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It would be cheek and impudence on my part to instruct the head of the Church of England about the True Meaning of Christmas but when has that ever stopped a journalist? I have in mind the news all over the papers that the Duke of York is being “urged to stay out of sight for Christmas”. That is, the carefully planted stories are saying, he should do the decent thing and miss the Buckingham Palace Christmas lunch for 50 on Thursday and stay away from the Sandringham Church Christmas Day service. Poor Prince Andrew; demoted to, as The Sun puts it, “The Banned Old Duke of York”.
It is inconceivable that this stuff would be in circulation without someone in the Royal Household putting it out there. Consider how it’s being framed: “One source close to the King said Charles would be reluctant to ban his brother outright. But he might have to rely on courtiers diplomatically ‘advising; him.” Well, it would take someone even dimmer than Prince Andrew not to grasp what he’s being invited to do, viz, cancel himself for Christmas. But in case he hasn’t twigged, here comes Ingrid Seward of Majesty magazine to spell it out: “Andrew should take it on himself and decline both invites. It would be the gentlemanly thing to do so he isn't embarrassing the King … Christmas Day is different because the walk to church is so public and the pictures go all round the world. He should take a back seat and just not go”.
This is perhaps the most disgusting and repellent sentiment I can think of in what’s laughably known as the festive season (actually that starts on Christmas Eve). If the King is indeed authorising these leaks, letting it be known that he’s barring his own brother from Christmas, then a little passage from a story by GK Chesterton comes to mind, in which a judge, fed up of the turpitude he encounters in court, tells a refined gentleman: “Get a new soul…the one you’ve got isn’t fit for a dog”.
Let me spell out the obvious. If you’re any kind of a Christian – and Charles is, God help us, head of the Established Church – Christmas is not a time to weed out undesirables from your family; it is a time to embrace them. The angels came over Bethlehem not to gentlemen, the kind of people that Ingrid Seward might recognise, but to all comers. The child in Bethlehem – who is, let us remind ourselves, the occasion both for the Buck House lunch and the Christmas service – did not come for the righteous, and certainly not for those in palaces, but for sinful humanity.
The King should be sufficiently in touch with the Christmas story to know that excluding sinners from the table isn’t what it’s about
Forgive me getting all theological here, but it is, I’m afraid inseparable from the season. The King should be sufficiently in touch with the Christmas story to know that excluding sinners from the table isn’t what it’s about. As for banning the Prince from the church service on Christmas Day because he’s erred and strayed from the right path, he should be right at the top of the queue. If we’re going to go for the True Spirit of Christmas, Charles should be linking his brother by the arm all the way to Sandringham Church as a fellow sinner. Do I really need to spell out that Charles too has erred and strayed in his time, that his persistent adultery with another man’s wife is what led to the very lovely spectacle of Camilla as Queen, presumably featuring prominently in his Christmas Day message? And what will that message be worth, with its careful asides about Christianity, if he doesn’t show that there’s a place for all comers inside the fold? Including a stupid Duke.
I can’t honestly bring myself to get that worked up about Andrew’s ill judgment in admitting to his circle of friends a man with links to the Chinese Communist party. Frankly the Chinese are welcome to anything they can pick up from the Duke’s parties. As for meeting Theresa May and David Cameron, why, so have I and I’d be a useless contact. It would be quite the Christmas party game to speculate about the nuggets the poor man was relaying back to Beijing – “Camilla and Harry just don’t get on! If you want to get the King going, talk vegetables! Camilla smokes!”
My advice to the King is, then, simple: Stuff the courtiers. Be your brother’s keeper. Remember, if it weren’t for the vagaries of primogeniture, he could be where you are now. And show some actual Christmas spirit and bring the poor man out of a cold more freezing than Good King Wenceslas’s.
Melanie McDonagh is a London Standard columnist
