The Rest Is History - 190. Jubilees

Episode Date: May 30, 2022

In today's episode of The Rest Is History Dominic and Tom look at how Jubilees have served as a moment for Britain to stop and reflect. From the celebrations of George III, Queen Victoria and George V to the modern jamborees of Elizabeth II, here's all you need to know before this year's Platinum 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 Producer: 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. It was awful. The worst moment of all was the Buckingham Palace concert, where the poor Queen pledged allegiance to the vile new culture of talentless celebrity. Any institution that has to suck up to Grace Jones and Paul McCartney to get down with the kids has plainly lost the will to live. It is a measure of how bad things have got that Her Majesty has to pretend to like the cacophonous,

semi-literate, musically trite rubbish that seems to have invaded almost every space in this country. I bet she loathes it, really. Its songs are the hymns and anthems of the modern religion of the self. Self-pity, self-indulgence, drugs, loveless sex. They are the exact opposite of the Queen's pledge made on her 21st birthday in 1947 that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service uh that was a uh i think he's a journalist is he peter hitchens who is that right the he's the brother of um of christopher hitchens i think he is tom and given that you've never heard of him that was an uncanny impersonation of someone you've never heard of well i i think the uh the character emerges from from the pros from the pros so um yeah so he was right that was uh peter hitchens writing on the jubilee uh in 2012 so which one was that i can't remember at least track of my jubilees that's the diamond the diamond jubilee of elizabeth the second and um people will probably have noticed that this week uh we are celebrating the 70th jubilee

the platinum jubilee platinum jubilee so the queen very much set it breaking all records and we thought it would be fun didn't we dominic actually you did it's your idea it's a brilliant idea to look at the history of jubilees yes because actually the jubilees it was a sort of mad idea on my part but then when we started looking into it i think we realized that jubilees are actually weirdly, profoundly interesting, because they're great punctuation points. They're the moments when Britain has stopped and sort of taken stock of itself. And actually, the really interesting thing that comes through from the jubilees, as we'll discover in the next sort of 45 minutes to an hour or so, it's not the spectacle of the monarch waving from

the balcony. I mean, that never changes. and it's actually not very interesting what's interesting are all the other things that are going on and the things that the country says about itself yeah where britain thinks it is and i think as we'll see with its imperial history in particular the sort of the the enmeshing of the personality of the monarch and the position of the royal family with the narrative about britain and its place in the world is really, really interesting. So it's a kind of temperature check. Yeah. On the health and fever of the nation. Yeah. You said Britain. Do other monarchs celebrate jubilees? Gosh, they must. The Dutch, the Danes, the Norwegians. But you're, well, you know about

jubilees better than I do. So I don't even know where the word comes from. So the jubilees, it's biblical and it's in Leviticus. Every seventh year. So that's the yearly equivalent of the Sabbath. The children of Israel are commanded to celebrate the sabbatical year, which basically means, you know, don't leave your fields fallow, free your slaves, all that kind of stuff. And so you have seven sabbatical years and then the year after that which is the 50th year that's the jubilee so jubilee is a 50th anniversary and don't they have catholic jubilees doesn't the pope do something yes so that's so that was introduced by um boniface the eighth who was i think we actually talked in the members um episode about

famous slaps in history do you remember that famous slaps in history. Do you remember that? Famous slaps in history. He got slapped. So he was the Pope and he got slapped by people who'd burst into his summer residence on the orders of the French King. So Boniface VIII is the Pope before the Avignon exile, and he gets into a massive bust up with the King of France. But in 1300, he instituted a jubilee. So there's some doors.

When I was at St. Peter's last year, I noticed there was some door that only gets opened in a jubilee so and what there's some doors when i was at saint peter's last year i noticed there was some door that only gets opened in a jubilee well i don't know why i'm not sure why either the papacy has well the catholic church has jubilees i think every 25 years now yeah you can have 25 25th or 50th jubilees a famous example of monarchies celebrating anniversaries was in ancient egypt so you have the said the said festival which was celebrated every uh after 30 years and then kind of i don't know four or five years after that and so on and the whole aim was designed to restore the um the masculine potency of the pharaoh so So that's something that hasn't passed into our own modern tradition. No, although it might have done for one of the Georges.

Although typically, a friend of the show, Akhenaten, he celebrated his said after three years. So ever the rebel. And of course, we've done the Shah's great party at the beginning of the 1970s to mark the one billionth anniversary. Yeah, 2,500th anniversary yeah 2500th anniversary of cyrus of the persians so yeah and actually one of the interesting things when jubilees first came in in britain is that in the victorian period there was some resistance to them

because they were thought of as un-british but why did they come in so it's with george the third is the first right so the first one is george is george the third so i suppose you could argue one reason they come in is simply because george the third is setting sort of breaking records for longevity but also the timing i think is really important so it's a very odd jubilee this one um you might say overseas listeners might say it's sort of typically british in that it's kind of in the wrong year because he came to the throne in 1760, but he has his Jubilee in October 1809. So it's when he's entering into his 50th year rather than marking 50 years. And I think it's pretty clear that the reason that the Jubilee happens is really because Britain's in the Napoleonic Wars.

And they want to cheer everyone up. Yeah, and the war hasn't been going terribly well. So the British have been fighting in Flanders, and that's completely bogged down. Wellington's gone off to the peninsula for the Peninsular War. But nothing has been heard from Wellington for some months, I think. And nobody really knows what's going on. Of course, because the news takes a long time to reach Britain. So nobody really knows what's going on in the Peninsular news takes a long time to reach Britain. So nobody really knows what's going on in the peninsula or everybody's tired.

You know, food prices are high. Everybody's a bit miserable. So the anniversary, so George III's 50th, is a great opportunity for people to cheer themselves up, but also to sort of feel good about being British. The other thing, of course, is that some of our, I know we have a lot of American listeners, and they may say, George III, what a terrible tyrant and stuff. But, of course, is that some of our, I know we have a lot of American listeners and they may say, George III, what a terrible tyrant and stuff. But of course, that's not at all

how he was perceived in Britain. No, cooking George. Yeah, he's farmer George. He's very, very popular, by and large, with the people. He hasn't gone mad yet. He's had episodes of madness. So this is actually one of the tragic things

about George III. So this is pretty much his last moments of sanity before. It's a nice way to go out. His daughter dies a year later, and that just drives him completely over the brink into madness. And he spends the rest of his life mad. So this is like this really is his last kind of hurrah. And basically, it's very 18th century. I mean, I know it's 1809, but it feels very 18th century.

So they have ox roasts and kind of towns and villages across plumb duff plumb duff lots of beer lots of sermons everybody sings god save the king um there are some sort of nice elements so he i mean george is quite absent because his health is so poor i mean he's he's old. He's old. He's also mentally very frail. And there's a big fete at Windsor that he goes to with his family and there are fireworks. Is that the one where there's the figure of Britannia being pulled to and fro in a chariot drawn by seahorses and illumined by fireworks?

Yeah. Yeah, that's right. A more striking spectacle was never witnessed. Yes. Which I find hard to believe. Well, you do get people writing accounts of this. So they clearly know it's a kind of red letter day. So there's an account of the celebration of the Jubilee,

collected and published by a lady, the wife of a naval officer. And that's one of these sources that we get all this from, because obviously there aren't that many sources for this compared with subsequent Jubilees. But what we do know is military deserters prisoners of war are pardoned but not if they're french and so and this is being held on the anniversary of the battle of agincourt right exactly yeah so it's a battle so it's a kind of anti-french theme to the whole thing there absolutely is um but some of the things that we now associate with Jubilees, so for example, I mean, I've still got somewhere

my silver Jubilee mug from 1977. The sort of, the creation of kind of China plates and mugs and things like that. I mean, that obviously, this is a time when people do love to have China mugs and plates. And it's an absolute boom time, isn't it, for the potteries? Exactly, exactly. And that's, I mean what the reason we do it

now is partly a sort of legacy from all this so it's a day it's a it's a it's a sort of a it's a nice sort of jamboree but it's nothing massively more than that you know people don't use that first jubilee as an opportunity for tremendous introspection i mean it's sort of a part i say it would really be forgotten actually it's a kind of not being subsequent jubilees it's a kind of merry england it is merry england it's very merry merry england and then going mad um a few months later poor old you know what george the third it's very sad i was reading andrew roberts's biography that came out last year um and he's basically spent the last 10 years of his life weeping uncontrollably and endlessly tying up handkerchiefs and unbuttoning unbuttoning waistcoats i think that they banned um productions of king lear didn't they did they

i think they maybe that's an urban myth so um in his biography roberts basically blasts holes in the thesis that george had porphyria he says that's rubbish he he thinks he had um manic depression and and that the treatment just kind of made it no treatment was so harsh that just made it a million times worse and the treatment you know compounded the existing problem and that that's you know it wasn't it wasn't some genetic you know it wasn't some inherited kind of physical um uh complaint as has often been suspected anyway that's a subject for another day. So that's the first Jubilee, that's 1809. And then there's a big break.

So an awful lot changes, obviously, in the next 80 or so years. So by the time we get to number two, which is Victoria's Golden Jubilee, 1887, I mean, Britain's in a very different position then. And this is the first time that you get i think it's still very much focused on the monarch but it's the first time when people are sort of slightly stopping to say aren't we great we're top nation all of this kind of stuff and you get an imperial element i think there had been some parties in in what was then bombay for george

the third but you get the imperial element really coming through as we some parties in in what was then bombay for george iii but you get the imperial element really coming through as we shall see in a second so 1887 is the year of a study in scarlet it's the year of h rider haggard's book she um you know what lord salisbury gave what the cabinet gave um queen victoria tom i do because you've sent it on your notes yeah okay he said he sent the queen a picture of himself yeah very uh very nice so victoria's been enthroned since 1837 and she's obviously lost prince albert she's been through a great sort of trough of unpopularity but she's come she's just come out the other side now has she so or does this help her come out i think it probably fits both i think she has come out of it but but it's it definitely helps um she has a uh she has a great banquet with foreign kings and princes

so there were no foreign kings and princes for george iii's jubilee well they wouldn't be able to travel would they no exactly but now there's all kinds of there's the king of denmark and there's willy of greece and there's all these kind of and presumably one of the reasons that it's not just that transport's improved and that Britain isn't at war with the continent, but also that basically they're all related to Queen Victoria. Exactly. It's a family gathering. She's the matriarch

of Europe, absolutely. On the 21st of June, which is a really big day, she has a parade through London and there are Indian troops in the the parade so there will see more indians later on um both in this jubilee and in the next jubilee but there's a big um uh sort of big service the queen of hawaii is there tom i know you're a big fan of the queen of hawaii

don't we yeah would you like to tell everybody the Queen of Hawaii's name? Have you got the notes in front of you? No, I don't think so. It's Queen Liliuokalani, I think it is. Yes. Yeah, you didn't have the courage to pronounce it. It's because I'd forgotten what her name was. I'm going to be honest. Anyway, the Queen has this tremendous time with Victoria.

She writes all about it in her journals, and she says, you know, I felt truly grateful never to be forgotten day, blah my dear albert my dear albert blah blah she has a united kingdom dress doesn't she she does with shamrocks on it and roses and so obviously the irish question is very much in the air right yes and um well there are two elements for this jubilee so this is her her golden jubilee that are worth investigating. So one is Ireland and the other is India. What do you think? What would you like to do first? I think the Irish one is so extraordinary that you should tell people about that.

So the Irish. So this is very, when I describe it, it will sound completely demented. Lord Salisbury, who had given the Queen a portrait of himself, part of him clearly envisaged that this might be the last gift she would ever get, because he was orchestrating a false flag, terrorist bombing plot against her and himself, and he aimed around the Jubilee. He told his daughter not to go. Yeah, well, I think the head of the Metropolitan Police. The head of the Metropolitan Police did. Told his children. It's extraordinary.

So this is an amazing, amazing story. And it was uncovered by a guy called Christy Campbell, who used to work for the Sunday Telegraph. He uncovered this about 20 years ago. And basically what happened was this. Sort of Fenian terrorism is a big issue in the late 1880s. And sort of Irish republicanism, Irish nationalism generally is a big issue in the late 1880s and sort of Irish republicanism Irish nationalism generally is a massive issue but also um Irish American terrorism exactly that's right sort of supported from America and um Lord Saul's but also Parnell the great sort of Irish um sort of independent spokesman the great sort of firebrand, the darling of the kind of...

The Nicholas Sturgeon of... Exactly. He's more than Nicholas Sturgeon. He's the Nelson Mandela of Ireland. And Lord Salisbury wants to discredit him. And the way he does it, he thinks, well, I'll organise, you know, I'll basically organise a terrorist plot against me, the Queen, and everybody else at the Jubilee and make sure that Parnell is associated with it.

And obviously Salisbury doesn't intend for the plot to succeed. So they basically get this guy called General Francis Millan, who's a mercenary who has been born in Tyrone, and he's got lots of links with America, so he can get money and dynamite and all this sort of stuff. And from people in Chicago and Pittsburgh. Millen is actually working for British intelligence. And has been for years, hasn't he?

Yeah, he has. The thing that the whole story reminds me of is, is it the Valley of Fear? Sherlock Holmes. Oh, yes. The story where it's all about undercover agents and Americans coming to Britain and engaging in these kinds of plots. I wonder whether Conan Doyle had picked up something. Maybe. Because there's also the, is it the Orange Pips? That's about the Ku Klux Klan operating in Britain, isn't it? Maybe that's the one I'm thinking of. Yeah. But there's a lot of

this sort of stuff in the air in the 1880s and 1890s so that wouldn't surprise me anyway um basically the american fenians provide dynamite and money and stuff and there are two guys thomas callan and michael harkins and they sail to britain from new york and um now there's a bit of a shambles because they don't actually arrive. They don't arrive until the very day that the Jubilee has started. The procession is meant to be blowing up as is happening. So they're hours away. They're in Liverpool. They don't even get there until it's too late. But then they sort of just, you know, travel around Britain, making contact with other sort of little sort of units, sort of fenian units and that basically gives away the entire fenian network in britain to the gets rolled up yeah but but as you say the head of the metropolitan police's secret department

who was an anchor james monroe he did tell his children not to go to that's very guy forks isn't it to the service it's very guy for yeah um and they did try to um associate it with parnell so the government did say you know parnell knew about this um this shows how terrible the whole thing is and it is a bizarre that lord salisbury knew about it sort of but of course the salisbury's have have form of this i know so exactly so that's how i was thinking with guy forks i mean it goes all the way back to yeah because we said in our guy forks podcast we talked about whether his ancestor had really been the architect of the gunpowder block yeah so maybe

it's just a family tradition if any member of the salisbury family is listening maybe they can tell us if they're if they're planning anything this time um now the other thing that's really interesting about this Jubilee is the Indian element to it. Because, of course, Victoria is Empress of India, and it matters to her enormously that there's an Indian element. And she says, basically, my way of recognizing the Indian side to my life is to have some Indian servants servants along for the for the jubilee and they

get a man who basically runs a prison um to to send to recommend two people and one of them is this man who ends up being called the munchie he's abdul kareem and he's the son of a hospital assistant um and he he's from near jansi it's the home to the Rani of Jhansi. Who is the Rani of Jhansi? The Rani of Jhansi is the queen who takes a leading role in what the British call the Indian Mutiny. Oh, very good. And Indians call the, what was it, the First War of Independence or something. Right. And she's a flashman.

Of course she is. Yeah. And you either she'd played cricket with you or she'd been to bed with flashman one or the other um so so there's a obviously a kind of queenly link there very nice so anyway the munchie comes he's abdul kareem he arrives in june of the 1887 the year of the um jubilee he first serves victoria a breakfast um two days after the jubilee and they become tremendous friends he He teaches her Urdu, he makes her curries,

all this sort of carry on. And everybody else hates him. They really resent him. They think that she was infatuated with him. And is this before or after she has her fling with Billy Colony? That, I don't know, actually. I'm thinking after. I think after.

Because I think the Munchie is sort of a bit of a replacement. billy colony that i don't know actually i'm thinking after i think after okay because i think the munchie is sort of a a bit of a replacement they've had there's been two films on that haven't there there's there's been the one with the munchie and the one with john brown yeah that's right um and obviously she became slightly infatuated didn't she we know from her her the way she was wrote about prince albert that she's quite a bit she's a very she's a woman of strong feelings, shall we say. And I think some of the correspondence was destroyed

after her death, or after his death, anyway. Yeah, on the orders of Edward VII. Exactly. Probably just because it was a bit embarrassing, rather than kind of... I'd be very surprised if it was kind of lewd correspondence or something. Right um we're going

very slowly tom very slowly well should we have a break now and then come maybe we should have a diamond jubilee return for the diamond which is it's the absolute i mean that's the acme it's the apogee of jubilees absolutely the top jubilee so that's something to look forward to okay so we will see you back after the break and when we come come back, we will be here with Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. 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-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com That's therestisentertainment.com There were hussars from Canada

and carabiniers from Knatal, camel troops from Bikina and Dayak headhunters from North Borneo wearing bright red pillbox hats and commanded by Captain W. Raffles Flint. The 17 officers of the Indian Imperial Service troops were all princes and the Hong Kong Chinese police wore conical hats. There were Malays and Sinhalese and houses from the Niger and the Gold Coast, Jamaicans in white gaiters and ornately embroidered jackets, British Guyana police in caps like French gendarmes, Cypriot Zapiers whose fezzes struck so jarring a chord that some of the crowd hissed them, supposing them to be Turks, and a jangling squadron of Indian lancers led by a British officer in a white spiked helmet. London had never seen such a spectacle. One of the Maoris weighed 28 stone, one of the Dayaks had taken 13 human heads that was jan morris um writing uh the middle

volume of pax britannica describing the jubilee procession um and dominic you said before the break that this is the top jubilee and basically it's the top jubilee because it it coincides with the the apogée of British imperial self-confidence. It absolutely does. So I think it's the top jubilee, both, as you say, because Britain's at its zenith, but also because it's by far the most interesting. Because people at the time absolutely took this jubilee as, they took it as the crowning glory of the 19th century,

the sort of climax, the moment that proved Britain was indisputably top nation. Actually, and when I say people, I don't just mean people in Britain thought that, people thought that overseas. Right, yes, they did, didn't they? So even the New York Times. Well, I mean, we'll get into the details of the Jubilee in a second. But as you say, the New York Times said, we are a part, it boasted, it boasted, we are a part and a great part of this greater Britain, which seems so plainly destined to dominate the planet. So that's 1897. I mean, there's a brilliant poem by a guy called Alfred Raleigh Goldsmith, writing in Philadelphia.

Our father's land, our mother's home, by freedom glorified. Her conquering sons the wide world roam and plant her flag in pride. For England's fame, for thy loved name fame for thy love name have bled have won have died victoria victoria long live and nation's queen that's extraordinary isn't it that's extraordinary and the kaiser sends a telegram and um kruger's in the middle of the burr war releases two british prisoners to mark the occasion so it's um it it is a kind of international occasion yeah so well there's they've just had the Jameson raid in South Africa. That's the prisoners that he's releasing.

But yes, so Britain now has an empire with 450 million people in it. And it's expanded. It's 10 times the size it was when Victoria came to the throne. I mean, that's incredible, isn't it? The amount of change that has happened since she came to the throne, also obviously since that first jubilee of George III, is astonishing. So we're now in a world of electric light, of the telegraph,

of obviously of railways, of all kinds of sort of developments that are going to lead to the cinema and motorcars, planes, all this sort of stuff. Friend of the show, Lord Kitchener, is currently avenging the death of very much a friend of the show, General Gordon, in the Sudan at the time. The Battle of Omdurman is looming. So imperial sort of, imperial, I mean, can I say jingoism? I suppose, I don't know, the only person who's going to be cross is myself.

Imperial jingoism is absolutely at its height in the late 1890s. And one of the key political figures at the time, the man who makes the weather, as people said, is the colonial secretary, Joseph Chamberlain, Birmingham man. And he says, let's use the Jubilee as basically a festival of empire. And so the whole thing must be about the empire. So actually, Victoria takes a step,

although she's the focus of it she takes a bit of a back seat partly because she's got um horrendous kind of arthritis and stuff so she can't really join in with all the sort of activities and you know who she has well you do know because you've got the notes so on the night of the 21st of june she has dinner with fran archduke franz ferdinand yeah amazing um yeah. The Kaiser doesn't go, I don't think. But he does, as I said, he sends a telegram. Yeah, he's probably worried about footwear. No, I think he'd definitely wear the right footwear

to a Jubilee. I think it's yachting that scrambles him. I think military possessions, he's absolutely on top of. But talking of telegrams and the Imperial, Victoria sends a telegram, doesn't she? She goes to the telegram room in Buckingham Palace. And the message, from my heart, I thank my beloved people. And it goes winging away.

It does. She presses a button. Cross the cables. She presses an electric button. To Canada and Australia and India and Africa. Exactly. All the reaches of the British Empire. And then they have this, as you described, this extraordinary parade.

So, I mean, people from all corners of the earth who are sort of cheered by the crowd. The crowds have never seen anything like it. There are hundreds of thousands of people on the streets of London watching this colossal, colossal parade. Do you want the Daily Mail set of the parade, Tom? Up they came, more and more. Rubbish. No, no, no. It's up they came, more and more.

New types, new realms at every couple of yards. An anthropological museum. A living gazetteer of the British Empire. The Queen obviously loves all this because she loves being Empress of India. She loves being the head of the empire. There's a court circular published that says that she addressed her troops in Hindustani, which was completely made up.

But when she was shown this, she said, you can print it anyway because I could have done so had I so wished. Could she? So she learnt Hindustani in Urdu. Maybe she'd learnt it from the munchie i don't know i think actually she couldn't have done but i think she could have done it in urdu yeah i suppose she could it depends how much she'd retained from the munchie

yeah um anyway interesting yes so if there are any quick experts on queen victoria's facility with indian languages so um the the newspaper that i just referred to britain's favorite newspaper then as now um they had a special edition printed in gold ink for the daily special golden edition of the daily mail every edition is a golden edition tom very older um shouldn't it be printed in diamond it should have been printed do you want their editorial said how many millions of years has the sun stood in heaven but the sun never looked down until yesterday upon the embodiment of so much energy and power? Death is gross.

I think Augustus would perhaps disagree. But there are two really interesting sort of side notes. orchestrated the whole thing. He's a big believer in protectionism, in imperial unity, all this stuff. And he hosts a colonial conference as soon as the Jubilee is over with the 11 prime ministers. So 11 places, Newfoundland, New South Wales, all these sort of places, sent delegations. They have this great meeting. And he really wants a permanent imperial council. He wants basically an imperial federation that will create a greater Britain, a genuine greater Britain.

And they basically don't go for it. So that's a bit of a dog that doesn't bark. Because they want to keep their autonomy. Because they want their autonomy. And so even there, the height of Britain's power in 1897, this moment that, as you say, Jan Morris takes as the centrepiece of the entire book, Pax Britannica, the Jubilee, was the moment when Britain's power was greater than it ever would be again.

Even then, I think there's a sign that actually the sands of time are kind of… Well, yes. And so the most famous literary product of this Jubilee is a poem by Rudyard Kipling, who is, of course, famed as the of the of this jubilee is a poem by roger kipling who is of course famed as the laureate of empire and at the time is is seen as the kind of the voice of britain yeah absolutely he sums up the the imperial mood the imperial spirit in his his short stories in his poetry um he's probably the most famous writer in the world. Yeah, I think that's probably fair. And he gets asked by the Times to write a poem to mark the Jubilee.

And the poem that he writes isn't at all what people have been expecting because it's called Recessional. And it's basically a warning to Britain that it will all vanish. And so the famous verse in it, far called our navies melt away on dune and headland sinks the fire. Lo, all our pomp of yesterday is one with Nineveh and Tyre. Judge of the nation, spare us yet, lest we forget, lest we forget. And that was prompted, I think, by him seeing a review of the Royal Navy at Spithead. And he was blown away by it and then felt this kind of presentiment of doom, hubris and nemesis.

It's one of the fascinating things about Kipling, isn't it? At the same time as he is extolling the empire and he absolutely believes in it. And he is the ultimate kind of, he's the poet laureate of empire but at this at this high point he writes this poem that is absolutely shadowed by impending doom well loss all that sort of yeah and i mean you of course he does celebrate empire but he is also he far from whitewashes it he no he's not he's you know he's very alert to the the dark side to it i mean he's he's a brilliant writer. We should definitely do an episode on him.

We should. Because you know the poem that he originally started writing? The White Man's Burden. The White Man's Burden is the poem he started writing in the Jubilee year. And then he ditched it and then reworked it during the Spanish-American War when he sent it to Teddy Roosevelt. But I mean, the message of The White Man's Burden is utterly different from that of... And that's the fascinating thing about Kipling, that he clearly believes both things equally. He believes in empire, but he also knows that it's transitory and that it's flawed and all this sort of stuff. And I think that's why sometimes people sort of diss Kipling and they

say, oh, he's just a sort of crusty old reactionary, but obviously that's what... But this, I mean, that poem, Recessional, it's a poem that is equal to the irony of that British Imperial Apogee. Yeah. I mean, it beautifully conveys the mixture of hubris and looming nemesis that obviously at a century more distance we can absolutely see in it. I think, and the other reason it works so well is even at that moment in 1897 Britain is being overtaken

by the United States and Germany economically. So even as people are wearing ever fancier hats and sort of cheering empire with ever more gusto, the sort of you know, it is beginning to fall behind. I mean, I wonder if there isn't a rule of imperialism,

that the more ludicrous the hats worn by imperialists or the headwear, the nearer to disaster it's coming. I'm sure that's true, because actually the people who are the imperialists in the 1890s are all about spectacle, pomp, pageantry. Swagger. I mean, the whole thing is a kind of confidence trick, isn't it? It is. Exactly.

Of course it is. Of course it is. But of course, the people who built the empire were not really into that because they were hard-nosed entrepreneurs trying to make money. And, you know, they wouldn't have had time to do parades because they were too busy. But it's all a kind of slight hint of smoke and mirrors about that. Definitely. The whole shebang.

Which means that by the next Jubilee, that is becoming very evident, isn't it? So the next Jubilee is actually a bit of a poor relation of Jubilees. It's a friend of the show, George V, stamp collector, a creaser of his trousers at the sides rather than the fronts and the back. Knocked out in the first episode of the World Cup of...ly i thought because i really like george v he's one of my favorite i like a boring king and he's a very boring he's so boring um yeah but his boringness is interesting and really important like the queens so exactly so george v has steered britain from the first world war through the depression and it's just coming out to the depression now 1935 it's his silver jubilee so 25 years monarchy has had a really tough time

obviously and if you think about his family that the kaiser has been booted out in germany the czar has been executed in russia but the british monarchy has succeeded by making itself quite humdrum and he's a very hum his humdrumness is what makes him popular. So I do like the embroidery kits that were given out that sum him up thus. Prince of sportsmen, brilliant shot, but happiest aboard his yacht. Where, of course, he does wear the right shoes.

Well, he's a sickler. I mean, he wouldn't let people come to Buckingham Palace if they're in the wrong shoes. And I'm not making that up. Quite right too. You had to wear the right foot the right shoes well he's a sickler i mean he he wouldn't let people come to buckingham palace if they're in the wrong shoes and and i'm not making that up you know you're quite right too you had to wear the right stuff so there's a there's a it's not as big as a blowout as the other um jubilees there isn't really so much of an imperial dimension certainly not in terms of the parades although of course his jubilee is celebrated in in parts of the empire because it's the depression there is a little bit of a shadow. So they're in places where there's high unemployment or there's a strong sort of left-wing political presence.

It's not as well supported as elsewhere. Are there kind of active demonstrations against it? There aren't really demonstrations, but for example, there's a place in Fife called Lumpinans, or Lumpinans, I think it's Lumpinans, where local communist councillors oppose celebrating the Jubilee and sort of make a fuss about it and say they're just a bunch of royal parasites. So there are hints of sort of criticism, which there absolutely were not in 1897. George's own speech mentions the Depression. So he says, In the midst of this day's rejoicing,

I grieve to think of the numbers of my people who are still without work. We owe it to them and not least to those who are suffering from any form of disablement or the sympathy and help that we can give and all this sort of stuff. So there's an acknowledgement of the kind of tough economic times. He's surprised.

He's famously very surprised when he goes. He goes on this sort of tour of London, the East End and stuff, and people are cheering and waving flags. And he says, which, again, is something that I think is very endearing. He says, I had no idea they felt like that about me. I'm beginning to think they must really like me for myself, which is quite sweet, I think, and quite self-knowing. But do you think that's true?

I think people did like him for himself, actually. I think they liked his… Pooterish quality. Yeah, his pooterish quality, exactly. And actually, I think this is a very pooterish Jubilee, and that is the point. Because it's only… I was having a look when I was thinking about this Jubilee. It's only a few months.

So it's the previous September. The Nazis had held the Nuremberg Rally that Leni riefenstahl filmed for the triumph of the will and the contrast between that you know with the amazing light shows with this the choreography the cinematography and then this i mean the best thing about this jubilee is they invent an ancestor of coronation chicken and they name a chimpanzee jubilee at london zoo yes so in other words it's so small scale and mundane and kind of sweet that in a way that kind of it's a rebuke to the sort of strutting swagger of mussolini or the or the well i i wonder whether um because for the dictators and particularly for hitler the assumption is that that fascism is the face of the future.

It's powerful. It's dramatic. It's visual. And that the democracies are mired in decline and are shabby and dull. Yeah. And it's the difference between a crisp, you know, Nazi uniform and Chamberlain's wing collar, basically. Yeah. You know, it's, you know, umbrellas against whatever the Nazis have.

Well, it's... Turbo missiles or whatever. Exactly. What it is, is the difference between that footage you have of crowds in Nuremberg who are beside themselves with excitement, screaming at the top of their lungs and doing their Nazi salutes, absolutely invigorated and energised. And they're kind of, you know, Lenny Riefenstahl's kind of framing

their prime specimens of humanity. And then meanwhile in london there are people with terrible teeth eating pies with under some bunting because of course the poor pie people are going to win because of this uh i mean there are there are two things that the british traditionally have liked to think about themselves which might seem contradictory and one is that uh they don't like to make a fuss and that waving flags is for you know we don't obsess about flags and that's for foreigners and the other thing is is that we do royal processions terribly well and they're obviously completely contradictory yeah but i guess that that this silver jubilee in 1935 perhaps uh you

know squares that particular circle perhaps yeah i Yeah, I think it does, because it's sort of flag-waving in an understated way, isn't it? Yeah, an apologetic way. Apologetic way, which is also true of the next Jubilee, the Silver Jubilee in 1977. Which I can actually remember. Yeah, it's one of the very first things I very vaguely remember. I was nine.

I was nine. Yeah. There's a photo on my website of myself at the silver jubilee looking patriotic yeah i'm waving a flag of course at the age of about sort of though it continues three or something yes exactly so this is one of the first jubilees where it inaugurated the tradition of everybody saying nobody will go it'll be a terrible disaster because and no one can um express no one can sum this up better than you, 1977, I mean, if 1935 was a bad year for Britain,

relative to other countries, 1977 is a terrible year. Yes, it is a bad year. So we'd just been bailed out by the International Monetary Fund the year before in 1976. In 1975, we'd set our post-war record of 26 inflation um so jim callahan is prime minister to be broken perhaps who knows well who knows exactly um

we've got a labor government uh they have a very funny discussion captured in tony ben's diaries where ben wants to give her uh he says what should we give her as a present he's got a great idea of a vase he's got a vase that's been carved by a Polish miner. And he thinks something like that carved out of coal would go down well with them. And it's got to be something that reflects the values of the labor movement. And James Callaghan, who's very patriotic and an absolutely staunch monarchist, sits through this kind of smiling through gritted teeth and then basically

gets his wife to go off and buy the queen a silver coffee pot for which each member of the cabinet has to pay 15 pounds as a contribution as if the queen didn't have a coffee pot already so obviously this is the jubilee most famous really for the sex pistols but i think it's probably true to say that um most people are not the Sex Pistols persuasion, although the song sells tons and tons of copies. Because when the day comes, as it always happens with jubilees, there's a great sort of outpouring of sort of patriotism and jollity and stuff. And I learned from you, from your notes, there were even special Jubilee editions of Penthouse, Mayfair and Forum. Very 70s. Very 70s. Did your researches lead you to...

No, I've never... I bet you can get them on eBay. Though I think it's a slightly weird thing trying to stop me on eBay. Again, if any listeners out there have copies of the special Jubilee editions, we'd be very interested to know. There's lots of people are wearing Union Jack pants and all this sort of stuff. And it's the golden age of the tea towel, isn't it? It is absolutely the golden age of the tea towel. So they do have Republican events.

There's a rally organized by the libertarian communists at Blackheath, but only five people turned up. So that wasn't a great success. But actually, when you look at the, as I said before, at the beginning of the program, what's really interesting is what people say about Britain.

So the Times, complete contrast with what newspapers had said in 1897, says, this is its leader. It says, the popular imagination can no longer feed on the glories and wonders of empire,

nor it has to be admitted as the Britain of 1977, relieved it has to be admitted as the Britain of 1977, relieved of almost all its imperial baggage, present the sort of spectacle to light in the mind the bonfires of national rejoicing. And Time magazine had a very similar sort of piece, looking from America. The past quarter century has witnessed enfeeblement and decline, the end of an empire, the shrinking value of of the pound near stagnation of a formerly innovative economy it's this grim reality that the jubilee briefly banished but it will still be there to challenge britons when their party is over so the silver jubilee which i remember quite fondly because it's basically the first thing i can ever remember

the sort of village fate and stuff um i think it's a great party but there's a real sense of it being a moment of escapism and what's it rain otherwise yeah exactly it rained it rained it's it's an otherwise fairly miserable sort of story um i suppose the uh as well as um sex pistols derrick jarman made a film called jubilee the following year oh yeah i know you had well i had uh toy I had Adamant. And the plot is that Elizabeth I is transported by John Dee into the present. And it's kind of, you know, Britain absolutely is worse with fires and drizzle. And I think somebody just murdered Elizabeth II. And the Queen kind of goes around and there are loads of punks. That's very Derek Jarman.

Yeah. I mean, nothing particularly happens. But it's also very late 70s, isn't it? Yeah, it's very late 70s. That sort of bleak, drizzly, miserable kind of thing. Yeah, I mean, so Jubilee is the 1977 equivalent of Kipling's Recessional. Yeah. So there'd be an interesting essay there.

That's a very good essay, Tom. I think you should write it. So let's move on. The next Jubilee, we've got two more to go. 2002. You remember 2002? They all blur. They do blur, don't they? The last two definitely blur. Actually, you know, what I do, I remember about that, or maybe I'm muddling it with the funeral of the Queen Mother. But there was, again, there's this great right royal British tradition of saying it's all going to be a disaster and they'll be interested. then actually there were massive massive crowds yes well this is what happens and

I remember going out thinking the way you know not even really being aware that there would be crowds not even thinking about it to go and get something and finding myself on you know just unable to move because they were so packed so the guardian I um the guardian had had great fun in the first half of the year saying what a a terrible disaster the Jubilee was going to be. Wave that flag and open that champagne, says his colonist, John O'Farrell, because for a decade now, nobody has cared about the monarchy. Hooray, we won't have to hold a street party and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then the Guardian published an editorial saying,

kind of, ha, ha, ha, there aren't going to be any events. The list of events bears a forlorn look. So far, it lists a golden Jubilee snooker and paul's ornament in plymouth the planting of an oak in the village of oxhill warwickshire the planting of a jubilee garden at cranmore infant school in shirley birmingham the placing of small fountains all over london and precious little else and of course was there anything else well there was because there was this there were these huge concerts yeah but what's it were there any permanent memorials? I don't know.

Well, I mean... So the Guardian was right. No, no, because what everybody remembers that Jubilee for is Brian May. Yes, I do remember Brian May. Brian May on the... But it's not the equivalent of a great, mighty, flourishing, golden Jubilee, whatever it was, memorial. Well, you obviously stand with Peter Hitchens here, don't you? Who? with peter hitchens uh here don't you who peter hitchens who you obviously don't know who he is but uh you you he agrees with you that a rock

concert is not appropriate and it's not no i'm fine i have no problem with rock concerts so here's the thing i'm just i'm just standing up for the guardian because you're sneering at the guardian for having said that there are no permanent memorials and i'm no, it didn't say there are no permanent memorials. It said there were going to be no good events. Okay. All right. Okay. That's what it said.

I take it. And actually what happened is first they hold a classical concert, the prom at the palace, and 2 really the first time, other than Elton John's appearance at Diana's funeral, that the House of Windsor had wholeheartedly embraced kind of British pop culture in that way. So Paul McCartney is there and Eric Clapton is there. Well, regular listeners will remember my brilliant rendition of Paul McCartney singing Her Majesty. But more people watch that, interestingly, than watch the Live Aid concert. That is such a Sandbrook fact. Yeah, I love that. That is such a Sandbrook fact.

So more people watch that and also far more people watch the next concert in 2012. 200 million people watch that concert around the world. I mean, that's a pretty big deal. The Queen, was present but she wore earplugs she wore earplugs yes and but the the um the best thing about that concert was um johnny rotten john lyden yeah he's great he's a reformed customer well i mean he he's he's he truly is the greatest punk because he he obviously hugely enjoys puncturing punk yeah which is the most punk thing to do yeah so um charles is a really good bloke who talks to plants there's nothing wrong with that yes he now says he really well he's then he's not advertising butter he then said when i heard william had popped the question to kate i had a nice cup of tea for them that's that's the spirit of 1977 yeah so anyway i think

that was a very important moment because the monarchy had been through this big dip with the in popularity with the death of diana and their their apparent sort of inability to emote in public and to sort of reconcile themselves to the, to the modern world. And basically the people who organized the Jubilee in 2002, I think the guy was called some Michael Pete who organized it incredibly clever kind of spin doctoring because they basically decided to harness the energies of pop and,

and make everyone love that. And energies of pop and make that. So everyone loved that. And they knew everybody would love that. And it just worked incredibly well to sort of revitalise their image. And that's what they basically did again 10 years later with the Diamond Jubilee, which is the most recent one, 2012. So that was the middle point of a trinity, wasn't it? So you had the Kate and William wedding in 2011,

and then you have the Olympics in London. Yes, that was the summer I hit my six was that the summer so that was the fourth part of that um yeah so four amazing mighty events mighty events and i went to see because i had um a friend who had a special birth on the thames to watch this flotilla of ships go by oh yeah and it was designed to look like a canaletto wasn't it lots of lots of tudor type ship poured with rain didn't it to in there it didn't i mean it hailed and sleeted and it was icy and the poor duke of edinburgh had to stand there for kind of three hours and he got a chill on his bladder did that that's right and it was i mean i i thought it was the most admirable thing

I watched as the Queen and Prince Philip went by. But do you remember what... Absolutely kind of rigid, standing to attention. The big story of that Jubilee was the BBC's coverage, which was absolutely mocked and derided because they didn't treat the river pageant with respect. Well, that was it, wasn't it? That was...

They had ill-informed commentary, which called the Queen Her Royal highness instead of her majesty and everybody went absolutely ballistic did top columnists in the daily mail well right do you know what punchy pieces on this they didn't because i had to go down to that jubilee i had to i didn't have but I did, to be a pundit on the BBC's Jubilee Roundup. And for some complicated logistical reason, I got there an hour too early or something. So they said, oh, sit in here at the back of the sort of control room where the producer who had been outed in the Daily Mail and other newspapers that day and condemned as a traitor to the realm where the producer who was called ben somebody and was a very media person with kind of precisely the right kind of trendy glasses yeah was sort of sweating and shouting at his underlings and just generally an absolute wreck um and all the underlings were smirking

because they had clearly been reading the papers with great enjoyment i see him utterly eviscerated by the tabloids so anyway that was good fun i enormously enjoyed that uh but that diamond jubilee was i mean that was basically a sequel to the golden jubilee it was more pop music more of the same which is i guess what they're doing this time isn't it there's going to be lots of concerts and i don't know is ed sheeran involved in some way isn't top tom cruise doing something tom cruise has done it it. Oh, has he? What did he do? He spoke in Slough or something. I can't remember. Not even Windsor.

Well, it might have been in Windsor. I mean, I don't know. He did something. He spoke. He looked, as he always does, you know, suspiciously young. That completely passed me by. Yeah. Tom, you're not following Tom Cruise's activities with the attention to detail that I would expect.

So what are you doing for the Jubilee, Tom? You know my commitment to getting this book done so that I can do more episodes of The Rest is History. So actually you're sacrificing yourself. I'm sacrificing my ability to share in the mood of national jollity for the good of this podcast. Are you a great man for street parties? I'd certainly go to one if it was being laid on, but I wouldn't organise it.

Are you? No, I'm not actually. That won't surprise you at all. You hate Royal Flammarie, don't you? I just don't like public jollity. No. I think, oh, I don't mind a bit of... I like a bit of bunting.

I don't mind a bit of bunting. We have some Union Jack bunting, actually. It won't surprise you tonight. I imagine Arthur must be very excited. They're doing a thing. I'll tell you what they're doing at his school. They're doing a day where everybody, each class has chosen a country of the Commonwealth thing i'll tell you what they're doing at his school they're doing a day where everybody each

class has chosen a country of the commonwealth and they're going to dress up as that country that's very 1935 right and they're going to go as a member and he came home and he said well we've got an absolutely excellent one and i said who are you all dressing up as he said he said mozambique right which has joined and i thought the english speak commonwealth of english-speaking nations it has joined i think hasn't it i think mozambique has joined although obviously it was part of the portuguese empire but i i foresee well i think that that needs to be sensitively handled dressing up as as mozambique yes yes because i obviously said well are they expecting you know a load of

justin trudeau style um costumes and clearly they're not because that would not be the thing um but i don't know because i don't want to send him i don't know what mozambique traditional dress is and i don't want to prejudge it in case we look well cancelable yeah well what do you do faced with that dilemma tom what having to go as mozambique as mozambique it's a good question i have no idea i don't really think about mozambique well if listeners have potent thoughts about maybe go uh wildlife perhaps goes a giraffe goes a giraffe do they have drafts in mozambique no the elephants they have elephants well there's an elephant you could go as an elephant. I mean, this is very 1897, isn't it, ultimately?

It is. It is. I mean, I think that the risk with celebrating a jubilee is that in decades to come, the photographs will come back and haunt you. It depends how your attire, though. If you're just wearing a nice sort of paper Union Jack hat. A Union Jack waistcoat. Yeah, if you're wearing a baby Union Jack hat,

you'll be absolutely fine. No, I think you've been embarrassed. Because as you said, you hate public displays of jollity. Yeah, but I'm not going to be doing it. I wouldn't wear a Union Jack hat. No, I'm saying you. You wouldn't want that. No, but I wouldn't go out. I mean, I'm not going to go out.

You're just going to kind of hunker down. Refuse having anything to do with it. Are you going to watch the concert? No, I'd watch the queen waving from the balcony and then i might well we all we all want to see if prince andrew's going to be there don't we i mean that's that's because that's the that's the massive great floater tom i will be waiting with pen poised to see what harry and megan are going to do yeah so are harry and megan going to be allowed there? And will Prince Andrew be released out of his dungeon? So Dom is saying that Harry and Andrew won't appear.

No, they're not welcome. Dom, is that absolutely official? That's our producer. He's saying, I think it is official that they're not involved. Okay, well, that diminishes the excitement of it. What's your favourite Jubilee? If you could have gone to any of these Jubilees, will you do it?

Oh, 1897. Oh, 1897. Yeah, 1897. I mean, the amazing spectacle and show. I like the thought of the ox roasts and the French. Le Plum Duff. Yeah, and the sort of Francophobia. Yes, and the warm beer of old England. Yeah, I think that would be it.

But I think you could have had that in 1897 and seen loads of headhunters. You could, yeah. Yeah, and and seen loads of headhunters. You could, yeah. And you'd have read your golden ink edition of the Daily Mail. I wouldn't. I'd have read it in the Times. I'd have read Kipling. Well, you know what Lord Salisbury said about the Daily Mail in 1897? I've seen something disapproving for boo boys, isn't it?

A newspaper written by office boys for office boys. Yeah, yeah. I think we've done the Jubilee justice, Tom. i think we have we've done multiple jubilee episodes yes i think it's been a right royal podcast uh you've done her majesty proud uh we hope you if you're celebrating that you enjoy it if your campaigning gets it we hope you don't then yeah then we wish you ill no i think i think it's an opportunity for everyone to enjoy themselves. Oh, no, Tom. This is the kind of appeasement mentality that I absolutely will not stand for.

Right. So enjoy your street parties. Enjoy your street parties. Have a lovely time. If you're not lucky enough to be British, you probably haven't been listening anyway, so. But I'm sure they'll be celebrating in Australia and Canada. Or maybe the Americans will be reading that poem.

That would be good, wouldn't it? Actually, Dominic, for our American listeners, do you want to just take us out by reading that poem again? Our father's land, our mother's home, by freedom glorified. Her conquering sons the wide world roam, and plant her flag in pride. For England's fame, for thy loved name, have bled, have have died victoria victoria long live our nation's queen goodbye bye

you 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. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. historypod.com