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50 years of governing the queen

By Donald Trelford Posted Oct 1 2002

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When Queen Elizabeth ascended the British throne in 1953, the press treated Royalty, in the words of the Daily Telegraph of the time, “in a mystic, almost sacramental way.”

It was almost as if the doctrine of the divine right of kings still prevailed. This was equally true of the tabloid press, which echoed the deference shown by the broadsheets but hinted gently that the monarchy should adapt itself to a more democratic age. “Gone,” said one paper, “is the Royalty of the golden staircase or the cruel caprice. The Royal Family of Britain, since the days of Queen Victoria, has mirrored in an ideal form the family of Mr. Everyman.” Then, in a passage that accurately prefigured troubles to come, the Telegraph wrote: “There have been, as there must be, disagreements;
there have been, as there must be, crises; but the family, as a unit, stands four-square to the winds of the world.”

In reality, the monarchy has had to stand four-square to the winds of the media, and at times, it has almost buckled under the weight of publicity about marital discord and the costs of keeping the ancient institution on the road. Press intrusion into the bedroom secrets of the Queen’s children — three of whom have divorced — has set monarchy and media on a collision course. When transcripts of intimate telephone conversations between Prince Charles and his mistress, Camilla Parker-Bowles, and between Princess Diana and one of her lovers, were published in full, it took some of the shine off the Royal mystique. The “Royal soap opera,” a phrase first used by Malcolm Muggeridge in 1957, has proved to be as popular and long-running as its television counterparts.

Muggeridge became a national hate figure for describing the monarchy as a “sort of substitute or ersatz religion.” He was banned by the British Broadcasting Corp., sacked as a columnist and had to resign from his club. Lord Altrincham fared even worse, facing death threats, for saying of the Queen: “The personality conveyed by the utterances put in her mouth is that of a priggish schoolgirl, captain of the hockey team.” Around the same time the playwright John Osborne wrote in The Times: “My objection to the Royal Family is that it is dead: it is a gold filling in a mouth full of decay.” In these cases, the press simply fanned the flames of controversy by reporting the comments of others. Later, it became an active participant itself by exposing the personal lives of the Royal children and thereby feeding an apparently inexhaustible public appetite for such information.

There are a number of paradoxes here. On the one hand, the public clearly relish Royal stories, no matter how trivial, as shown by the sales of the popular press. On the other hand, they affect to deplore the sensationalism and think the papers should be controlled. A Press Complaints Commission was brought into being mainly because of this public unease. Its main function seems to be to broker peace between the press and Buckingham Palace. Another paradox is that, while many of the Royal stories reflect badly on the participants, the popularity of the monarchy itself is largely unaffected. This is attributed to the fact that the Queen herself — about whom no disreputable stories have appeared — rises above it all. A prime reason why she has managed to retain her mystique is that she has given no personal interviews to the press in half a century.

Another paradox is that, despite the massive international coverage given to the Queen over so many years and in so many countries, her mind and personality remain largely unknown. She steadfastly refuses to be a media performer.

Michael Shea, longtime press secretary to the Queen, pointed out that 98 percent of the publicity generated about the Royal Family is positive. Much of it he also characterized as “claptrap.” The Queen’s late father, King George VI, used to keep a scrapbook of media clippings titled “Things my daughters never did.” Shea said he once tried to keep a list of fictional stories about the Royal Family.

“I ended up with writer’s cramp after the first day,” he said.

During the Queen’s reign, the Palace has wavered in its attitude to the press. At times it has seemed paranoid, summoning editors for a dressing down (I have attended two such occasions), and at other times treating print journalists with disdain, hinting that television has much more impact on the public and can be more easily controlled through restricting access for the cameras. In recent years, Prince Charles has set up his own, highly professional press office, which sometimes seems to be sending out a different message to the media than the one emanating from Buckingham Palace.

After decades of sensational headlines and so many battles between Palace and press, how have attitudes to the monarchy changed from those expressed in the Daily Telegraph 50 years ago? The Queen’s Golden Jubilee this year was a curious event. At first the press thought it was a needless expense and didn’t take it seriously. They were then bowled over by the wave of popular sentiment that had crowds coming up to London and queuing for hours to catch a glimpse of her procession. So the newspapers changed their tune and responded to the public mood by publishing pages of commemorative pictures and souvenirs.

Two newspapers, The Observer and The Independent on Sunday, openly expressed republican sympathies, which would have been unthinkable 50 years ago. Most newspapers reflect the attitudes shown by their readers in opinion polls, which suggest that, though the Queen herself retains her popularity (71 percent think she is “hardworking” and 81 percent that she is “a good ambassador for Britain”), the public are tired of the minor royals and think the Royal Family should pay more tax. More than half think the monarchy should stay as it is, and only 12 percent think it should be abolished.

If the monarchy ever were to be abolished, it would be a bad day for newspapers, which rely on the twists and turns of the Royal soap opera to keep up their sales. At the heart of the press-Palace relationship is a mutual dependence. And now that we live in a celebrity culture, the Windsors — for all their well-chronicles foibles — seem likely to enjoy a new lease of life.