Текст книги "Glimpses of Britain. Reader"

Mary, Mary, quite unwary

by Anne Campbell Dixon

The Daily Telegraph, November 4, 2000

The Palace of Holyroodhouse has had almost as chequered a career as its most famous inhabitant, Mary Queen of Scots, but it has survived triumphantly, and is a working royal palace – only Mary’s private apartments have been preserved, almost untouched, as a shrine.

Given Mary’s impact on British history, it is extraordinary to realise that she was Queen Regnant in Scotland for only six years and all the highest drama of her reign was crammed into the two years between July 29, 1565 – when Mary married the petulant pretty-boy, Henry-Stewart, Lord Darnley – and July 29, 1567, when she was forced to abdicate. The intervening months saw the murders of her secretary Rizzio and her husband Darnley (one of Rizzio’s killers), the birth of her son James, her subsequent marriage to Bothwell (one of Darnley’s killers) and the stillbirth of twins by him.

The most traumatic event of all, for Mary personally, must have been the murder of Rizzio, her detested Italian favourite, who was stabbed over her shoulder while he cowered behind her – the knife passing so close to her throat, she said later, that “she felt the coldness of the steel”. Visitors to her bedchamber today approach it up the same little winding stair that Rizzio’s assassins used.

The intimacy of the scale makes it easy to imagine the mayhem. The little, tapestry-lined turret closet, where Mary was dining with Rizzio and other members of her entourage on March 9, 1566, must already have been crammed with the nine or 10 people present. The first of the conspirators to enter was Darnley, soon followed by the ghastly figure of Lord Ruthven – an unsavoury dabbler in black magic, who had risen from his sickbed for the occasion and was dressed in full armour over a nightgown.

While Darnley pinioned his wife’s arms and Ruthven pointed a pistol at the other guests, another 20 conspirators rushed in, overturning the dining table and sending its dishes and candlesticks crashing to the floor. The Countess of Argyll, Mary’s half-sister, caught one candle as it fell – only it, and the flames of the fire, lit the scene as Andrew Ker of Fawdonside grabbed the pregnant Queen and held a loaded pistol to her stomach while the first blow was struck at Rizzio. He was then dragged out, stabbed another 50 times and thrown down the stairs on Darnley’s command.

The earliest buildings at Holyrood pre-date Mary’s reign by more than 400 years. The palace began as an Augustinian monastery, founded by King David I and taking its name from what was believed to be a fragment of Christ’s cross (or “rood”) brought to Scotland by David’s mother, St Margaret. When Edinburgh became Scotland’s capital, succeeding kings found the abbey in its parkland setting provided more comfortable quarters than the city’s draughty castle, perched on high rocks, and gradually the abbey was swallowed up by the palace. But the beautiful ruins of the Abbey Church, roofless since 1768, remain.

Mary’s reign was brief and inglorious. I am not among the romantics who consider her the innocent victim of others’ machinations – although the Scotland of her day, with its murderous and conspicuously ignoble nobility, undoubtedly constituted shark-infested waters for any monarch. Mary made her ambition clear when she married her first husband, the French Dauphin, and they assumed the titles of King and Queen of England.

Her devotees should be glad that she achieved her dynastic aim, after – and ironically, because of – her early death when her son became James I of England on the death of Elizabeth. As the current Hereditary Keeper of Holyroodhouse, the 15th Duke of Hamilton, points out in his book, Mary Queen of Scots – the Crucial Years, if Mary had outlived Elizabeth instead of being executed, she would not have been acceptable to the English as heir to the throne, whereas her son James was. A fascinating collection of Stuart relics and mementos was recently moved to Holyroodhouse from Windsor Castle and is on display in the room next to Mary’s bedchamber.

The union of England and Scotland marginalised Scotland as a seat of government and Holyroodhouse languished for most of the next three centuries in consequence, with only sporadic bouts of royal attention. It was renovated for James I’s return home in 1617, and again for the coronation of his son Charles I in 1633. Charles II, who was crowned in Scotland in 1651, never went back afterwards, but he did commission a major restoration and extension of Holyroodhouse, giving us most of the palace we see today.

James V’s tower was balanced by another, identical tower. Between and behind these towers, a far more sophisticated palace around a court was added – in style, not unlike Wren’s additions to Hampton Court 40 years later. The exteriors, by the King’s Surveyor of Royal Works, Sir William Bruce, followed the severe dictates of the classical orders of architecture, but the interiors, under the direction of the Earl of Lauderdale are sumptuously baroque.

To the modern eye, this was a particularly pleasing phase in royal architecture: the panelled rooms are rich but in a restrained way – and not intimidating in scale, mainly because their ceilings, in proportion to their floor area, are not high.

The decorative effects are achieved mainly by tapestries and needlework upholstery, and rich plasterwork on the ceilings – but even this is subtle, because painted a chalky white.

Victoria was the first British monarch to revive serious interest in Holyroodhouse after centuries of neglect; George IV had already taken the significant step of making a state visit to Scotland in 1822, during which he pleased his Scottish subjects by wearing the kilt (albeit with the unorthodox addition of pink tights), but he stayed with the Duke of Buccleuch at Dalkeith.

Victoria and Albert found Edinburgh a convenient staging post on their journeys to Balmoral, so Holyroodhouse fell victim to some well-meaning but tasteless Victorianisation – their pseudo-16th century Throne Room ceiling (now gone) was described as “dreadful” by George V’s more discriminating Queen. But some of Victoria’s other contributions to the palace, notably gorgeous tapestries, were good; while some of George V’s were rather dull, particularly the pedestrian plasterwork and panelling of the Throne Room, installed in 1929.

Victoria and Albert’s florid taste is well displayed by an exhibition of watercolours they commissioned as souvenirs of their holidays in Albert’s homeland. Victoria was never happier than when at Rosenau, Albert’s childhood home, or visiting the other scenes of his youth. In Saxe-Coburg-Gotha – a realm on toytown scale compared with her own – she could relax to the extent of eating hot dogs in the street, and the exhibition depicts some of the open-air events she enjoyed there: the annual children’s and song festivals and – less attractively – a deer drive, during which Albert and other gentlemen picked off the terrified animals at conveniently close range from what looks like a bandstand, inside a small, fenced enclosure.

At her Majesty’s pleasure

by Mary Riddell

The Observer, November 3, 2002

Like the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland Elizabeth Windsor is suspected of tailoring the law to her own agenda. Naturally, the off-with-her-head style of intervention does not fit the taste of a modern constitutional monarchy. But sins of omission also count.

Five years ago, Princess Diana’s butler, Paul Burrell, confided to the Queen that he was keeping some papers safe. Mr Burrell, branded a common thief in the Crown’s opening, was subsequently charged with theft of the dead princess’s possessions. He was about to enter the witness box and divulge secrets that might unsettle the monarchy when the Queen recalled their conversation. Off with the trial.

Perhaps the explanation is pure incompetence. Amnesia is not a crime, even in the nation’s chief prosecutor. Maybe the police and the Crown Prosecution Service should take all the blame for bringing a shambolic case, but what’s new there? Paul Burrell, an innocent man, may have endured some very rough justice, but so do some of Her Majesty’s less prominent subjects.

As for Mrs Justice Rafferty, her gagging orders and secretive ways rarely conveyed the impression that this Ј1.5 million charade was being conducted in the interests of the public who paid for it. A further overload of apparent deference from public servants reluctant to bother the monarch may have done the Queen, and the cause of justice, few favours.

Still, the central issue is why she failed to divulge what she knew earlier. On that we may learn no more. When logic, plausibility and openness expire, the royal family can always revert to its default position of lofty omerta.

Under the distinction drawn by Walter Bagehot, the monarchy is the “dignified” section of the constitution, as opposed to the “efficient”, or executive, parts. And now, in these undignified and inefficient times, the sovereign’s reputation rests on a bungled prosecution, undertaken in Her Majesty’s name, over whether Her Majesty’s former footman had stolen items including a pair of cream Ferragamo shoes and a Harrods black cloth bag containing chewing gum and a two-pence piece.

Constitutional crises used to be confined to such rare events as an abdication or the House of Lords’ rejection of Lloyd George’s People’s Budget in 1909. Now they hinge on the disputed ownership of a Neil Diamond tape. True, the monarchy is many headlines short of a catastrophe, but what happened last week may prove a graver setback to the House of Windsor than scandals, divorce or burning castles ever wrought. Somewhere in the Old Bailey proceedings, a chronicle of rancour and resentments, the age of mystique died.

It was doomed, perhaps, from the moment Paul Burrell walked into the dock and the story of unravelling lives began. On one side was the Spencer family, a dynasty so grand that it traditionally thought the Windsors slightly below the salt; on the other, Diana’s butler and “rock”.

She and her mother, it emerged, had not spoken for four months before she died. Earl Spencer, who pledged to teach his nephews’ souls to sing, was exposed as being less saintly than his funeral oration might have indicated. The rules for his game of musical souls did not, it transpired, extend to offering his beleaguered sister the house she sought on the family estate.

The secrets of the Windsors, due to be heard in court this week, will not now be revealed. Even so, few, with the exception of Princes Charles and William, who were gravely misled by the police as to Burrell’s conduct, emerge from this story of frigid snobbery and feuding without taint.

Meanwhile, the British public is deemed too thick, or nosy, to deserve a full explanation. Here’s the one on offer. Paul Burrell meets the Queen in 1997 and tells her about the private papers. Charges of theft are brought against him, though the butler sold none of the many items in his possession. Stories emerge of document-shredding raids by Diana’s family.

And, finally, Prince Philip, who is on the way to the Bali memorial service with the Queen and Charles, says: “You know the case about the butler. It’s a bit tricky for Mummy because she saw Paul.” Whereupon Charles, acting through channels, raises the alarm. The trial is off.

There are constitutional issues here, but take the emotional ones first. The Queen, we are informed, first saw Mr Burrell, for three hours, because he was deeply upset by Diana’s death and because she wanted, in the words of Lord St John of Fawsley, “to bolster up a faithful old servant”.

Leaving aside the fact that the royal family has a sterling record of paying its faithful old servants pitifully and disposing of them clinically, this explanation sounds out of character. The Queen is not Samaritans material. With the exception of childbirth, she may never have expended three hours on any interpersonal activity in her life. Her conversations, except on matters equine, are supposedly terse, and her communications with her oldest son, as emphasised in the Burrell case, vestigial.

And yet the public is asked to believe that she spent three hours consoling a servant. Maybe. That makes it all the more surprising that she, who is certainly not in the habit of conducting gestalt sessions for below-stairs colleagues, would fail to recall every detail of such a rare encounter. (It is not clear either why Mr Burrell was so coy about mentioning the meeting, but then, unlike the monarch, he is not the fount of all justice.)

All of that is speculation. It may well be that sheer bungling drove events, rather than any conspiracy. But when an innocent man gets so close to staring at a spell of Her Majesty’s hospitality, and when loyal subjects find their credulity so stretched, it is not surprising that some cynicism creeps in.

The Queen is above the law. When the slightest suspicion emerges that she may not be above using it for her own ends, it is time that she should declare herself answerable – like all other citizens, however elevated – to the justice system she heads. The theoretical notion of a case labelled Regina v Regina may be a constitutional conundrum. It is not the most relevant problem facing an unwritten British constitution, built round a fairytale monarchy in which the head of state alone floats above the ruckus of her realm.

The sovereign, as well as being head of state, is formally the head of the executive, which can proclaim war and ratify treaties without the consent of Parliament, She is part of the legislature able, theoretically, to assent or veto legislation according to personal taste. Justice is dispensed in her courts and in her name.

This shopping-list, the argument goes, is purely formal, bereft of any practical dimension in the modern world. No doubt. But modernity also permits a monarch to be simultaneously ethereally distanced from and alarmingly close to the machinery of state. It is time for a constitutional rethink. In the wake of the Burrell case power without transparency looks more dubious than ever.

Myth of the few that does not add up

by Stephen Bungay

The Times, July 12, 2000

Sixty years ago, two nations were ready for battle. On one side was a country with an economy working at full-steam, outproducing the other in key weaponry at the rate of two to one; fielding a force led by hard-bitten professionals working to a carefully prepared tactical plan informed by first-rate intelligence. They controlled a weapons system which not only exploited the latest applied technology brilliantly but was also extraordinarily robust; and fielded troops who fought as disciplined teams displaying ruthless determination. On the other side was a country with an economy so inefficient that, despite spending almost twice as much as its opponent, it failed to match its rival’s output; fielding a force led by a romantic amateur, who was a chaotic planner misled by faulty intelligence. Its weapons system neglected modern communications and lacked reserves. Its troops fought as gifted individuals, with an old-world ethos that was sporting and chivalrous.

That was the Battle of Britain. The first side won, of course, but the remarkable thing is that it was the British. At a crucial moment in the history of each, the two countries exchanged their traditional national characteristics. That the British should convince themselves that they muddled through and won by being romantic amateurs is quite extraordinary.

The popular view of the Battle of Britain was a deliberate piece of myth-making by Winston Churchill. He had announced on June 18, 1940 that the Battle of Britain was about to begin – Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding subsequently pinpointed the opening day of that aerial conflict as July 10 – and so gave it a dramatic name before it began in earnest. These young fighter pilots were exactly the sort of heroes that the nation needed.

The fighter pilot as hero had its roots in the First World War. Revolted by the anonymity of the slaughter in the trenches, every belligerent country seized on the exploits of its airmen to create heroes for the public.

Drawn at first mainly from the cavalry, the pilots liked to think of themselves as Knights of the Air, jousting man-to-man in fair fights. The whole ethos was symbolised by Baron Manfred von Richthofen, the Red Baron.

The metaphor of Knights of the Air sits uneasily with the one used by the Baron, that of hunting. Most kills were achieved by diving on an opponent out of the sun, getting close and pumping bullets into the cockpit. The best way to become a great ace was to follow this method: creep up on your enemy, shoot him and then run for home. This worked equally well in 1940.

The young bloods of the Luftwaffe fighter arm all wanted to be Red Barons. It got them some high personal scores, but it did not win battles. The British pilots were not a superior breed to the Germans. What made the difference was leadership.

Hermann Gцring was a Fighter pilot in the First World War, and ended up commanding von Richthofen’s unit. It made good headlines to promote a one-time ace to head of the Luftwaffe, but Gцring had no understanding of, or interest in, modern technology, air strategy or running large organisations.

Helped by Ernst Udet, the second highest scoring German pilot after von Richthofen, these two “practical men” introduced romantic amateurism at the top of Germany’s new air force.

German aircraft production raced ahead to create enough frontline strength to add credence to the propaganda claims but, unlike the RAF, the Luftwaffe did not build up reserves. In Britain, the Air Ministry and private industry worked together to solve the enormous problems of mass-producing Hurricanes and Spitfires. But in Germany the Nazis intimidated industrialists such as Hugo Junkers and failed to exploit the advantages of production scale. In 1940, the Luftwaffe ran short of both new aircraft and spare parts. Fighter Command had plenty of both.

Unlike Gцring, Dowding was not just an airman but an organiser with a deep understanding of technology. He was the builder of a battle-winning weapon. The man who laid the ground-plan was the now-forgotten Major General Ashmore, who took over London’s air defences in 1917 and created the plotting system, gun lines, barrage balloons and the Observer Corps. Without his work, Dowding could not have been ready in time.

When he took on the new job of Commander-in-Chief of Fighter Command in 1936, Dowding spent four years creating the most formidable air defence system in the world. At its centre was a unique, near-indestructible command, control and communications system that featured the world’s first large-scale intranet, using analogue technology, as well as radar. The system acted as a Force-multiplier, enabling Dowding to deploy his 600 to 700 fighters with the effectiveness of many more. Dowding’s right-hand man was Keith Park, who took over the forces covering the vital South East. Park used small formations to hack chunks out of the Luftwaffe’s bomber fleets. This has added to the impression that “The Few” were hopelessly outnumbered.

The irony is that, of all the fighting forces in history, none have themselves eschewed heroics more than Fighter Command. One pilot, Brian Kingcome, wrote in 1990: “I think it quite wrong that, because the Battle of Britain turned out to be quite an important event in retrospect, the participants should be automatically classed as “heroes”. It denigrates all those others whose contribution and sacrifice were just as great, but whose exploits hadn’t been pushed into the public eye by Churchill’s splendid oratory.”

All the veterans I have met are genuinely modest men who say they were just doing their jobs. One said he thinks the bomber crews were far braver – they had to fly on and take whatever was thrown at them. It does seem to be forgotten that during the Battle of Britain Bomber Command suffered heavier casualties than Fighter Command.

Part of the reason that “The Few” became so celebrated was that their world was attractive and they were a charismatic group of young men. Their ironic humour contrasted with the self-important hubris of the Luftwaffe and their humility enabled Fighter Command rapidly to integrate the newcomers vitally needed after Dunkirk.

If it was their leaders who enabled them to triumph, “The Few” still had to find the courage and resilience to keep on going up despite the losses and the exhaustion. “We were young,” they will tell you. “You can do anything when you are young.”

The victory was created by a few men behind the scenes, but most of the fighting was done by youths who had scarcely left boyhood behind. So it was their youth that made a victory seem against the odds. It was not really against the odds at all but perhaps we can nevertheless join with the French novelist Georges Bernanos, who wrote in his Letters to the English in December 1940 that Britain’s stand was “a fairy-tale, a tale that no serious adult, no man of ability or experience, could possibly understand – a children’s tale”.