THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: William and Kate are the new stars of the Royal family – and the public love them for their spontaneity, says Patrick JephsonA week has passed in the new royal era. Prince William is back at his airbase. Kate is in the supermarket. The Queen is at Windsor Castle. The media circus has packed its satellite dishes and left town. The bunting has been recycled. Like a cartwheeling verger, we’ve watched the world turn upside down and then revolve right-way up again. Everything looks as it did before. But everything has changed.
These unremarkable days are actually momentous. Historians of tomorrow may look back on them as the point at which either the British Crown reinvented itself to prosper for another 100 years… or at which it gave one final hurrah before slipping into terminal irrelevance.
A touch melodramatic? Consider the options. On the one hand, with the wedding of the decade triumphantly behind us and the prospect of royal babies growing closer by the day, the monarchy is set fair. But on the other, by any realistic actuarial assessment, the next two candidates for the throne will be grandparents by the time they ascend it. That’s not in itself a bad thing – wisdom being one of the qualities most prized in a king – but in a country inexorably ageing, who could blame today’s teenagers for being disenchanted by a system that will never deliver a head of state for their generation. Continue reading and comment » | Patrick Jephson* | Saturday, May 07, 2011
*Patrick Jephson was equerry and private secretary to HRH the Princess of Wales 1988-96
Patrick Jephson »
