What ails the royal family? By Tina Brown’s telling, the answer to this perennial and highly thorny question is: just about everything. Yes, it’s partly a simple matter of context; in the early 21st century, there no longer seems to be much point to the hats and the parades and the tours (Kate and William in the Caribbean? Cringe de la cringe! as Prince Harry’s ex-girlfriend Cressida Bonas would say.) And yes, it’s a suffocating way to live: like being a “battery hen in the Waldorf Astoria”, as Brown puts it, struggling somewhat for the right image.
But the former editor of the New Yorker and Vanity Fair, having applied all of her famous wit and intelligence to the problem, identifies many other maladies, too. Sadism, parsimony, profligacy, infantilism, randiness, ruthlessness, rudeness, coldness, extreme entitlement and, last, but not least, incredible stupidity; alas, among the Windsors, all are present and correct. The family is a walking, talking advert either for – take your pick – intensive group therapy or religious seclusion (after all, wasn’t Prince Philip’s ma a nun or something?). No wonder the Queen Mother’s steward, William Tallon, used to herald dinner at her Scottish retreat, Birkhall, by swinging a censer, as if he was a priest.
