The Monarchy

In Our Time: Culture

BBC

History

4.6 • 978 Ratings

🗓️ 10 June 1999

⏱️ 28 minutes

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the British monarchy. In the last two hundred and fifty years, we’ve beheaded one king, exiled another, hired a distant German-speaking dynasty to fill the monarch’s role, and then mocked and ignored them, suffered a mad man and then a lavish sensualist, threatened a young queen, and then, over a century ago, invented a pageantry which brought majesty to a monarchy which is now tilting at the twenty first century against many and mighty odds. How has the monarchy survived since the execution of Charles the First two hundred and fifty years ago and what relevance does it have in a devolved Britain?With Professor David Cannadine, Director of the Institute of Historical Research, London and former Lecturer in History and Fellow, Christ’s College, Cambridge; Bea Campbell, sociologist, journalist and author of Diana, Princess of Wales.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thanks for down learning the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.uk.
0:10.0	I hope you enjoy the program.
0:12.0	Hello, I'm joined today by historian David Canardine and social commentator B. Campbell
0:17.2	to look at the changing face of monarchy.
0:19.8	How has the monarchy survived since the execution of Charles the 1st 250 years ago?
0:24.8	What relevance does it have in the devolved Britain of the late 20th century?
0:29.8	Professor David Kainadine is one of Britain's leading historians. He's been a lecturer in history and
0:34.2	fellow of Christ College, Cambridge and has taught at Columbia University in America.
0:38.1	He's the author of several books including The Pleasures of the Past, Class in Britain, and The Decline and The Fall of the past, class in Britain and the decline and fall of the British
0:44.2	aristocracy, about which Michael Foote wrote that it was how real history should be written.
0:49.6	He also wrote a famous essay about the monarchy entitled The Invention of Tradition.
0:54.2	B Campbell is his leading sociologist, journalist and author of Diana, Princess of Wales, her books
0:59.1	include Wigan Pier Revisited, The Iron Ladies about Tory Women, and Goliath, Britain's dangerous places on account
1:05.6	of the riots of 1991 on estates in Cardiff, Oxford and Tyneside.
1:10.8	David, let's take a broad sweep to start with.
1:14.0	A hundred and fifty years ago we executed, or the British or certain section of the British
1:20.0	people executed a king, then not very long after we expelled a king, we brought in foreign
1:26.0	implants which didn't take very well and they were much mocked. We had a man king, we had
1:30.0	a sort of sensual and corrupt king. We had a queen who was ignored and derided for most
1:36.4	of her reign and then about a hundred years ago, hey presto, it all began to change.
1:40.6	So how did that first 150 years post the execution of
1:44.0	Charles I first? How did the monarchy survive what looks as a series of total
	...

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