I knew a bit
I knew a bit but we don’t study a lot of British history at school in Australia. We have our own 50-year period to concentrate on. Eric Bana
Quotes for All
I knew a bit but we don’t study a lot of British history at school in Australia. We have our own 50-year period to concentrate on. Eric Bana
Thirty resolute men in your House of Commons could save the world. Felix Frankfurter
We fight to exist. Personally, I am not ashamed of fighting to exist. We are doing no very extraordinary thing to fight simply because we do not wish to be enslaved or exterminated. Donald Woods Winnicott
Great Britain has lost an Empire and has not yet found a role. Dean Acheson
Compare the scale and magnifcence of Versailles with St James’s – the brick-built hovel in which the 18th-century kings of England lived. What was then the most powerful monarchy in the world housed its sovereigns in a converted leper hospital, yet, at the same time, parliament provided the magnificent palaces of Chelsea and Greenwich as … Read more
Out of the chaos of post-Roman Dark Age Britain, the English had created the world’s first nation-state: One king, one country, one church, one currency, one language and a single unified representative national administration. Never again in England would sovereignty descend to the merely regional level. Never again would the idea of England and the … Read more
Royal relationships across the generations have often been strained and distant, rather than close and affectionate. Most eldest sons, interminably waiting to become king, have not been on the best of terms with the sovereign to whose death they look forward with a debilitating combination of guilt-ridden anxiety and eager anticipation. And younger sons (and … Read more
There are important arguments to be made about the relative merits of an hereditary or an elected head of state: but not at the level of the human frailties of particular monarchs or presidents. No one seriously contends that the American presidency should be abolished because Bill Clinton is a self-confessed adulterer. So why should … Read more
Scandal, it bears repeating, undermines monarchies, but rarely ends them. It may be true that, according to a recent editorial in the New York Times, the British monarchy now exists primarily ‘for our amusement’. But as long as people find it amusing, and want to be amused by it, they will be happy to see … Read more
Of all the memorable phrases that have been minted and mobilised to describe modern British royalty, ‘constitutional monarchy’ is virtually the only one which seemes to have neither been anticipated nor invented by Walter Bagehot. It was he who insisted that ‘a princely marriage is the brilliant edition of a universal fact, and as such … Read more