The Rest Is History - 30. A Royal Row

Episode Date: March 9, 2021

With the British monarchy under intense scrutiny following an interview with Harry and Meghan conducted by Oprah Winfrey, Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook use the lens of history to analyse the significance of this event. 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. family entertained themselves by going to the opera. Now they shock the world by a visit to Oprah. And with that truly terrible pun, courtesy of our producer, I welcome you to a special edition of The Rest Is History with me, Tom Holland, and our royal correspondent, Dominic Sandbrook. And Dominic, we've decided to have this special edition because,

of course, the bombshell news that's come from California, the interview with Prince Harry and Meghan. And basically, I guess the idea is that every so often something will happen in the news that has such kind of shed such an interesting light on the kind of broader sweep of history that perhaps we should just do a kind of guerrilla episode. So that's what we're doing. And I confess it was my idea and you were slightly sceptical about this. So let me just let me begin by asking you. Top royal watcher, Tom Holland. Yes. I mean, first, we're not talking about the rights and wrongs here of, you know, which side we're taking. But more broadly, you as a historian of modern Britain. Yeah. Suppose you lived to 100 and you were writing the history of Britain in the 2020s.

I'm guessing that you would include this episode. I mean, even now, a day after it, you would say, yeah, this is probably worth a chapter. I would, I think, because in previous books that I've done, The Wedding of Princess Anne, The Silver Jubilee, obviously Diana's Wedding, they've all kind of featured. So that, you know, it's always part of the national story, isn't it? The monarchy is woven into the stories that we tell about the country.

And that's, of course, why this is so incendiary. And you're right. I mean, even for people who absolutely can't stand the House of Winter, can't stand the monarchy or royal stories, it's hard to avoid this story because it feels like, you know, it opens up lots of discussions about Britishness, about celebrity, about race, about about celebrity about race about class about all these kinds of things which i'm sure we'll get into and i guess also about um

about america because yeah well we did our americanization yeah so which which went out yesterday uh and this in a sense is kind of a thing about americanisation. I guess that the royal family had its experience of Americanisation in the 30s with the abdication crisis. And that's the kind of the obvious parallel, Wallace Simpson marrying Edward VIII and divorcing. But I mean, slightly different because her Americanness wasn't really the problem, was it? She was the divorcee. That was the issue then. I don't know that I'd go quite along with that Tom I think that being a divorcee wasn't obviously the bulk of the issue with Wallace Simpson in 1936 but I think the American this was an element as well so because she was American she was seen as a kind of

parvenu as an outsider as a bit vulgar I mean that's always been the sort of British slightly condescending view of Americans hasn't it and i mean we were talking in our americanization podcast about american society heiresses coming to you know the sort of henry james novel characters these women coming over and getting themselves um entitled i mean literally well titled um british husbands and wallace simpson was seen at the time as the sort of culmination of that story. And obviously, there's a slight element of that with this story as well. I mean, I think Meghan's Americanness is key to the kind of culture clash as much as anything. And I think, I mean, I think it's, that's why I think this is actually a really fantastic story um i have you have you come across um a book by uh the

former portuguese uh europe minister bruno massange um i have seen it yeah uh eurasia he writes about dawn of eurasia is that it's that yeah but his most recent book was on is on america and he he posits this i i think brilliant thesis that what what's happened between Reagan and Trump is that Reagan kind of brought the glamour of Hollywood and the methods of Hollywood to Washington. But Trump, basically, he kind of brought Washington into the orbit of mass entertainment and essentially created a kind of fantasy version of America that lots and lots of Americans found more compelling than the reality. And that basically with social media and cable TV and everything, you can basically, as an American, inhabit a complete world of fantasy and reality barely kind of intrudes. And, you know, both on the left and the right, people construct entire kind of fantasies about

what America is. And in a sense megan is a kind of representative of that because she's from you know she's she's from the the entertainment industry which historically has been a kind of great motor of americanization and she essentially has brought that kind of fantasy idea to britain and the idea of becoming a princess you know she compared herself to the little mermaid i mean everything everything is kind of drawn from the world of movies and tv dramas and melodramas and things like that and usually when people like that come into the orbit of the royal family they get crushed by it diana would be the obvious example i mean she had had

fantasies about you know her prince prince charming and it all went horribly wrong and she was crushed by it but because megan comes bringing behind her the heft of this enormous entertainment industry and more importantly the this the kind of the ability to to to see the world through the prism of the entertainment industry it's run crash crash into the British variant of that, which is essentially a kind of royal one, which again is kind of steeped in fantasy and kind of incredible tradition. And basically, for the first time, I think,

the British variant is coming off worse. Well, I mean, I think it's coming off worse in the battle for international public opinion. There's no doubt about that. But the royal family, the British monarchy doesn't need to care about international public opinion does it i mean there's only one i don't think it does tom i think that's balderdash i really think that's balderdash because then that's judging it by the wrong standards see i think that's judging it by the

american tv if you like your american tv industry standards i think the the british royal family only really has to worry about one constituency, and that is the British. I mean, of course, they've got Australia, Canada, and so on. But it has to worry about the British domestic audience. But they've also got the Commonwealth, which is hugely important to the Queen. And she was giving a message about that the evening before the interview went out. And that's why the charge of racism is so incendiary, because I think that really does

matter I think it obviously matters in the United States where it's an absolute lightning rod issue but I think it does matter for the role that the Queen has played in the Commonwealth and of course very obviously for the role that the Royal Family plays in Britain as a kind of unifying symbol. Although the really interesting thing about that Tom, I was thinking about this yesterday about the racism charge and the race issue with the royal family and obviously there's been a lot of commentary in the last 24 hours of particularly from sort of the sort of guardian wing of the spectrum saying well the royal family is a symbol of colonialism and a symbol of racial prejudice and all the rest of it. And yet, actually, when you look at the last 50 or 60 years, the institution in Britain that's probably been done more than any,

I mean, the sort of venerable institution that has been most overtly non-racist is probably the monarchy. I mean, the Queen, in the 50s and 60s, at a time when politicians were keen to take a hard line on immigration and not to be seen as soft on immigration. The Queen was probably the one public figure who was most often photographed with, you know, black children or greeting crowds in Africa and all that sort of thing. As you say, the Commonwealth is hugely important to the Queen. And the Queen quite early on sort of, you know, she sort of wrapped herself in the robes of, you know, I'm leading a multicultural, multiracial Commonwealth rather than a sort of white dominated empire.

She went much further along those lines than the sort of tory governments of the 50s and 60s would have done so there's a kind of irony that at the very end of her life that issue is the one that has sort of come back to dominate the headlines yeah which but that's precisely why i think that the charge is so damaging because i think that um the monarchy was effective as a symbol of a multicultural mult multiracial Britain. I mean, I live in Brixton. I know Prince Charles has done lots of work here, very popular. But the kind of lurking suspicion now, I think that is incredibly damaging.

And I think that it does have a kind of international resonance because if the monarchy you know the monarchy is a symbol of britain yeah and if if your symbol is is seen as as kind of morally tainted then that becomes a problem you saw that with with trump i mean it trump was very damaging his reputation internationally for america because the presidency likewise is a symbol of the united states so but there's also an element to this which is just as surely tom is just merely the latest twist in the soap opera. I mean, we did a thing about the crown. We talked about the crown, didn't we, earlier in the series.

Again, your suggestion, Mr. You know, I'm convinced that deep down you have a collection of tea towels with Princess Anne's face on it. Because you're constantly coming up with these monarchy-themed podcast ideas. But, you know the in a sense what's happened in the last 24 hours is kind of what you know it's it's what the writer's room would come up with is the latest twist in the drama i don't think there's an element i don't think people are walking up and down the streets of britain in a state of shock reeling with

disbelief that this could have happened i mean my sense is that people think well this was obviously going to happen at some point. I mean, this was kind of in the script. It's been in the script for the last two years, and it was obviously coming. Do you not think? No, I think, no, I don't think so. I mean, I think that there were kind of two incendiary charges,

and they're incendiary because they have a particular purchase kind of generationally. So the issue of racism is one. And the other one is the mental health. That accusation that the royals didn't care about that. And I think that you can see there's a kind of perhaps an element of truth to that because the queen is the embodiment of the kind of stiff upper lip, the quiet and sober commitment to duty. Never talk about things. Just suppress everything.

Just carry on. Keep calm and carry on. Yeah. And that's the kind of ideal. And it comes up against another ideal, which is one, I mean, it's basically kind of generational depth charge i think that people under 40 say you know slightly arbitrary dividing line but i think it matters more to them than it does to people over and i think that that's reflected in the polling that people let's say of our age are slightly less sympathetic inclined to be slightly less i think

there's no doubt that there's a huge generational divide, isn't there? I mean, my daughter went back to school yesterday and I sort of asked, you know, do you talk about it? She said, oh, yes. I mean, you know, of course, we're all completely on Harry and Meghan's side. I mean, it wasn't even an issue. So I think that this is kind of it. And that's why I reckon that I don't want to tell you how to write your book.

Well, you're clearly going to. But as a way of kind of, you know, and you're right, of course. You're now going to tell me how to make this chapter more interesting, aren't you? I know it. You're going to say, now, Dominic, you should use this as a way into. Thanks for that. Thanks for that, Tom. That's very helpful um but would you not say as someone

who is brilliant at at um finding ways to to kind of shed light on broader social trends but this is kind of one of the reasons why this is interesting is it does shed a light on a kind of what is quite a significant generational sense of evolution yes it does and i suppose in exactly the same way as the diana story did in the. You see, I was thinking about this in the context of the podcast we did about the 90s, where we were talking at the end about kindness and about emoting and about crying. And these things as kind of, you know, the 90s felt like a watershed. I mean, if a watershed is not too much of a pun, given the crying analogy. But Diana in particular. Diana interviewed. So the Diana is the precedent for this. not too much of a pun given the crying analogy but diana in particular diana interviewed so

the diana is the is the precedent for this and i think there's definitely an element to which this is the you know it's the playing out of a trend that you've seen you know you talk about mental health or your or the sort of the airing of your linen you know the airing of your linen in public feels like something that you do in a post-90s social media age in a way that you might not have done before but all of that said there's also a much wider context, obviously, which is you've got the abdication crisis in 1936. And actually, British history is littered with royal bust-ups that are as incendiary as they are. I mean, this is not... Possibly even more. But let's have a break. Let's have a break now. And we'll come back perhaps to the longer view.

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. That's therestlesentertainment.com. Hello and welcome back to our Megan, the Restless History special with me, Tom Holland and Dominic Sambrook with me.

So, Dominic, let's put this in the broader sweep of history. Yes, let's. So we talked about kind of the American brand of fantasy, but there's a sense in which the royal family is a kind of focus for a distinctively British brand of fantasy because, you know, the queen is head of state because she's anointed uh and the ritual of anointing she's anointed of god i mean this goes all the way back to um you know before the time of alfred the great uh ultimately to um king david and king solomon and queen clearly takes that really is

seriously yeah and uh you know i take it very seriously tom and the queen rules um you know in a line of descent from the god woden so yeah um that is why she rules um the royal family is different the the the idea of a bloodline is significant um and that obviously great against quite a lot of things that people take for normal now. And I guess that one of the reasons that this is an incendiary story is that it does slightly focus people's attention on that. It does to an extent, but I think people, anyone with a sense of history knows that the royal family, the story of the monarchy has always been attended by kind of hideous familial bust-ups dynastic rows marital disasters i mean i think about you know for all that i read this is this terrible crisis you think you think about the

coronation of george the fourth when his wife his estranged wife was physically barred from entering the church by men with bayonets while the crowd kind of howled around her and she's so upset this is carolina brunswick who he's tried to divorce he's accused her of adultery he's um he's campaigned against her in public she tries to get into the coronation she's barred he has these guards not let her in she gets soaked in the rain she dies three weeks later and then at her funeral there's rioting and people are killed in the fighting during her funeral and the monarchy kind of sails on untroubled into the into the uh safer waters of the later 1820s and 1830s i mean this is kind of part it's that it's that crown thing i think there's always been an element of people enjoying

you know think about henry the eighth and his wives or edward the fourth and elizabeth will there has always been an element of people in that sort of taverns loving the scandal the gossip you know there's that strange um place the monarchy has in our collective imagination where it is both as you say this sort of sacred institution but it also always has feet of clay. And sort of lifting the skirts and seeing the sort of the dirt beneath, if you like, has always been one of the chief pleasures in life of being either British or English. But, okay, but to come back to this idea that the queen rules as God's anointed, as the descendant of this kind of extraordinary lineage, ultimately of kind of feudal notions

that have survived kind of amazingly well into the present day. It's kind of like finding an allosaur happily roaming the jungle in Africa or something. But I think that, again, one of the things that's interesting about about megan's take on this is is that to her it's incomprehensible so two of the things two of the charges she brought up one of stories one was that um she got married by the archbishop of canterbury with harry in a garden three days before i believe she may have mistaken the rehearsal for the wedding.

And the Archbishop of Canterbury gave her a blessing and she thought that this was a wedding, but it can't be because of complicated details to do with canon law. I mean, does Meghan have any conception of canon law? No. I mean, it's unimportant to her. And likewise, the charge, she said that, you know, that her son wasn't called a prince, I think, because of whatever, racism or whatever. Whereas, in fact, it's because of complex, heraldic laws about who's a prince. Back to the time of George V.

Tom, don't tell me you don't take these things seriously, as seriously as I do. So the point is that to Meghan, it's incomprehensible and baffling and ridiculous and ludicrous and can only be explained by kind of darker motives.

Whereas, she was shocked that she had to curtsy to the Queen, wasn't she? Which I thought was very telling. Yeah.

But if you, you know, if you are a genealogist or a herald for the royal family or, you know, the Archbishop of Canterbury or, you know,

I find it hard to imagine myself as a herald, but all this this all this kind of stuff matters hugely yeah and that and in a sense megan just kind of sharpens the problem that um everyone has who married into a royal family because by definition they are commoners and it's difficult for so kate had it tough diana notoriously had it tough um but of course you know you've mentioned uh andrew in elizabeth woodville who are also you know famous examples of commoners who married into royalty and it didn't and you know and berlin had her head chopped off well they're slightly different examples so amblin is an executor because she's a commoner uh and of

course elizabeth woodville is not she doesn't have a head cut off and now both of them get into trouble i think because in those days for a commoner to marry into the royal family the commoner arrives with their family and their family expect a degree of patronage you know the berlins at the court of him in the eighth and that means they make enemies so there are always people in the shadows who are sort of saying all those upstarts these provincial kind of hayseeds who are now hoovering up all the sort of plum jobs. And that means that the commoner arriving encounters problems. I think the commoner, as it were, arriving now is more of a problem because the commoner, you know, you have to know what you're signing up for.

So an example of a royal marriage with the commoner that worked very well and sort of an amusing one is prince rainier and and grace kelly where it's in monaco where it's clear that both of them sort of thought of it as a business arrangement basically he wanted an american film star she knew exactly what she was getting into she wanted you know she thought about it long and hard she basically had two offers on the table i think hitchcock wanted her to be in marnie and prince rainier wanted her to rule monaco and you know she had to decide which one to go for and she went for it very hard-headedly and she knew precisely what she was getting into um i'm not sure that's true in this instance and obviously it wasn't true in the instance of diana and that's where your fairy tale point is really important, because I think if you're blinded by the fairy tale element and you don't understand the sort of cold, hard reality of the institution, then you're going to be in trouble from the very beginning. Yeah, but I think also,

I mean, again, looking at it in the broader suite, the comparison that you can make between Megha and Diana and everyone, and earlier examples of commoners marrying English Kings is that, um, by and large, um, it's exactly what you say that, that, that if by and large Kings marry other Royal families,

people from other Royal families, because the expectation is, is that they will understand the rules. Um, and they are likewise generally coming from kind of anointed you know if they're french or whatever um but at the very least they they are marrying into families that are ruling because of their bloodline so there's a there's an acceptance that in that sense they are equal but if they're not then that kind of unbalances it and i think

you can see even you know even with elizabeth woodville who edward the fourth it's a love match it creates all kinds of chaos um and of course you know it that that that unleashes all kinds of dynastic feuding um and in fact you know if megan thinks that archie's had it bad um elizabeth woodville's children get murdered by by her brother-in-law richard the third so um yes that's surely an unlikely prospect. I think that is an unlikely prospect. But, so on the topic of dynastic feuding, there is also an element of that, isn't there, with Harry's taking this, because he's kind of, you know,

I mean, he's kind of delivered a dagger into the back of his father and brother. There's so much interesting stuff there, isn't there? I mean, an amateur psychologist psychologist or indeed a professional psychologist could have an utter field day with uh harry william relationship and part of it tom surely we were only joking about this the other day part of it is the time on at elder brother younger brother dynamic isn't it the dutiful reliable elder brother and the yes it might be reckless in the way my brother has kind of run off and married a comedian whereas i've played straight and married you it's you are the kate middleton of history podcasts that's exactly how i've always always seen myself megan the megan

of uh podcast but so on. So on that theme, do you have any particular favourite examples of royal sons attacking royal fathers? So what is it? Henry II, isn't Henry II? Yes. He falls out with all his children. Don't they all turn against him?

And he's sort of encouraged by their mother children yeah they all turn against him and it's sort of encouraged by their mother yeah yes i mean i see i always i always feel sorry for him in that story i think the lion and winter have you seen the lion and winter so that's all yeah that's all um all that sort of stuff is that's the one with um war war war that's all you ever think about dick plantagenet that's it it. Yeah, that's it. That's it. Yeah. So the producer is sending a text that says Lear

and of course he's quite right. King Lear. Yeah. Although that's not history. No. No, that's true. Can I tell you my favourite? Yeah, you've obviously got one.

That's why I asked the question. There must be some fantastic Roman ones. Yeah, the best one is the Vikings. Go on. So Harold Bluetooth. Bluetooth, first Christian king of Denmark, who boasted of joining all the various parts of Scandinavia, which is why Bluetooth technology has the name it does.

Ah, nice. I didn't know that. Yeah. So interesting detail. I genuinely learned something from this podcast for the first time. Well, there you go. So Harold Bluetooth, founder of Bluetooth technology. I genuinely learned something from this podcast for the first time. Well, there you go. So Harold Bluetooth, founder of Bluetooth technology.

I mean, like all these kind of Viking kings who convert to Christianity, they basically do it to make themselves more powerful. Terrifying figure. But he has an even more terrifying son, Svein Forkbeard. Oh, yes. Isn't he to do with Canute? Is he Canute's father? Yeah, so he's Canute's father yeah so he's saying canute's father so

canute is is harold bluetooth's grandson um and swain fortbeard is impatient once his father out the way uh launches an attack um musters a huge fleet of dragon ships harold bluetooth sails out to meet his son there's a massive great clash in the middle of it um harold gets caught short so he pops off his boat onto an island pulls down his britches has a dump gets shot in the arse wow and that's his thing

is he killed? he's killed I'm dignified yeah yeah so I think and that's what you think Harry wants to do to Prince Charles

that's not for me to say I'm not a royal watcher like you Dominic I'm so pleased that this is this conversation yeah I mean that I think that is exactly where all discussions of the Harry Megan uh imbroglio should lead to um the death of Harold Bluetooth on an island jolly good well I think we've we've put this you know nothing more needs ever be said about this issue ever again. Yeah, we resolved it.

That's it, guys. You can move on. Let's talk about something else. Thanks ever so much. We have a, talking of moving on, we have a new podcast on Thursday with the historian Katja Hoyer, and that is about the Second Reich. So not the Third Reich, the Second Reich. I hope you'll listen to that and enjoy that.

Thanks a lot. 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