Prince Philip: ""^It 1 .^ the New Battle of Britain
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Saturday Review Special Section June Π, 1977 !//7J What Makes Britain Great ...no matter what at St. Paul's; the queen abroad on the Thames, sailing in a Happy and Glorious "Royal Progress" by day and a river pageant in the evening; the queen driving from Windsor Castle through an avenue by Horace Sutton of torches and lanterns to light the first bonfire at Snow Hill. And then the hundreds of bonfires taking their signal from T WAS a chill morning in the forest of hers, sending flames of joy from the Shetlands to the Channel [ Aberdare in the misty reaches of Isles. Some burning signals will crackle on beacon hills last IKenya . They had spent the night lit in 1588, when the Spanish Armada was beating up the watching game at the inn called Treetops, hung in a great fig Channel. tree overlooking a clearing where the forest animals and the The jubilee spectaculars that will sparkle all over the plains game come for water and for salt. Now Elizabeth and United Kingdom—and in the colonies and the Common Philip descended to Sagana Lodge, which had been given wealth nations—until the edge of winter are modern mani them as a wedding present from the people of Kenya. It was festations of monarchial and religious fetes that began with there, on that day, February 6, 1952, that the news came. the pharaohs 4,500 years ago. Before Christ, the Hebrews George VI had died in his sleep at Sandringham House in celebrated sabbaticals every seven years, and every 50 years Norfolk. Elizabeth was queen. (after seven sabbaticals) they staged a yobel, a Hebrew This week all Britain bubbles with celebration. The jubilee word that is the origin of jubilee. that marks 25 years of Elizabeth's reign is being com Pope Boniface VIII took up the idea in 1300 and decreed memorated in a dazzling flurry of spectacles—the queen every 100 years as a Catholic jubilee, but that seemed too driving in a carriage procession to the thanksgiving service long between celebrations, and the interval was reduced to PRODUCED 2005 BY UNZ.ORG SR 6 11 77 ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED i-Ά every 50 years, then to every 25 as tradition now dictates. there were 2,500 beacon lights, and some of them would be Some dusty documents attest to jubilees held by early turned on with an electric switch. British monarchs—Henry III in 1265 and Edward III in JUBILEE mug—there will be some 1377, both on the fiftieth year of their reigns. George III, issued this year, too—bore a triple that old American nemesis, was the first of the modern mon- X», 'portrait of Victoria inscribed under achs to celebrate 50 years on the throne. The jubilee came neath with the legend: "The Centre of a World's Desire." almost by afterthought, for it was not the best of times, "the Wrote a correspondent of the Daily Mail upon viewing the King mad and the Regent bad," as Elizabeth Longford was Royal Procession: to write in her biography of Queen Victoria. The expendi . And you begin to understand, as never before, what the tures to support the forces in the Napoleonic Wars had Empire amounts to. We send out a boy here and a boy crippled the exchequer, and it was left to private citizens, there, and the boy takes hold of the savages . and teaches them merchants and bankers, to attempt a revival of spirits. Re to march and shoot . and believe in him, and die for him and sponding to a letter from a reader. The Times suggested a the Queen. A plain, stupid, uninspired people, they call us, and celebration. The idea so caught the public fancy that a yet we are doing this with every kind of savage man there is. "Grand National Jubilee of George III" was held from Oc tober 1809 to October of the following year. Splendid lawn By 1935, when George V celebrated his silver jubilee, the parties were staged at Frogmore, all of Kew was illuminated love of monarch and of empire had not eroded. The tribute (as the Annual Register for 1809 reported) by "variegated came, wrote Hector Bolitho, "from the people ... in small lamps," and processions coursed the City of London. As is the custom, an amnesty was granted to deserters, "... if the jubilee's effect is not as wide as it was in and the beneficent lords of the Admiralty sent out the word that for every eight men in the Royal Navy an extra allow George's day, or Victoria's, it is deep, standing as ance of four pounds of beef, three pounds of flour, and a a symbol not just of a nation, but of a people's pound of raisins was to be issued, along with a pint of wine contribution." and half a pint of rum. Generosity and good feeling knew no bounds. Sentences of small debtors were commuted, too. By the time Queen Victoria, the granddaughter of George hamlets and far-away colonial towns and in the spirited III, had ruled for 50 years she had already been a widow for cottages and tenements of the East End of London." Every nearly a quarter of a century. Her visits to London had be night during the first week of May, King George and Queen come few and her excursions to the Continent many. But Mary appeared on a balcony of Buckingham Palace to take now she returned, and the crowds who came out to cheer the cheers of the crowd. "I'd no idea they felt like that about her in 1887, her jubilee year, seemed to infuse her with a me," King George said following a rousing tour of the poorer new warmth. She went to thanksgiving services at Westmin neighborhoods of London. On May 6 he went on the radio ster Abbey preceded by a cortege of her own princes, but to speak his thanks. "How can I express what is in my heart?" other princes were on hand, resplendently, from India, and he asked. "I can only say to you, my very dear people, that kings came from Saxony, Belgium, Greece, and Denmark the queen and I thank you from the depths of our hearts and joined her at what she called "a family dinner." That for all the loyalty—and may I say so?—the love, with which night the beacon fires were lit from Shetland and Orkney . .. you have surrounded us." clear to Lands End. Wrote Harold Nicolson, the king's biographer, a decade Aside from the public spectacle, the jubilee had a deeper and a half later, "Surely there was magic in all this? The significance, for the spirit of approbation that welled out King, an unreal incredible personage, a resplendent hiero- of the colonies, India included, imparted a reassurance of phant bowing rhythmically in a golden coach, with diamond the monarch as the unifying symbol of the far-flung empire. orb and sceptre in his hands, suddenly became a human Ten years later, by which time Victoria had achieved a reign voice—intimate and paternal—speaking to them from a box longer than that of her grandfather and twice as long as any on the table between the sewing and the mug. The effect contemporary monarch except the emperor of Austria, the was wide and deep." imperial manifestation was, if anything, even more pro This week the orb and the sceptre are in the hands of his nounced. granddaughter. The empire is vastly reduced, and if the The state procession that wound through London on June jubilee's effect is not as wide as it was in George's day, or 22, 1897, for her diamond jubilee sparkled with mounted Victoria's, it is deep, standing as a symbol not just of a nation, riflemen from Australia, black troops from West Africa, but of a people's contribution. In the field of jurisprudence, contingents from Cyprus, Hong Kong, Borneo, and from in the matchless literature that spans 600 years, in the touch South Africa, Canada, and India. Colonial prime ministers stone of the free press, in the annals of the theater that has were received, and on June 26 at Spithead, 173 warships informed, enraptured, and amused—in all this the British drew up in a four-column line that stretched for 30 miles. bequest to all nations and to all men is peerless in recorded London lit its streets with gas jets, an innovation when Vic history. It is in acknowledgment of that gift that this issue, toria was young, but now there was the novelty of electric dated the day of Her Majesty's official birthday in her jubilee lights, too. Novel, too, were the telephones, which had not year, is tendered—to her as sovereign, to the British people, been invented at the time of Victoria's coronation. This time and to our readers. ® SR 6 11 77 PRODUCED 2005 BY UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED '-:>Sjft· Prince Philip: ""^It 1 .^ The New Battle of Britain . ·. and how to win it s THE jubilee year approached, Prince Philip granted an interview A•: to George Bull, editor in chief of the British magazine The Director. They talked for an hour in Prince Philip's library, a sunny room in the Buckingham Palace compound lined with books and with figures of British prime ministers. The interview was recorded, and in the transcript, extracted here by special arrangement with The Director, Mr. Bull's queries are in italics; Prince Philip's answers, in roman.