When Did Britain’s Age of Deference End – and Why?
An old-fashioned feature of a fusty, inegalitarian past, when did the British stop knowing their place?
Elizabeth II
Off with Their Heads!
Recent royal crises reveal echoes of discontent in 1870s Britain, when disquiet with monarchy manifested in calls for its abolition.
Barbados and the End of Monarchy
Barbados’ decision to remove Queen Elizabeth II as head of state was inevitable. Why did it take so long?
The Last Emperor of India
The voice of the British monarch carried considerable weight in imperial India. Its slow silencing mirrored the retreat of Britain from the subcontinent.
Foreward to the Coronation Issue
Peter Quennell and Alan Hodge provide some historical background to the coronation.
The Scottish Monarchy in the Fourteenth Century
Eric Linklater finds that among medieval champions of Scottish independence was an ancestor of Elizabeth II, the heroic Robert the Bruce.
Pioneering Royals
On June 2nd, 1953 Elizabeth II was crowned in Westminster Abbey in the first coronation service to be televised. Here are more pioneering Royals.
The Monarchy: More Ancient than Modern
Commentators repeat with regularity the claim that the Queen’s greatest achievement, besides simple longevity, is her modernisation of the monarchy. But, says Dan Jones, she still owes a great deal to her medieval predecessors.
Still Sacred? The Coronation Rite
Ian Bradley looks at the fundamentally religious nature of monarchy and the persistence of its spiritual aspects in a secular age.