The regally refurbished St. Ermin’s Hotel in Westminster hosted a party this evening in honour of Robert Hardman and his new book, Our Queen. Hardman, a veteran royal correspondent, broke from the exhausting canapés (which were inspired by George VI and the Queen Mother’s hearty wedding breakfast – lobsters, black pudding, chicken and an array of fish), to talk about his book and the monarchy.
Hardman’s thesis, which he previewed in the Spectator a few weeks ago, is that the Queen has overseen the most dramatic reform of the monarchy since the French Revolution. Through extensive travel and diplomacy, she has single-handedly maintained the Commonwealth as an economic and political force for good; that achievement is now being exploited by politicians of all political stripes, who are desperate to save Britain from declining Europe. She has also brought transparency to the royal finances, subtly modernised the royal family’s communications operation and exposed her family to her people. At the same time, this apparently conservative woman has done away with arcane traditions like the debutantes’ ball.
Hardman insists that change was inevitable, but there have been dissenters. He said, “40 years ago, Sir David Attenborough, one of Her Majesty’s direct contemporaries, said that the royal family couldn’t survive media exposure.” Hardman reported Attenborough as having said that the monarchical system relied on there “being a chief in a hut into which no one looked”; if anyone saw into that hut, then the mystique would be destroyed. The Queen’s genius, Hardman said, is that people have looked into the hut but no one “noticed the change happening.”
Finally, Hardman said that the Queen’s success is confirmed by the “regard in which she is held around the world”. The Queen is “the world’s most famous woman” who represents “so much more than Britain”. He predicted that the “memory of next year’s Diamond Jubilee will far outlive that of the Olympics.” After those words, all that remained to do was to toast the monarchy and its remarkable head.
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