Letters From London by Julian Barnes

Author:Julian Barnes [Barnes, Julian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, General, Literary, Romance, Europe, Literary Collections, Essays, History, Social Science, Biography & Autobiography, London (England), London (England) - Social Life and Customs - 20th Century, Great Britain, Customs & Traditions
ISBN: 9780679761617
Google: NQVsOTrl6wIC
Amazon: 0679761616
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 1995-06-24T04:00:00+00:00

9

Britannia’s New Bra Size

Pious moralists and historical depressives like to comfort themselves with the notion that Britain is downwardly mobile. This is abundantly true in the geopolitical sense: Dean Acheson’s 1962 remark that “Great Britain has lost an empire and not yet found a role” continues to sting, because it continues to be accurate. But snufflers after signs and symbols often prefer the small instance to the large denunciation. So what better news than that Britannia herself, the very image of the nation, had become déclassé? Last month, a new ten-pound postage stamp was put on sale, and its design featured a new Britannia. In France, a replacement for the seriously sexy national figure head of Marianne might have led to an open competition, a national canvas, a TV phone-in; the Minister of Culture, if not the President himself, would have felt a duty to interfere before the announcement of a successor to Brigitte Bardot, Catherine Deneuve, and Inés de la Fressange. In this country, too, the corporeal model for Britannia has had her moments of social glitter. When she was reintroduced onto the coinage of modern times in 1672, King Charles II used the occasion to promote his mistress Frances Stuart, Duchess of Richmond and Lennox, as the national icon. Samuel Pepys had seen her image on a commemorative medal a few years earlier and written in his diary for February 25, 1667, “At my goldsmith’s did observe the King’s new medal, where in little there is Mistress Stuart’s face as well done as ever I saw anything in my whole life, I think: and a pretty thing it is that he should choose her face to represent Britannia by.” In looking for a successor to the Duchess of Richmond, the “pretty thing” might have been to choose Prince Charles’s longstanding friend Mrs. Camilla Parker-Bowles. But nowadays the royal writ does not run so far; we live in times that are more squeamish, or hypocritical, or democratic. And so in 1993 the tufted helmet of Britannia alighted on the head of Karin Craddock, photographer wife of the illustrator Barry Craddock. The unexpected icon and her husband dwell in Deptford, a less than fashionable quarter of southeast London.

Charles II chose his own Britannia, and also his own designer, Jean Roettiers, whom he invited over from Antwerp to work at the Royal Mint. Nowadays, the process has become bureaucratized. Royal Mail Stamps auditioned several design teams before choosing the Roundel Design Group. Roundel, in turn, considered the work of several possible illustrators before selecting Barry Craddock, one of whose strengths is an ability to draw in a way that resembles engraving. (“Brush on white scraperboard and then cut back with a tool,” he explains.) His contribution is the first thing that strikes you about the new stamp, but in design terms he was last on the timetable. The Royal Mail’s Stamp Advisory Committee and the Roundel Design Group worked together for almost two years; Mr. Craddock was only involved in the final six weeks of the process.

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