A Classless Society by Alwyn W. Turner

Author:Alwyn W. Turner [Turner, Alwyn W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781781311424
Publisher: MBI

11

Royalty

‘Storm the Palace’

I’ve never discussed private matters and I don’t think the Queen has either. Very few members of the family have.

Prince Philip (1994)

I sometimes sense that the world is changing almost too fast for its inhabitants, at least for us older ones.

Queen Elizabeth II (1997)

Diana’s power is born out of emotion and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Tony Blair (1998)

Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip celebrated their forty-fifth wedding anniversary on Friday, 20 November 1992. They weren’t, however, together to mark what should have been a happy occasion, for he was away on a trip to Argentina, in his capacity as president of the World Wide Fund for Nature. She was therefore alone when she heard the news that a fire had broken out at Windsor Castle.

She arrived from Buckingham Palace some hours after the start of the conflagration, at which point firefighters were still struggling to bring the blaze under control. Hundreds of staff were joined by Army personnel as a priceless collection of paintings, books, carpets and porcelain was removed from the burning building; in their midst, television cameras filmed the Queen, in off-duty headscarf and wellingtons, cutting a distraught and forlorn figure. ‘Her Majesty is utterly devastated,’ Prince Andrew told news reporters, the formality of his words somehow distancing viewers from what was clearly a deep personal disaster.

It was also a potential disaster for the country, whether one accepted the idea that this thousand-year-old building and its contents were held in trust and that the loss was to us all, or whether one merely counted the financial cost of the damage. For Windsor Castle, like the other royal palaces, was not insured – the premiums would have been prohibitive – and the repairs were, announced the national heritage secretary Peter Brooke, to be paid for from the national purse. ‘The heart of the nation went out to the Queen last night,’ he said. ‘I am sure the Queen will want to see her home restored in the way which we all see fit.’

It wasn’t supposed to be a startling revelation, merely a statement of the obvious, but the idea that taxpayers were expected to pick up the estimated tab of £60 million unexpectedly aroused considerable hostility, even while the embers were still glowing. ‘With the greatest respect, Ma’am, you should foot the bill,’ said the Sunday Mirror, and its sister paper ran a telephone poll for readers in which 95 per cent of the 40,000 callers agreed with the proposition that the Queen should contribute to the restoration costs. The Sun also asked its listeners to phone and received 60,000 calls saying she should pay, against just 4,000 disagreeing. It was a response that caused genuine shock. ‘We must have got it wrong,’ lamented one courtier. ‘At the moment of her desolation, this woman, who had done nothing but give service to her country, didn’t even have the solace of her people’s sympathy.’ A public appeal was launched and raised just £25,000.

Attitudes were changing, but those in royal circles seemed not to have noticed.

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