Queen Victoria a greater monarch than Elizabeth II? Twaddle! She was a workshy recluse
As TV historian sparks a furious debate
LATE next Wednesday afternoon, there will have to be yet another amendment to the royal record books. And, this time, it’s the big one. On September 9, the Queen’s reign will surpass the 63 years, seven months and two days that Queen Victoria sat on the throne.
Elizabeth II is already our longest-lived monarch, enjoying history’s most enduring royal marriage.
The first reigning monarch to fly in a helicopter, visit every single realm and change a puncture (among umpteen other firsts), Her Majesty will still not be the world’s longestreigning monarch. That honour, for now, rests with King Bhumibol of Thailand.
But she will have reached a milestone which may never be surpassed in the annals of these islands. It is, by any standards, a historic moment.
The Queen remains endearingly underwhelmed by the occasion. Never one for competition with the ancestors, she had originally planned to spend the day quietly and privately at Balmoral.
When it became clear that the rest of the world regarded this as a major landmark, she accepted that a public appearance would be required, provided there was a point to it all. So, she will spend the day opening the new Borders railway line in Scotland.
Capricious
Elsewhere, however, there will be the greatest outpouring of affection since her Diamond Jubilee in 2012. There will be speeches in Parliament, the minting of a new coin, special television programmes and much analysis in the global media.
Yet, inevitably, there is a truculent minority for whom this is not a moment to celebrate or reflect. Instead, it is time for a fight.
The republican fringe, now invigorated by the prospect of an overtly anti- monarchist Labour leader, are as sour as ever. Reheating her familiar cry for the Queen to go down in history as ‘Elizabeth the Last’, The Guardian’s Polly Toynbee dismisses her as the ‘past-mistress of nothingness’ and warns: ‘Another avalanche of adulation is about to asphyxiate us.’
More noteworthy is the contribution from Britain’s pre - eminent historian-curmudgeon, Dr David Starkey. He accuses the Queen of the crime of banality.
While ‘ Victoria was and remains universally instantly, recognisable’, Dr Starkey argues in the Radio Times, the opposite applies to Elizabeth II: ‘ She has done and said nothing that anybody will remember. She will not give her name to her age. Or, I suspect, to anything else.’
He then adds crisply: ‘I say this not as criticism but simply as a statement of fact. Even as a sort of compliment. And, I suspect, the Queen would take it as such.’
I suspect (and we can all ‘suspect’ because we will never know), the Queen couldn’t give two hoots. After more than six decades on her throne, she has heard pretty much every extreme of flattery and abuse levelled at it.
But it is sad to see a historian as distinguished as Dr Starkey peddling such utter tosh at such an important moment.
His words rang a vague bell in my mind and, after a little digging, I realised why.
When the Queen notched up her previous milestone, overtaking Victoria to become our longest-lived monarch in 2007, the same David Starkey chose to give a similarly inflammatory interview to The Guardian, accusing the Queen of being a philistine, among other things.
This time, he salutes the ‘boundless energy’ of the Victorian age, whereas he sneers that the present Queen has redefined the monarch’s three existing constitutional rights, ‘to be consulted, to encourage and to warn’, by adding a fourth — ‘ the duty to be silent and make no public comment’.
That the Queen has worked with 12 British Prime Ministers, not to mention more than 150 PMs in all her other realms, without a batsqueak of criticism is, to my mind, a far more accurate, impressive barometer of constitutional success. Dr Starkey also overlooks the fact she is the only sovereign who has genuinely redefined the role of the monarch.
It is there in black and white on the royal website. The Queen is the first sovereign to embrace not just the role of ‘Head of State’, with its official obligations, but the equally important role of ‘Head of Nation’, encompassing recognition of excellence, service, national unity and continuity.
So let us turn the argument around and imagine it was Victoria reigning today. If so, the monarchy would be in serious trouble.
Meddling
Where, for example, would the monarch have been at the State Opening of Parliament? Not in Parliament, that’s for sure. After the death of Prince Albert, Victoria set foot in the place only six times, and invariably left the chore of reading the Queen’s Speech to the Lord Chancellor.
Where would she have been for Trooping the Colour? Nowhere to be seen. Victoria turned up for her Birthday Parade only once. The present Queen has never missed one.
We would not have seen Victoria handing out commemorative coins to well- deserving pensioners on Maundy Thursday, in keeping with a tradition dating back to King John. Victoria never did it. Elizabeth II has not merely observed the ritual but been the first monarch to take it to cathedrals all over the country.
Palace officials would be pushed to tot up all the ribbon- cuttings, hospital-openings, plaque-unveilings and walkabouts conducted by our Queen in the past year.
Victoria, although fond of meddling in political affairs, would infuriate her ministers and private secretaries with her reluctance to do anything which struck her as remotely disagreeable. In his biography, Victoria — A Life, A. N. Wilson recounts her hilarious exertions to avoid opening London’s new Blackfriars Bridge in July, 1869.
‘As Mr Gladstone [her Prime Minister] seems still in doubt,’ she wrote, referring to herself in the third person, ‘she will repeat her sincere regret that it is quite out of the question for her to do anything of the kind in the heat of summer.’
Victoria was then 50. Six weeks ago, at the age of 89, our Queen spent a day touring the London borough of Barking and Dagenham without a word of complaint.
Historians are fond of comparing the rise and rise of the British Empire on Victoria’s watch with the unstoppable imperial decline under her great-great-granddaughter. Neither monarch can be praised or blamed on either count. But while Victoria was happy to be an Empress, she never set foot in her empire.
Elizabeth II, as Dr Starkey at least acknowledges, has shown an assiduous devotion to that Empire’s remnants, forging her Commonwealth ‘ family of nations’. She has made a point of visiting almost all of it.
For all its faults, it remains an important and significant 53-nation partnership, spanning almost a third of the world’s population and all its main religions.
It is the envy of all of our European rivals with their own post-colonial ‘club’. Any of its leaders will tell you the Commonwealth would have fallen apart without the Queen.
With the benefit of hindsight, it is easy to talk about a ‘Victorian age’ because it neatly spanned a steady arc of progress and expansion. If we do not (yet) talk of a new ‘Elizabethan age’, it is because the idea is so vast that it becomes almost meaningless.
It began with ration books and God-fearing families gathered around the wireless. Today, the Queen reigns over a secular, digital, globalised, multicultural society. Yet she remains as respected and popular as the day she took the throne. Would wilful, capricious, interfering Victoria be able to say the same?
Reluctant
Of course, the 19th century was a world apart from postwar Britain in so many ways but it is not hard to see who has been the more dutiful and loyal to her people.
That is why, next Wednesday, we will gladly salute one of our greatest sovereigns — even if it does irk Dr Starkey and ‘ asphyxiate’ poor Polly Toynbee.
As for the Queen, I dare say she has her heart set on a very different royal record altogether. And it is not one which belongs to Queen Victoria either but to Edward VII; thus far, the only reigning sovereign to own a horse that has won the Epsom Derby.