How the Monarchy restored public affection for it

If you’re planning to listen to a Royal Recovery on Radio 4 this morning at nine, repeated this evening at half nine, about how the Royal family came back from the death of Diana do read Matthew d’Ancona’s account of making the programme in this week’s Spectator. Matt concludes that the monarchy has surived because”the public were not rebels at all, but complicit with the monarchy in this process of selective amnesia and quiet restoration.” As Matt says, “The deeper lesson of the past ten years is that our national genius for memory is matched by a genius for forgetting.”