The Rest Is History - 186. The New Elizabethan Age

Episode Date: May 19, 2022

The longest reigning monarch in British history, Elizabeth II acceded to the throne 70 years ago. To mark the occasion, Tom and Dominic are joined by Frances Christie, Deputy Chairman of Sotheby's UK and Ireland, who specialises in 20th century British art and culture. Together they drill down into some of the cultural, artistic and historic happenings that have taken place during the Queen's reign. Sotheby's, the sponsors of this episode, are putting on a celebratory month-long programme of exhibitions and events to dovetail with the Platinum Jubilee celebrations. Six of the pieces on display are discussed in detail during the pod, ranging from a Warhol portrait to the tiara that Princess Diana wore on her wedding day. For more information on Sotheby's exhibitions, visit: sothebys.com/jubilee Join The Rest Is History Club for ad-free listening to the full archive, weekly bonus episodes, live streamed shows and access to an exclusive chatroom community. Producer: Dom Johnson Exec Producers: Jack Davenport & Tony Pastor *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Her Majesty is a pretty nice girl, but she doesn't have a lot to say her majesty's a pretty nice girl but she changes from day to day i want to tell her that i love her a lot but i gotta get a belly full of wine her majesty's a pretty nice girl someday i'm gonna make her mine oh yeah someday i'm gonna make her mine bum bum that dominic uh as of course you'll know as a top historian of the 60s was the beatles her majesty was it was it was i felt that you didn't really i you only approached that half-heartedly tom by your standards so we we meet in the wake

of your absolutely stellar hercule parow and by those very high standards I felt you did live a Padleian accent unless that was your live a Padleian accent no it wasn't no no well I wasn't singing it as Paul McCartney I was singing it as a tribute to the musical tradition that the Beatles embodied and indeed as a tribute to her majesty there were levels of new accent there that I didn't appreciate well that's why I'm here to tease them out for you, Dominic. Yeah, thank you. That's very kind. And talking of teasing out, the reason that I picked on that was partly because I know the lyrics, so that was easy. But also because, actually, I think there's quite a lot of meaning in there that we could pick out.

So we've got the Platinum Jubilee of the Queen coming up. So there'll be lots of people, Cap preeminent among them who will be wanting to tell the queen that they love her a lot and there'll be lots of people getting a metaphorical belly full of wine yes we've got a holiday haven't we and they're all these kind of these cakes and things that the platinum jubilee cake and stuff that apparently very complicated to make now i thought it was i thought it was very easy with just that you just add lemon or something no no i've read i read an article or Oh, it was in The Guardian, I think. It's probably wrong, then, isn't it?

Anyway, yes. We're just wittering. So for people who don't, for outsiders, we should say it's the Queen's Platinum Jubilee. It's a moment of seismic significance for every right-thinking Briton, isn't it, Tom? Yes. And we thought we'd do a Jubileeilee a special jubilee podcast and tom we've got a guest haven't we a very exciting guest we do indeed and so we have francis christie who is the deputy chairman of sotheby's who are kindly sponsoring um this episode and francis i

mean with your surname being christie you must be bored of people making jokes about that as i am of people making jokes about spider-man it's's the deputy chairman of Christie's called Francis Sotheby. That would also be cool. It's not quite as cool as Christie at Sotheby's, I think, obviously, because I am Christie at Sotheby's. Of course. Your area of specialisation is modern British Irish art, a well-known face on the Antiques Roadshow. But specifically, you're here because you have curated a special kind of festival, a Platinum Jubilee Festival at Sotheby's, which will be going on from, when is it? End of May through to June? End of May to the middle of June.

And we'll have stuff going on right to the end of June. And that's going on at New Bond Street? At New Bond Street, right in the middle, 34 to 35. Free and open to the public. And you've got celebrities coming in to give talks. You've got Andrew Roberts, is that right and we've got loads of things going on we've got talks for kids from michael mappugo up to a battle of the bears i've got dancing bears from the balkans paddington versus winnie the pooh oh oh so not gladiatorial

although i mean you could put you could put in some um i'm sure you could put in some um some ideas to make it gladiatorial um but battle of the bears we're very excited about we've got a battle of the queens as well um victoria versus queens with the first you know we had we had the world cup of kings and queens yeah um and uh actually i think elizabeth second she got to the semi-finals didn't she did she who was she against she was i think she was against athelstan and who so who was the winner athelstan we thought it would be elizabeth first you didn't you haven't got an athelstan theme at your exhibition sadly not but i can make a suggestion it's not too late well let's see if

we can work it in today um because um's podcast, we're structuring it around six items that you have chosen from the exhibition that you're staging, each one of which highlights a distinctive aspect, not just of the Elizabethan age, but of Elizabeth II herself and our relationship to her. So what is the first that you have chosen so let's go for the most obvious one that hopefully everyone would recognize anyway um and that's the andy warhol portrait of queen elizabeth ii well obviously we're on a podcast so people can't see the image should i describe it it's it's um as a lot of people know andy warhol loved loved popular images so he would take photographs of celebrities and people and he once said um i want to be as famous as the queen of england so it was apt then when he made her one of his subjects annoying all the scots and welsh and yeah and more than irish don't forget them yeah um so he took one of the formal portraits from the 77th Silver Jubilee by someone called Peter Grudgen.

And he styled that photo, I guess, with colour and his own with his own celebrity treatment. And I guess that in itself could have been quite controversial at the time because, you know, perhaps the Queen is above celebrity treatment. So I'm kind of looking at the moment she's got kind of joker style she looks like a kind of gotham city villain and with with purple face yes purple skin rather and deep blue hair but i don't think the queen is above celebrity and i don't think she ever was so some people might see this as the collision of celebrity with something sacred almost dare i say sacral tom but uh but but i would say the queen uh when she born 1926 um so she's born into a world where the celebrity culture already exists through gossip magazines

and um sort of picture post type things i mean i know that's his heyday comes a little bit later, but that the Royal, that she was always a celebrity even when she was a little girl and that Warhol's not doing anything necessarily new with this, I would say. I mean, she's arguably, and I know we don't think of her as a celebrity because we think of film stars and rock stars as celebrities,

but you could argue she's the single most recognisable the 20th century couldn't you i think i think she is and i think that's sort of what's so clever about andy warhol portraying her like this is that like the brits would never portray her like this but it takes a kind of american cool new yorker to show the queen in the same way that he showed marilyn monroe and i think that that sort of shows what the world thought of her as well, that she was totally deserving of this amazing accolade in a way to be treated as the ultimate celebrity. And I guess we wanted to choose this picture because she's the only queen that's really been in technicolor, if you like. She's the first monarch to have their coronation filmed the other

thing about this image so yeah it's your kind of classic wall but it also is it not very similar to a kind of is it it's an icon i mean it's literally an icon as in a kind of orthodox you know the sort of icons that you would see in russian or greek or ukrainian churches or something the sort of the framing of it is very similar to an icon and the queen that sort of thing that in eastern orthodoxy they had with icons which is they were very kind of unearthly and they were not deliberately not naturalistic and they didn't show emotion and all that sort of thing i mean that kind of seems right for the queen doesn't it because the whole she's always been as much symbol as kind of a flesh and blood personality.

Well, she doesn't have a lot to say. So, I mean, that's kind of the point of her. But that is kind of the point of her, isn't it? I mean. Yeah, of course. You know, you kind of get intimations that in private she's capable. Absolute laugh a minute. Well, I think, was it Tommy?

Is it Tommy Lascelles or Laskelles? Yeah, Tommy Lascelles or Laskelles? Yeah, Tommy Lascelles. Tommy Lascelles said that she's, something like, she's not funny, but she's quite a good sport. Did he say that on The Crown? No, I think, well, no, he actually, well, I'm quoting from a book that I read in preparation for this, Robert Hardman's Queen of the World, The Global Biography. Actually, he's talking in our festival. Is he? Well, okay. So he could probably absolutely nail that. But his book is, I mean, essentially is a kind of elaboration on this theme, the idea that she's not just the Queen of England, or indeed of the United Kingdom, Great Britain and Northern Ireland, or indeed the head of

the Commonwealth. But she is, as Dominic, as you said, probably the single most recognisable face to people across the globe um and in that sense perhaps has a kind of international significance that is greater than we might be you know we might we might think we've called our exhibition um power and image and then the the the portraits the painted portraits the subtitle is raw portraiture and iconography it's exactly what you're saying they they become icons they are icons yeah their time but but most monarchs weren't icons though francis i would say so most monarchs were kind of flesh and blood wow wow so what we said so our portrait exhibition we're not focusing on all monarchs we decided to be really really niche and we've gone for the seven queens regnant only so just the queens

no kings just queens so here's a question for you have you included matilda not yet it's not again it's not too late not not too late not too late and tom i know what you're going to ask have they included athelflad she wasn't a queen oh she's a queen of your heart though she absolutely she's the lady of the mercens of my heart no we could we could we could maybe do um you know how like when they had the paris salon and then they had the salon where all the pictures got rejected we could do like an alternative queens but i mean on the on the topic of the queen as a global icon, presumably she, I mean, she's the only monarch that Warhol painted. I mean, you know, there are loads of, there are lots of Queens.

Yeah, he actually did other Queens. She is the Queen. He didn't do any other British monarchs because we only had, we've only had the Queen. But he kind of painted the Queen of the Netherlands. Yeah, he did. Oh, that blasts my whole theory out of the water then. come we never see that image i mean we never see that image well she's not the queen of she's not the queen of britain is she she's not as famous if people say the queen by and large they mean elizabeth ii they mean our queen yeah in america so in the

first uh every now and again in this podcast we like to bring in the naked gun films and in the first um naked gun in the first naked gun film plot, as you will no doubt recall, Francis, hinges on an attempt to assassinate the Queen. That tells you that she's immediately recognizable to an American audience because, of course, that film's for an American audience. She has a very distinctive dress style. And apparently she goes for kind of the very bright primary colors so that she can be easily seen in walkabouts and things like that and people will recognise her. So that again is a kind of an example of branding, I suppose. Well, she's surely more recognisable for longer

than any other world figure in the 20th century. I mean, other people were more famous for five years or something, but to have had that kind of longevity and to outlast, I don't know, Mandela, Gorbachev, Reagan, JFK, Nixon, Khrushchev, all these people she met. Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe to talk of the Warhol icons. But Dominic, just on the topic of the queen and and her international role is she anything more than a symbol has the role that she's played say as head of the commonwealth

was about to say head of the commonwealth yeah because she really cares about that doesn't she i think that's one thing she does care about well but what's key about it though for the people in the commonwealth that's also good branding, because essentially your monarch is also the queen. So even though she's not directly impacting government, she's the figurehead in all of these places. It's almost like it's like the ultimate social media. You're out there in all those countries anyway, regardless of having to sit on a throne there. So when the Commonwealth first gets set up, and it was George VI, so it wasn't automatic that the Queen was going to become

head of the Commonwealth. And basically it was Nehru who swung it for her. So he sent a kind of congratulatory telegram. But do you know the Latin word that was used to describe George VI's role as head of the Commonwealth? Enlighten us. It was princeps, which is the title augustus season yeah yeah to avoid the name rex because it would have been offensive rex king in latin

it would have been offensive to uh to the republic quite different characters in india augustus and george the sixth yes they are um the thing i think is really important and i think is um she has played that role with such gusto and such enthusiasm in a way that I suspect almost anybody else would have put a foot wrong, particularly during the period of decolonisation. When she played it so cleverly and she was so sensitive to kind of local sentiments in the various countries that had once been imperial kind of possessions. The next object I think kind of linked to what we were saying about her being so recognized and that's this amazing punch cartoon by e.h shepherd which was on the banner head of punch magazine the week of the coronation which was may 27 1953 um and for those listeners who don't who can't recall e.h shepherd was the famous

illustrator of winnie the pooh and wind in the willows and there's an amazing design he did where you've got eeyore toad of toad hall dressing up in you know regal robes you've got poo trying on a crown you've got piglets studying de bretts just to get ready and dominic we've got owl to whom you were compared by the times i wanted to bring this up actually so i was very pleased that you chose this, Francis, because the Times reviewed this podcast and said that Tom was like Tigger and that I was like Al Wise and Skelly.

And I was really... Tigger's not on this. Tigger's not on this, Tom. Tigger's not even significant enough to be on the banner. Do you know, I don't think we should do this one. And the morning that review came out, i had a message from tom on my whatsapp at kind of some ungodly hour like 6 31 a.m saying i can't believe they called you owl this is absolutely outrageous you're not owl at all you're eeyore well and eeyore's there as well he's there as well anyway

um so anyway apart from reminding us of this splendid um notice in the times why did you choose this this cartoon so my point about this is i think in kind of british collective i don't know collective knowledge if you like um in the queen's reign there are a few characters as recognizable as the queen and i kind of think these characters eh shepherds drawings of poo they've got to be the most recognizable just for you know generations past but also kids today still well tom has a theory about this okay so so i i think in a way it illustrates the opposite because i think these are edwardian figures um these are figures um very much certainly of the before the second world war

and i would say that the image people if people think of Winnie the Pooh now, they're going to think of the Disney character rather than the Eighth Shepherd. I've had a massive kind of, you know, grumble about this, but I think- He does have an American accent in Disney, doesn't he? Yes, yes. So what this sums up for me

is just how old the Queen is. I mean, I know that's a really obvious thing to say when she's celebrating her Platinum Jubilee. So one of the things that struck me reading this book on Queen of the World, she first travels abroad when she's 20 in 1947. And it's to South Africa with the king and then queen. And while she's out there,

she meets a whole load of veterans of the Burr War, some of whom are actually Burrs who fought against the British. But one of them, and Dominic, you'll be excited about this, one of them, he'd been in Sudan in the year that Gordon died. Oh, my word. So he'd been on the expedition to rescue General Gordon. Yeah. So the Queen met somebody who'd been on that expedition. And it just seems insane in 2022 that that would even be possible. That that person is still the monarch of the head of state.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, of course, I mean, her first prime minister was Winston Churchill, who's, I mean, Churchill was a Victorian, born in the Victorian era. And the people that she must have grown up with, well, the children's books that she read, you know, when she was growing up would have been Victorian, Edwardianian they're changing guard at buckingham palace but isn't

that also her point that she is like this bridge not only to the early part of her life but also a bridge through history you know she's the seventh of the seven queens right yeah of course maybe this is where i can slot in my next object, which is we've borrowed one of her coronation Bibles. Oh, now Tom's very excited about this. But the point of showing one of her coronation Bibles is that links back to Queen Elizabeth I's coronation Bible and how that's sort of become a thing,

that all monarchs have a special coronation Bible. And I think to lots of people, they might think, well, you know, why do you need a special? Why can't you just use the normal Bible? I suppose it also shows the degree of detail of our pageantry. You know, we can't just use the same Bible. Well, the whole point is, before we get into the Bible, the whole point of the Queen to most people is that she's precisely, as you say, I would say, that she is an embodiment of a link with generations that have gone before she's the incarnation of tradition and that's why actually um suppressing her personality has been so important because it allows you just to see her as this kind of avatar of of history yeah um the other thing about the bible i think

you would have to have very particular bible i mean you're not going to use the good news bible at your um i mean prince charles might but i wouldn't approve of it anyway tom um i know you want to talk about bibles well i mean it's much old i think it goes back obviously much much further than than even the foundation of the british monarchy or the english monarchy i mean this is taking us right back to uh the anointing of kings and queens in the Old Testament. And it's a reminder that the coronation ritual, you know, for the queen, it's a sacrament, it's a sacramental ritual. And I think she takes it completely, you know, has taken it completely seriously. She's very, very devout Christian. I think she completely

believes it. And again, I think that that is an aspect of if you like her kind of antiquity because i think she has a you know she she she believes in dare i say the sacral quality of the coronation ritual and therefore as her her role as an anointed monarch in a way that i would imagine only capital loft of her loyal subjects probably still does. Well, that's why when they had the cameras in, the cameras weren't allowed to capture the most intimate moments. Yeah, because it's an absolutely sacred, sacred moment. I wonder whether, you know, when the time comes for the new king to be crowned and anointed, quite what people will make of all this.

But he himself, he wants to be a defender of faith, doesn't he? Well, he does. And the Queen, I mean, the Queen is perfectly happy with that as well. I mean, she clearly is very devout and committed to her role as Supreme Governor of the Church of England. But she's also perfectly happy with the multi-faith aspect, particularly of the Commonwealth, because, you know, there are more Muslims and Hindus in the Commonwealth than there are Christians. So she's never had a problem with that. And in fact, Dominic, we've got our charity thing that we're doing at St. Martin-in-the-Fields on Monday. And actually, there was a multi-faith celebration in St. Martin-in-the-Fields in 1966 to celebrate the many different faiths of the commonwealth that

generated quite a lot of controversy and the lot of blowback from bishops on this and so the queen has uh westminster abbey is a royal peculiar so basically she do what she likes with it yeah so so now they have these kind of commonwealth um you know spiritual celebrations in the westminster abbey maybe it's just her it's just her approach to faith as you say she can totally empathize with everyone else's faith which is what makes us so powerful as the head of the commonwealth too absolutely i think i think that's absolutely it she because she believes in because she's so deeply christian and so content and and rooted in her faith other people's faith are not an issue i think that that now i mean we we live in a kind of thought for the day world i should explain for non-british listeners this is a a radio slot on

the uh on the morning news where various people from different faith traditions all come on and say exactly the same they basically say exactly the thing that your headmistress says when you're six and i think that therefore it has a you therefore it has much less kind of potency. And also the fact that it's a very Protestant ritual. I mean, that's the other thing that I think people will find quite odd. It's quite a sectarian ritual. And again, going back to Elizabeth I, I mean, she was a Protestant queen. Well, one of the portraits that we've borrowed is one of Mary, Queen of Scots. And I think going back to the Bible, I think one of the amazing things about an amazing Bible is all of that is summed up in this very intimate object. You know, we've got to remember books back in the day, that was the ultimate luxury object to have a beautifully bound, illuminated manuscript.

How old is this Bible? For the coronation, there was a series. There were 25 special copies made? For the coronation, there was a series. There were 25 special copies made to mark the coronation. And so with books, it's all about bindings. And the bindings were created and designed by probably the most famous 20th century binders in Britain, people called Zangorski and Sutcliffe. They were established in 1901. They've got the Royal Warrant.

And the 1953 Bible, it's actually got quite a cool geometric pattern on it so i suppose it reflects that's just a sort of written yeah it's very 50s kind of yeah it's very 50s um design isn't it and then there's a cathedral you can't miss that it's regal because there's about 15 crowns on it and is it the King James version? It can't be any other. Yeah, it can't be any other. It would be ludicrous to use the Good News Bible to be crowned.

It could be Revised Stan version or I don't know, whatever. I think you've got to use the King James, haven't you? I think it's un-British not to. When Charles becomes king, this to me will be the absolute litmus test

to whether I support him. And of course, you don't support him anyway because you're on record as saying in a succession crisis you're backing Prince Edwardward i am i'm on record as being his banner man yes i think he'd be a wonderful i think he'd be a wonderful king it's just is that just because he's the youngest no it's because he said to tom what he clearly says to all writers that he meets i enjoyed your book so i'm now i've pledged my sword to him yeah and i shall be honest

i think seconds before he met you, someone whispered in his ear, Tom Holland, author, not Spider-Man. Yeah, that's enough of your... Honestly, Dominic. Right, I think we should take a break now. We will see you after the break for more sober... Right royal.

Yeah, right royal. We've done quite well. We've done half of them, I think. We've done halfway. We're halfway through the top six artifacts from Sotheby's exciting exhibition about the Queen and her Jubilee. And we'll see you after the break for three more.

I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad ad-free listening bonus episodes and early access to live tickets head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com.

Welcome back to The Rest Is History. In the first half, as you may remember, we dealt in a very profound and serious way with the three first artefacts that Francis Christie has chosen for their exciting exhibition about the Jubilee and about the life and times of Queen Elizabeth II. And now, Francis, you're going to surprise us with number four. So what's number four? Because we were so serious in the first half that maybe we should go for like proper controversial as the first one. And that's later on the year, we'll be exhibiting it,

but we're selling it later on the year. It's one of Jamie Reed's famous designs for the Sex Pistols. And it's their God Save the Queen poster, in which, for those who don't know the poster, Jamie Reid took a very staid photo of Her Majesty the Queen by Cecil Beaton. And he essentially graffitied it, graffitied out her eyes and her mouth using news type, which say God Save the Queen and then the Sex Pistols over her mouth. And then he mounted it

on a Union Jack. So this is 1977 it's the year of the silver jubilee isn't it it's also the peak of kind of the moral panic over punk and over the sex pistols and the song God Save the Queen well I mean there's still some debate about whether it really peaked at number two or whether there was an evil conspiracy to stop it from getting to the top of the charts. I'm actually a little bit sceptical about the conspiracy theory myself. But Tom, are you a big Sex Pistols fan? I approve of them having happened.

Can you sing God Save the Queen, seeing that you sang at the beginning? God Save the Queen, the fascist regime, she ain't no human being. I can't remember the rest. Yeah. Something like that. That's not the message that Souther is wanting remember the rest yeah something like that that's not the message that suther is wanting yeah no no that's not the message that was that was johnny rotten of course that was a very good impersonation thank you very much

um so what does this show i mean it shows that um well she ain't no human being so this is the use of the queen as as it's not quite satire is it because what's it satirizing or is it satirizing the cult of the queen would you say it's quite interesting to think about the warhol yeah it's kind of playing off i suppose you know even if you can't it's playing off both that image of power the tiara even without seeing her eyes the mouth you know that's the queen and it's interesting isn't it that the sex pistols chose to kick against the queen not a prime minister and yeah but it was because it's a silver jubilee and because everyone's being kind of you know

right royal garden parties and street parties and all that kind of stuff and and this is the kind of stuff of tea towels and then and then they have the boat remember the boat on on the silver jubilee weekend that sailed past with mark mclaren and yeah blaring it out past the palace of westminster it's kind of sticking it to the man isn't it or i suppose in this case the woman i mean that's the fun of it i was thinking it shows actually in britain we're really lucky in that, I mean, her reign has been this massive explosion of British creativity, but also, I guess, freedom of speech.

People can come up with whatever they want to come up with. Yeah. And that's cool. There was a huge controversy at the time. So do you want to know what the Conservative Law and Order spokesman of the GLC, the Greater London Council, said said about this image was he in favor of it as a celebration of free speech an artistic self-expression he said it was absolutely bloody revolting do you want to know what the labor mp marcus lipton said about it what did he say said uh

if pop music is going to be used to destroy our established institutions then pop music ought to be destroyed first i don't know how would you destroy how would you destroy pop music i don't know simon cowell yes exactly maybe he was playing a very long game very very long game i mean this is so this is i mean it's kind of this kind of oedipal sequence where artists react against predecessors. So the Sex Pistols are famous to do that with the Rock and Roll Swindle. Yeah. That long list of rock stars who they hate. Who was the one who got chucked out for liking the Beatles?

Oh, is it Glenn Matlock? Was it Glenn Matlock? One of them supposedly got thrown out for liking the Beatles. But the thing with the queen though that's interesting though is that this has only happened once so in the whole course of her reign and we're up to the platinum jubilee now and in all that time this is really the only moment i can think of where there's been a cultural backlash yeah against i mean obviously there have been moments when her popularity is dipped but this is the only time i can think of where

there have been images like this but i would say it's not a reaction really against the queen it's the queen is icon isn't it yeah and it's the queen it's the queen so she's photographed by cecil beaton yeah who is a kind of the the representative of a previous generation of artists he's like the ultimate sort of staid society photographer that that's what they're reacting against rather than her herself he used to be my next door neighbor Cecil Beaton yeah you're old enough to have lived next door to Cecil Beaton he he um he had this huge queen and house in Broadchalk the village I grew up in and we had the house next door to it did your son has kicker bought on he wouldn't have kicked more you'd have well you you remember we set up the cricket net on the day that the Falklands wall broke out.

I do remember. And we would occasionally hit a cricket ball or kick a football over the wall so that we could go and explore Cecil Beaton's garden. He was very nice. He didn't mind it at all. Occasionally we'd run into him and he'd just beam at us cheerfully. So I'm very, very pro Cecil Beaton. Okay. So you deplore this cover?

Yes, I probably do. No, well, no, I Cecil Beatton. Okay. So you deplore this cover? Yes, I probably do. No, well, no, I'm sure he enjoyed it. Okay. So the sex, I mean, that's probably one of the most celebrated images of the Queen. What it is mocking, though, is not the person Elizabeth Windsor. It is mocking people. It's actually not even mocking the monarchy. It's mocking people's reverence for the monarchy, which is something different.

And sort of, I think it's mocking, yeah, establishment. And I think also the reason why I sort of wanted to talk about it, it also again shows, goes back to this idea of the power of imagery. Yeah. Like a very subtle tweak, you know, to her eyes and her mouth. To me, it's not, it's a comic image in some ways, rather than a genuinely angry. It is funny.

I mean, it is just funny. It's not, it's silly rather than, it's not genuinely scathing or subversive. I wouldn't say. Yeah. It's not like, do you remember when, was it such and such, you did that campaign and Tony Blair's eyes were slit into evil eyes.

Demonize new labor, new danger. Well, I mean, and as far as I know, I mean, the queen has never been kind of burnt in effigy or paraded through streets hanging from a gibbet or anything like that that occasionally happens in you know the streets of

Lewis for instance yeah no she hasn't and actually if you did that it would be genuinely shocking do you not think yeah you could burn anybody else you could burn Tony Blair has been burned in effigy and he's always been burned in effigy it's sort of fireworks displays next to Donald Trump or something but no one would burn the Queen, and it would be really, really... Yes, I think people would be genuinely shocked by that. I also think it's quite cool because it shows that connection between music and art, such a major thing that Jamie Reid and Malcolm Clarendon...

I think that's really interesting there, though, Frances, is that... So, 77, when you had the Silver Jubilee, the monarchy was about the last institution imaginable that would ever embrace that sort of pop music art nexus. I mean, when they had the Jubilee, it was as far away removed from the sort of pop culture of the day as could be imagined. And yet you go forward to 2002 or 2012 and the Jubilees then, whoever their spin doctors were pulled a blinded and they were brian may on this and the roof of buckingham palace and elton john and paul mccartney and all these characters sort of the monarchy one of the great secrets i think of us of its success in

recent years has been the way that it's basically appropriated the energies of popular culture rather than setting itself up as a in resistance. Which is what the Queen essentially did with the Commonwealth, to go back to that, that all these kind of revolutionaries and radicals who'd been locked up in prison, you invite them along to a grand banquet and the Queen's charming to them and they all go weak at the knees. I mean, I think that is a definite kind of tendency. Frances, do you have any other object that might in any way link the Queen

to giants of rock music? The one painting, which again, I'll describe it because people can't see it. I wanted to bring into this mix is a painting by Frank Auerbach. It's a head of Goethe-Bohm from 1965, but famously it belonged to David Bowie. So it doesn't really have anything to do on the surface with the Queen. But hear me out. Or judging by the picture with the head of gerda boom so it's it's it's for those who who can't immediately conjure up what this picture is um it's an abstracted head of his cousin gerda boom he painted for over 20 years

and with all of his sitters they would come for the same two hours the same day every single week and he'd look at them and look at them he would put paint onto a board or a canvas he'd take the paint off he'd scrape it off he'd add it on and he was trying to capture the essence of them so it is quite abstracted there's so much paint that you almost if you get up close it looks like a kind of sculpture of oil but then a bit like when you do a magic eye painting if you move further back and you squint your eyes a bit um you can see that there is a head so david bowie said about it hung at the end of his corridor so he saw it every morning when he got up and every evening when he went to bed and he said i want to sound like that looks wow and so what is

the link what what links this to the queen so I think this links the period in which Auerbach and Bowie came to prominence in a way. It's a Britain that in the post-war period that was, you know, huge post-war angst. She picked up the reins in the early 50s just as we were rising from the embers of the Blitz. That's when Auerbach came as a refugee to London. And I think it's her reign which set the stage for amazing people like Bowie, who he was the ultimate shapeshifter in a time where all of these different shapes that he shifted, they weren't necessarily,

they weren't accepted. And he made it, he sort of blazed that path. And I think it shows actually how in her role as I guess overseeing Britain and overseeing the Commonwealth she's kind of helped to enable that so so Tom are you aware of any books written about Britain's soft power during the Queen's reign and her the transformation of Britain's image from a sort of Victorian imperialist industrial powerhouse to a nation of entertainers and storytellers. Is there a book on the shelves behind you that may be? Yes.

Dominic Sandbrook's Pleasure Island. The Great British Dream Factory is the title. Yes. So, yeah, because I have this thesis that basically what happened from the 1960s onwards is that as Britain lost its empire, it kind of reinvented itself and found, I mean, Dean Acheson, the American Secretary of State, famously, said this much-quoted line about Great Britain has lost an empire

and not yet found a role. But I think in some ways, everything that you're saying, Francis, about creativity, which nobody ever said about Britain before the 1960s. So everybody said the nation of shopkeepers or pith-helmeted kind of empire builders and all this sort of stuff even though actually we were very creative even then but our our self-image as the as the as a people who create these kinds of image you know avant-garde art pushing the boundaries of music um you know in fiction and poetry and all in film are on the stage.

That's where Atana lies. And that's obviously Danny Boyle celebrated all of that, didn't he? The 2012 Olympics. And that is in Sex Pistols, of course. So it all goes around. Exactly. Sex Pistols have become part of the heritage industry. Exactly.

They have become part. Well, the Sex Pistols are part of the heritage industry now. And that's something that is absolutely emblematic, I think, of her reign. When people in the 25th century talk about the reign of Elizabeth II, they'll undoubtedly use a clip of the Beatles to illustrate it, won't they? I mean, there'll be a clip of Union Jacks coming down in West Africa or something. And then they'll cut to somebody with a new washing machine and then the Beatles. And they'll say this was late 20th century Britain. And I think that's actually, that self-image of ourselves as kind of hilariously witty and creative people

is not something that any previous generation of Britons would have said about themselves. And cool Britannia, let's not forget the 90s. Yeah. Actually, David Bowie is one of the few British rock giants who wasn't, as far as i know assimilated into the you know he wasn't dragged into the kind of the tractor beam of queen jubilee's performances and things he never did that did he i don't think it's hard to imagine isn't it i mean

so when he he wore union jack coats and things that was that was like kind of he was a mod he was yeah there was a strong streak of irony in it well i tell you what so we we had the great privilege of selling his collection a few years ago and when it first got announced that david bowie was selling his collection everyone thought that his collection would be you know international sort of poppy andy warhol's gerhard richter's what other pop stars collect. What was so cool about Bowie, and I think again this sort of speaks to what we're talking about, your title, The Dream Factory, is that he was collecting in the 90s and he didn't buy people like Warhol and Richter.

He bought what at the time would have been really quite random British artists, but he bought them because they'd walked the same paths as he. They meant something to him. They came from the same landscape as him. And so they resonated with him. And I think that's another essence of our creativity that you can't get away from as well, is that maybe it's because under Queen Elizabeth of the Rain, you know, she's overseen a Britain that inspires people like that.

And I think that was the most amazing thing about his collecting and I suppose that's why I wanted to talk about this picture just because it sort of shines a light on a slightly unknown part of him um he you know he never did what anyone expected and what was so great about his art was that it was unexpectedly British but isn't there a way isn't there a I mean I don't know what you'd think about this, that in a way, it's actually... I mean, David Bowie's kind of classic example in a sense that he was constantly reinventing himself. I mean, that's what he's famous for. He's constantly reinventing himself. But there is a sense in which he kind of slightly ran out of steam.

And certainly musically and as an icon, he began to seem a bit tired. He probably was tired after. Couldn't you say that about the cycle of creativity, I suppose, paradigmatically began in the 60s? There's quite a strain of self-parody in British popular culture at the moment. It's endlessly kind of reheating half-eaten meals in the microwave. But I think that's been the case actually since the 60s, Tom. I mean, you could argue people were probably, half-eaten meals in the microwave. But I think that's been the case actually since the 60s, Tom.

I mean, you could argue people were probably, I mean, I think people were saying that about, you know, Sgt. Pepper or something, that it was cannibalising Victorian music all. It was, you know, it was back when- Yeah, but they were the first to do it. Yeah, but I mean- Everyone else is just continuing to do it. I mean, I think you can definitely argue that the culture produced and during the, certainly the latter part of the reign of Elizabeth II has been,

has been very, you know, obsessed often with our own history, with looking backwards, with constantly reinter, I mean, we, I mean, how often have we talked about this on our podcast about the sort of introverted, the constant sort of, oh, the fixation on our, on our on the on the our own history and particularly the victorian period um again and again and in a way it's there's some elements of being trapped in a cycle that you can't quite escape i guess that's that's britain isn't it that's part of our eccentric legacy because i mean in a way we're lucky we've got all this history however turbulent it was to reference back maybe you know that's why around the world that brown britain they like the sort of edgy side of it but then they like that

it's placed next to a sort of like a heritage i mean in a sense though it's there in her majesty the brilliant rendition of which we we opened this with but there was a sense in the 60s and this again is where sergeant pepper comes in and so much of the popular culture of the 60s that the edginess lay in taking a stayed imperial imagery and kind of making it you know groovy making it something kind of enjoyable union jack mini skirts and waistcoats and things like that that was the point but now i mean no you know when when jerry hallowell did it who cared? I mean, everyone had done that. And now what is there to do? I mean, it's such an obvious thing to do now.

You know, even the Sex Pistols thing. I mean, that was how long ago? I mean, decades ago. Can I say something that I just realised? I haven't mentioned something quite key about our exhibition that sort of speaks again to the heritage and what people expect from monarchy is that we've borrowed all these tiaras to show. And tiaras. Tom loves a tiara, Francis.

I do love a tiara. I thought so. So this is your last item? This is our last official item. And I thought just to throw it out there we've borrowed diana's tiara from her wedding in 1981 dominic you you love her you you love a wedding don't you you love a royal wedding we actually talked about that we talked about the royal wedding we did did i say then how much i disliked weddings generally? You did. Yes, you did. In my capacity as Eeyore.

Yeah, so this is Princess Diana's tiara. So obviously worn in 1981. The absolute sort of nadir of what seemed like the nadir of Britain's post-war fortunes, the summer of 81, because there'd just been the riots in Brixton and Toxteth. Had 3 million unemployed. Yeah, the hunger strikes in Belfast. Mrs Thatcher was the least popular prime minister since records began and all that sort of thing.

And then the wedding of Charles and Diana. Robert Runcie famously says these things about, is it going to be a fairy tale? Obviously, we all know that it wasn't. So there is always that shadow, isn't there? So when you tell the story of the queen and her reign, I mean, I'm not surprised you have a Princess Diana artefact, but there is always this issue that there is the sort of,

there are always, you know, there are sort of skeletons rattling in the closet, aren't there? But do we think that that makes because it i suppose it makes the royal family a real family yeah in a way you know at the one hand we've been talking about how in a lot of the imagery they've got to be set on pedestal but then on the other hand they are real people in a real family albeit with different circumstances and castles that the rest of us have actually Actually, in terms of the tiaras, I mean, because obviously there's only, at the moment, it was only noble women and royal women that wore them.

They're sort of amazing objects in their own right, though, because you only really, apart from the person who wears them and gets to hold them, everyone else sees them from quite a distance. But when you do see them up close, and we hope, Carmen, Dominic, you'll come and see them. i'd love to come on i'd love to come on that they are beautifully crafted objects there's so much detail that is sort of lost from a distance so whose tiara is it i mean i know it's diana warwick but is it a spencer tiara or a royal tiara we've we've borrowed all these things from the families to which most of them all still belong. So this is a Spencer tiara, is it?

This is a Spencer tiara. And what's also amazing about these tiaras is normally they're locked away in safes wherever they are, and they're coming out for a little outing for everyone to see and for you and Dominic to try on. Although it's funny that if you think,

if you close your eyes and think of an image of the Queen, you probably think of her with either a crown, aara or a hat on a hat um yeah i'm now gonna think about yeah she's wearing a hat she's wearing a hat i've tried it and she there was the great image at the recent um opening of parliament with prince charles next to a crown literally crown representing well the crown got its own got its own vehicle taking it to the but and a lot of people i noticed sort of people who i imagine who live now in your neck of the woods tom were being sniffy about this on social no people in brixton we love we love the queen do you prince charles is when he was very popular he was mobbed when he goes to brixton yeah he

set he set up um all kinds of stuff in Brixton. Riding stables and things. Yeah. Good for him. I'm very much team Prince Charles. And he owns the Oval, of course. I have to say. Well, we shall meet on the civil battlefields of... Well, actually, the truth of the matter is if it does come to a succession crisis,

I would undoubtedly back Princess Anne. I think she has the steel. She doesn't make as good biscuits as Prince Charles's. I don't think she has as good literary judgment as Prince Edward. But I think she would come south, wouldn't she, with a massive horde of Scots. She would, yes, and they'd all be very good at rugby. Yeah.

I mean, they'd all be clad in tartan. She'd have the best cavalry, wouldn't she? She'd have the best cavalry. She is. I'm just thinking of claymores. And they'd all kind of dance. Would they? I think they'd be be... She'd have the best cavalry, wouldn't she? She'd have the best cavalry. She is. I'm just thinking of claymores. And they'd all kind of dance. Would they? I think they'd be cleaving people's heads off.

No, no, their horses would dance. Oh, yeah. Because that's her skill, isn't it? Is that her superpower? It's her Olympic skill. Right. Yes. Okay.

Just one last thing on the Diana thing. Yeah. Because her death famously created the great crisis for the Queen. And she felt that perhaps she was losing the affection of the great British public. And basically she she has that turned out not to be the case. And I don't know what proportion of people want to republic back 20 percent. Is it something like that? It's been pretty static, actually. It has grown a little bit, but it's remarkable how weak Republican sentiment is, I would say, given, you know, if you were asking people in the 1960s or 1970s, I think they might expect it to grow more than it has.

But, I mean, a question, which is when she dies, do you think she will be seen to have made the future safe for monarchy? So safe for Charlesles safe for william or will she will her reign seem like something that um you know it lasted so long and then when she went everything went what do you think dominic because you compared her to uh what's his name the austrian hungarian franz joseph yeah joseph i'm a big fan of him um uh but he reigned for years and years and years and then he did but he that his that that only fell apart really because of the first world war i would say and um i think yeah i i think she'll she'll hand over the the baton with the institution in actually pretty good shape considering how it could have been you You know, if you think about the pressures

of the late 20th century, the death of deference, the rise of populism, the sort of unbridled attention of the media. I mean, it's hard to imagine anybody coping as well as she coped. Right. So that's, you know, how will Charles, how will...

Well, of course, we'll be living in a different world then. And actually, I would say, I mean, how will they cope? I mean, way the less they do the better or they bide their time and wait for their loyal henchmen to right back them in an unexpected i don't think prince edward's ever going to be king tom we can dream right francis do you think prince edward would be king final question is this more about a vote, though, for Tom or Dominic? No, I'm just asking you, Jenny, do you think Prince Edward, A, has the killer instinct to make a bid for the crown, and B, do you think he'd make a good fist of ruling the country

as a despotic, absolute monarch? I don't think he's going to get to be king. Okay, well, there you go. Okay, that's a tough note on which to end. But, you know, we're not afraid to look at the grim truth and ask the big questions. So let's just talk a little bit about your exhibition because I believe your exhibition is – you said it was free to the public.

So it opens on the 28th of May. And you've got – am I right in thinking Joanna Lumley is going to be your – Joanna Lumley is one of the speakers. And all the talks are free you just people do need to book those so just go to sotheby's.com forward slash jubilee and people can book their places the exhibitions though of the seven queens and our 50 tiaras are totally free you don't have to book for that you can just come in at any time we're open from 9 to 4 30 we're doing a's Weekend so that's when we've got

the Battle of the Bears the Battle of the Bears I have to say the Battle of the Bears is what blew me in rather than the tiaras the Battle of the Bears sounds amazing

I had 50 tiaras though well the Battle of the Bears why don't you combine the two and have the Battle of the Bears with them wearing the tiaras well they could fight over the tiaras yeah

or fight with tiaras I think 50 to 50 tiaras I mean that's that's an impressive number of tiaras what's a collective number of tiaras what's a collective exactly a glitter a dazzle a dazzle of tiaras tell me you've got such a sort of you missed your vocation tiara enthusiast

and so what other what apart so we've we've had six items on on this what what other that stand out items that you've got so i do have item, which it kind of links to Commonwealth, going back to what we were talking about. It's a bit abstract. So it's a sculpture by Barbara Hepworth. And it's carved out of a single piece of wood. It's tall and oval. And it has these really elegant sort of holes in it, I guess.

And those holes are painted white. And it was carved in 1945. So just pre-Elizabeth's coming to the throne. But it's really special because it's unique where a lot of her work was made into bronze. And I guess I wanted to mention it because we talked quite a lot about Commonwealth, but I didn't have an object at the time to represent Commonwealth.

But I think this sculpture sort of does because post-war, the British Council were amazing for our artists at getting them out to the Commonwealth. They sort of saw it as a way of having cultural partnerships and of getting our artists out to a wider public. So the British Council sent people like Hepworth and more around the world, almost as their spokespeople, as the Queen's spokespeople, to show how creative we were and what we were making at home, if you like. And I think this sculpture kind of represents that. Does that point about soft power again, I guess, isn't it?

Yeah. And also Hepworth, I mean, she's quite radical. There's very few major female artists, actually, in the pre-war, pre-Second World War period. There's luckily more now. But, you know, she was like the queen herself in that she was a rare thing, A, to be a female artist,

but to be a female sculptor, that was super rare. She had loads of kids amongst the way just like it's pretty amazing the queen's four kids i mean not as many as victoria but you never that that's quite a feat in itself even though she did all this pageantry pregnant and constantly traveling wasn't she constantly traveling i mean essentially going back to the origins of the commonwealth i mean basically whenever there was um you know a political crisis or something the government would send her out and and she'd be off to india or ghana or something for months at a time because you happen to go by ship and then often as i said they'd send artists works out too

as a way i suppose of um telling the message of britain to that wider audience but i have an exhibition of i don't know 20 objects that could tell the story to people wherever it was in Hong Kong or yeah Nairobi or wherever it be in a way I mean she couldn't visit all those places all the time but the art objects could so the exhibition you need to go to sotheby's.com uh slash jubilee uh the big revelation of today's podcast again is uh Frances Christie saying that she doesn't think Prince Edward will be king. And in the event of the succession crisis, you cannot expect her to be backing Tom Holland's favourite candidate. So on that bombshell,

do go to the Sotheby's exhibition. Enjoy the Jubilee. And thank you again, Frances, for a really fun conversation. And we'll see you all next time on The Rest is History. Goodbye. Bye. Bye-bye. Thanks for listening to The Rest is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com.

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