Wednesday 29th March 2023

Royston King phoned. It was like that sketch where Jenufa and Dawn French are editors of Womanly Woman, a Women’s magazine. They’re planning pages and doing so well. They call out to Knitting in the next room, they whirr beautifully to get the title for a piece on James Bond – ‘Premium Bond’ – what could be better? Jane Asher rings up – no, they don’t want to feature her kitchen again but how about ‘Flawless Flans’? They’re roaring along, absolutely top form, when suddenly Dawn stands up and circles… ‘It’s all so trivial… I can’t go on… ‘ Jenufa is tested to the limit: ‘Brides,’ she says eventually. ‘Autumn brides.’ Dawn recovers: ‘Oh yes, Brides, it’s the biggest day of their life, isn’t it? It does mean something after all.’ And she’s back down again and forging forward.

The day Royston King phoned was just after Lilibet had been declared a Princess. That’s ‘Lilibet’, the spring of Harry and Meghan, named in an act of outrageous appropriation, a terrible colonisation of Her Late’s (oh where is Lilibet?) inner pet name. ‘It’s so ridiculous,’ Royston said. ‘All these titles. Am I going mad? What’s the point….?’

I didn’t fail. This is the glory of the Monarchy, I said. It means everything and nothing. How wonderful that the burning core of our National Life is raging splendour. It would be awful if it meant anything. Meaning something means the House of Commons. Means arguing and nastiness. It means politics. Or being a nothing country like Germany, social democrat, with a ‘president’, the heart of the Nation a nothing grey Government room with a nobody in it.

No, no, no. Never in the United Kingdom. We have an unbroken line of descent from the Conqueror, nothing to hide, nothing to be ashamed of, our Monarchy has survived on merit and made the United Kingdom the great country it is, progressing and changing without the upheaval of revolution, the secret of our success, built on the careful avoidance of making sense, which is the dreariest thing.

The last thing you want is making sense.