Royal Bodies

They recognise the swoon in a fawner’s eye, the brisk music of a colour sergeant’s bark. They are touched by the public’s fondness for plastic union flags in the drizzle. They believe that when it comes to Maundy alms, it’s the thought that counts. They appreciate the fealty of those maimed in the sovereign’s name who dutifully strive to give great forelock even if the stump can’t reach the hairline.

At Windsor it was the evening of the state banquet and as the president of France took his place beside Her Majesty, the royal family formed up behind and the procession slowly moved off and...

I had​ supper with a friend on 31 August 1997. He arrived looking wonderstruck. ‘Are we just going to have dinner?’ he said.

‘Why, you think we should sit shiva?’

...

A good children’s writer makes children feel things without ever quite talking about feelings. They teach children how to read the world for signals of what is important and strange and valuable, but it never feels like a lesson and it always feels like something only children might really understand. Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex (presumably the title helps sales) has written a children’s book which is not for children at all, and possibly not for anyone.

On 27 October 1954 the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh visited the University of Sheffield in order to inaugurate its Jubilee Session. No other reigning sovereign had visited the principal...

Only the hardest heart would repress a twitch of sympathy. To live on the receiving end of so much gush and so much abuse, to be simultaneously spoilt rotten and hopelessly infantilised, how well would any of us stand up to it?

Our current royal family doesn’t have the difficulties in breeding that pandas do, but pandas and royal persons alike are expensive to conserve and ill-adapted to any modern environment.

The first British election ever without the Monarchy: is this not how it’s likely to be remembered? The Italian phrase for it is better than ours: perdere la bussola, the loss not merely of...

Time’s​ whirligig, as one surly underling told another, brings in its revenges. For the Royal Family, 2002 went bad faster than an over-hung widgeon. In September the Prince of Wales...

In his memoirs, Claud Cockburn wrote about the occasional charm of things being just the way they’re supposed to be. Thus, the first time he went on the Orient Express he met a tempestuous...

The question is: what is the question? This summer has seen a bumper crop of books all ostensibly addressing the problems of the British monarchy. The blurbs have been in technicolour: ‘the...

Can Harry develop a model of self-funded service which milks his status yet does genuine charitable good? It is an interesting question. But if he manages the trick what should we do? Should we continue to pay a licence fee for a ‘nationalised’ royal family, or should they pay their own way? This would be the ultimate victory for the neoliberal state.

Asked​ in an exam at the age of 16 whether kings should be elected, the future Edward VII answered: ‘It is better than hereditary right because you have more chance of having a good...

According to Barbara Tuchman, quoted on the jacket, there is ‘a startling royal family scandal buried at the heart’ of this biography of Queen Mary. What steaming titbit can her...

Aaron Barschak, who gatecrashed Prince William’s 21st birthday party last year, says the question he is most often asked is: ‘What was Camilla Parker Bowles like?’ He could do...