Hello and welcome back to Chronicles, where today we're going to be talking all about King Charles III by Mike Bartlett, because I figured that after over 40 episodes

of Chronicles now, it might not be the worst thing in the world for me to actually talk about

something that was written and published within this century. So that's what I'm doing. I have a lot

of literature, as you could quite imagine,

back at home, but I honestly have so few plays written from the 21st century that really I was

looking about and I was like, well, this is definitely one of the best of them, right? I actually,

despite many of the things that I think will become

apparent as we continue to talk about this play. So it's written in 2014. It won the Olivier

Award for Best New Play in 2015, so it met with all of the approval from, you know, the arts

institutions and we know what they're like. So there's a lot in it, right? There's a lot in it that, you know, the arts institutions and we know what they're like.

So there's a lot in it, right? There's a lot in it that, you know, sort of is conformist in many

ways and not that radical. However, at the heart of it, I think that this play is asking a lot of

really interesting questions about what does the monarchy, our monarchy,

you know, which I'm sure needs no introduction, what does it mean to have an institution

that is essentially beyond, you know, ancient. It's, you know, kingship is of course the oldest and most natural form of government.

And of course, for our own part as well, it goes right back to the core of our Anglo-Saxon heritage

and has been there throughout all of our history, apart from that one very little Cromwellian blip in the 1600s,

right? So what does it mean to have a monarchy and a king in the 21st century? What does it mean to have a monarchy and a king in a liberal democracy?

And I think the play asks all of these questions and perhaps my

opinions on the matter don't quite align or are it not what Mike Bartlett quite envisaged

when he first wrote this play. But I have to say, I really applaud him for his skill in making it

because it's quite an ambitious play to write in many ways.

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