16-PAGE GLORIOUS PICTURE SOUVENIR

The birth of a child is always a joyous event, wreathed in all the glory and mystery of life — and the birth of a royal baby an occasion for national rejoicing. even the sourest republicans can sometimes be seen to crack a smile.

Yet t his t i me, t he l ong- awaited announcement that Prince George has a baby sister feels a little different.

I ndeed, after weeks of t he most negative, uninspiring and downright depressing General election campaign in living memory, it is hardly surprising that so many people have been desperate to see the bickering politicians wiped off the front pages by good news from the delivery room.

To outside observers, I suppose it must seem odd that a nation famous as the home of the stoical stiff upper lip can get so worked up about a royal baby.

But that would be to overlook the extraordinary place that our Queen and her family occupy not just at the centre of our national life, but at the heart of our national imagination. Today, perhaps more than at any time in our history, t he Royal Family has become t he supreme bastion of Britishness. The last bastion, you might well say.

And at a time when the very survival of our United Kingdom seems genuinely threatened by electoral deadlock, political chaos and the rise of fanatical nationalism, this baby is a reminder of the ties that, for centuries, have bound us together.

The birth of a child is, of course, a family event. But a nation is a family, too. Not that you would know it from the appalling cynicism, hypocrisy and dishonesty that we have heard from some quarters since t he el ection campaign began.

No doubt the Queen’s mind in the past few weeks has been on her own close family. Though she already had four children, eight grandchildren and four great-grandchildren — among them, all being well, three future British kings — she would not have been human if she had not had the odd pang of anxiety as t he so - called ‘ Great Kate Wait’ dragged on.

BUT I just wonder whether, during the long days of waiting, the Queen’s attention drifted to the ghastly circus of the el ection campaign, with it s weird cast of posturing populists, nationalist fanatics and, God help us, demagogic comedians.

What, I wonder, can it all look like to an 8 9 - year- old great- grandmother who was born in the aftermath of World War I, served as an Army volunteer in World War II and has already had audiences with 12 Prime Ministers?

In fact, if you want to get a sense of how much Britain has changed between elizabeth II’s infancy and that of her l atest great-grandchild, then you could do worse than start with her birth.

In some ways, royal births have changed less than you might expect.

Born on April 21, 1926, at 17 Bruton Street, Mayfair, the Queen was the f i rst royal princess for generations to have entered the world in a private house rather than a palace.

But then, as now, her entrance was the object of extraordinary international Press attention; and then, as now, newspapers and magazines were desperate to get the first shots of the new arrival.

At the time, as the first child of the Duke and Duchess of York, little elizabeth was only third in line to the throne, since most people expected that her uncle, the ill-fated future edward VIII, would one day have an heir of his own.

In t hose days, custom demanded t hat t he home Secretary be present at all royal births. A common myth has it that he was supposed to check that the true heir was not replaced by a usurper, but his presence was merely a hangover from the days when royal apartments were habitually crammed with political cronies.

So i t was that the home Secretary, flagrantly reaction- ary Sir William Joynson-hicks, was on hand to report that all went well. Alas, his modern-day successor, Theresa May, had other things on her mind — but perhaps this is one tradition that Britain can do without.

All the same, the world into which elizabeth II was born was unutterably different from our own. Telegrams of congratulation poured in f r om all over the world, reflecting her place at the centre of a great global empire.

In Australia and New Zealand, India and Canada, South Africa and Nigeria, politicians and officials organised warm public celebrations. This was not merely a national event, but a genuinely international one.

By the time the future Queen’s first child was born, on November 14, 1948, much had changed.

After standing against hitler’s empire, Britain was economically and morally exhausted. Already the British empire was breaking up, with India and Pakistan having won independence a year earlier.

This time, as a future king, Charles was born at Buckingham Palace. Outside, crowds waited impatiently in the cold and the smog while the young Princess elizabeth, as she still

was, endured a gruelling 30-hour labour. Meanwhile, like many men of his generation, Prince Philip elected to stay away from the moment of truth.

Perhaps surprisingly, this was in stark contrast with the Queen’s great- great- grandfather, Prince Albert, who had attended Victoria’s confinements a century earlier.

Victoria wrote that ‘there could be no kinder, wiser, nor more judicious nurse’ than her husband.

But Philip had no intention of following Albert’s example. Instead he went off to play squash to relieve the tension, nervously bashing the ball against the sides of the court.

The story goes that he was drying himself after a post-match swim when a footman rushed in with the happy news.

Outside, the delighted crowds chanted: ‘We want Philip!’ But the relieved father maintained his usual sardonic sang-froid. Asked what his first child looked like, he said drily: ‘A plum pudding.’

Britain was a country that adored royal pageantry and could never resist a touch of sentiment. In Trafalgar Square, the fountains’ lights were turned blue to indicate the birth of a boy (just as the water ran pink for the little Princess on Saturday night), while the bells of Westminster Abbey and St Paul’s Cathedral rang out across the city. Similar celebrations greeted the birth of Prince William on June 21, 1982, when thousands of wellwishers gathered outside St Mary’s Hospital and Buckingham Palace.

Only a week earlier, the Falklands War had ended in a heroic British victory, and the news of the royal baby captured the imagination of a country that, after years of gloom, had suddenly rediscovered i ts patriotism and pride.

Outside the hospital, Prince Charles emerged with a gigantic smile. Told that the crowds had been chanting ‘Nice one, Charlie, let’s have another one’, he laughed and said: ‘Bloody hell, give us a chance.’

There was to be another one, of course, with Prince Harry entering the world just over two years later.

But the Royal Family’s fortunes were about to enter a dizzying spiral of scandals and divorces, its reputation plunging to depths almost unknown in modern history.

By 1997, when the death of Diana sparked hysterical outrage from people who felt that the Queen had shown insufficient public sorrow, there was even talk of the public turning against the monarchy for good. Republicans, hitherto a strange and sorry assortment of weirdos, were ostentatiously rubbing their hands with glee.

No one, I think, could have predicted just how dramatically the monarchy’s fortunes would recover. And few people could have imagined that by the time of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee i n 2012, the monarchy would be virtually the last great British institution regarded with genuine affection and respect.

Much of the credit for that goes to the younger generation: not just t he Duke a nd Duchess of Cambridge, whose university romance and fairytale wedding captivated the world, but also Prince Harry, whose military service in Afghanistan reminded us that at i ts best, the monarchy i s the embodiment of patriotic duty.

But the credit also belongs to the Queen, whose extraordinary resilience and dedication to her country have been such a contrast with the naked self-interest and wretched cynicism exhibited by so many of our politicians.

Yet there is, I think, another reason we have rekindled our national romance with the Royal Family — and it is not necessarily a very heartening one.

The truth is that, in an age when so many of our institutions, from the House of Commons and the police force to the National Health Service and the BBC, have been exposed as crooked, corrupt or downright inept, the Queen stands virtually alone as the incarnation of seriousness and service.

WHAT is more, I believe the House of Windsor has become the last r e doubt of a battered and embattled sense of Britishness. The Queen certainly believes in Britain, and her intervention in the referendum campaign last year, when she remarked that she hoped voters would ‘ think very carefully about the future’, was all the more effective for being so understated.

But as the past few weeks have made only too clear, Britain remains in mortal danger.

Polls suggest that in Scotland, the SNP are poised to take almost every Westminster seat in a landslide with no precedent i n our national history.

Meanwhile, the very tone of the election campaign has revealed something desperately depressing about the moral and political health of our country.

It is not just that so many of our political pretenders have demeaned themselves in a shockingly grubby public auction or that so few of them seem prepared to talk about the issues that really matter to ordinary people, from the yawning budget deficit to the social consequences of mass immigration.

It is that the very integrity of our country seems threatened as at no time before in our modern history, with many experts warning that, after May 7, we may well find ourselves with a weak government propped up by a cynical gang of nationalist zealots whose dearest dream is to destroy the United Kingdom.

Perhaps I am being fanciful to hope that the arrival of this royal baby will focus people’s minds on what really matters: the importance of building for the future, the urgency of providing jobs for our youngsters and, above all, the ties of family, history, l anguage and l oyalty that for centuries have bound Britain together.

Perhaps, too, I am being absurdly optimistic to hope that the story of the Queen and her family will remind us that we, too, are one family — four nations united in one country — and that to be born a British citizen is to have won first prize in the lottery of life.

But amid the heartfelt celebrations of the little girl’s birth, and amid the warm congratulations for her parents, I cannot help wondering whether she will come of age in a Britain immeasurably transformed and diminished.

And I cannot help asking myself whether, one day, when she has grown up and tells her own children about the circumstances of her birth, she will be talking about a country that no longer exists.