen coronation banquets from Richard I in 1189 to George IV in 1821, trials including that of Guy Fawkes, and Winston Churchill lying in state.
The genius of Britain is continuity, a very serious idea of which William and Kate now become part! . Its en ough to make a republican dabble in monarchism.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/22/opinion/22iht-edcohen22.html.
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