Prince Philip is my favourite, but in fact I love all the royals

I became a monarchist in the late afternoon of 19 November 2009; a dark and chilly day, damp brown leaves blowing balefully along the gutters, the smell in the air of a hard winter to come. This ended more than 30 years of what I considered principled soft-leftish republicanism; the notion that however practically effective and traditional the royal family might be — all those tourist dollars, plus a sense of national continuity — it was still sort of wrong.