Buckingham Dallas

...Thatcher's policies are for Mrs...

...The man who seems born to be an elderly king was so obviously out of his wet windy Balmoral element, terribly missing The Family and the Highland Games...

...Feedback What little criticism the British media publish of the royal family is usually personal and superficial...

...Diana (who bravely admits to disliking quadruped company) prefers pop-music and society yatter, so their conversation is bound at times to be yawny...

...and that the monarch's ceremonial role relieves the chief executive of a wearying chore...

...To quote the Express again: "The age-gap between the Prince and the Princess showed in Mallorca like Charles's bald patch...

...Caricatures of the Spitting Image type are often shrewd but in such bad taste that they win sympathy for the target...

...and Princess Margaret trying to be a groupie and Princess Michael (sic) a jet-setter...

...Prince Philip, the Queen's husband, won headlines with a line of dialogue worthy of the Lorimar school—a denial that his son deserved the nickname Randy Andy (reporters would have liked to ask if he had consulted Koo Stark...

...Of course, no reasonable person would begrudge the Queen her birthday party...

...The system is much more expensive than the presidential regime of any democracy of Britain's size...

...The Queen and the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, whose relations have been abrasive for some time (see "EuroVista," NL, March 10), locked horns, or perhaps curlers, over government policy...

...Still, oil moguls and cigarette manufacturers siphon more money off the public without providing any entertainment...

...They married their sons to daughters of the new business class (if the daughters weren't appetizing, no matter...

...The British monarchy allows too much of the prestige and glitter earned by its two or three productive members to be reflected by a horde of relatives and hangers-on...

...A 1976 act of Parliament that required people owning more than 5 per cent of a public company to disclose their holdings was amended by the government to exempt the royal family...

...aircraft that bombed Libya...

...Many fans of the leading British saga, a multimedia extravaganza, have a similar feeling...

...My gaze, anyhow, fell benignly on the marching bands, the polluting horses, the popping corks, and the charming commemorative stamp that was issued...

...The crown has helped keep them alive...

...Whether it's measured in decibels, pixels or tons of woodpulp, their burden is heavy...

...The tabloids said that Charles was bored lounging around in Mallorca while Diana sunbaked, but no more enthusiastic about having to meet some of her dim cronies in London...

...Television brought them into the chilly living rooms of the 1950s and '60s for an occasional one-night stand, and Elizabeth became a star...

...The same mentality helped ruin Spain...

...They survived the advent of democracy by harnessing rich industrialists to their coaches...

...It summed up the the life of a pretty woman and three chapters of British history that might be entitled "Great Expectations," "Heartbreak House" and "The Play's the Thing...

...Unlike the French, the British public has no access to a national landowner-ship register...

...The Queen's press secretary told the Sunday Times that Elizabeth disagreed with the PM's soft line on South Africa, fearing it might alienate some Commonwealth states, and had been uneasy about the use of British bases by the U.S...

...But the primitive myth of inherent aristocratic superiority, and the belief that privilege is an aristocratic right, have lingered in England longer than in France and Spain...

...Thanks to television, the brighter members of the royal family now know something of Britain's social and economic problems...

...There are periods when the Play seems to be the only thing...

...TheQueen, whose main off-duty interests are horses and dogs, also likes to hear political gossip...

...After seven years in office, Thatcher has lost her electoral majority, but 52 per cent of Conservative voters told pollsters she should press on with her policies even if they resulted in the breakup of the Commonwealth...

...and in 17th-century France, Moliere made fun of the notion that "les gens de qualitesavent tout sansjamais rien avoir appris" (the gentry know everything without having learned anything...

...The British are as attached to political, if not social, democracy as their southern neighbors...

...Next, Charles and Diana acted another sequence of their "drifting apart" theme, with Diana posing as a couturier-designed rebel...

...To confuse simple minds, the myth of the superiority of the aristocratic "amateur" over the middle-class expert was fostered...

...Thatcher to decide, with the approval of Parliament and ultimately the electorate...

...The media have squeezed more entertainment from them, and the royals have become more accessible, as Britain's economy and social conditions have deteriorated by comparison with those of most other Western states...

...Why bother about education and ability...

...Say what you like about English aristocrats, they know how to handle the lower orders...

...Edward, 21, smooched into action at the Royal Yacht Squadron ball, stealing another man's girl...

...A Conservative reform group has criticized the "tatty and slumlike" state of "the fabric of the nation...

...So the royals are ready to give the taxpayer rather more for his money than merely formal services...

...Her claque, insisting that the vacation was her idea, stressed her "openly-expressed" dislike of the royal family's traditional holidays in "rainswept Scotland," in particular her boredom during "long dull days" and "windblown weeks" at Balmoral...

...The aristocracy and landed gentry were, for the most part, only scrappily educated and unskilled, yet they controlled vast estates and bought or otherwise acquired seats on the boards of great companies...

...When, in August, she and Charles spent a week on Mallorca, the Spanish island almost sank under the weight of British media cliches...

...Andrew's grant was increased to $900,000 a year when he married...

...Tory Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli gave Queen Victoria an ostentatious golden jubilee celebration while making her the figurehead of his imperial policy...

...A few public-spirited television stations rebroadcast past installments several times a week, but some addicts find the overdose as harrowing as deprivation...

...Ratings How useful is Britain's monarchy...

...The headmaster of Winchester, the oldest private school in the UK, has said that the education of 94 per cent of British children "is being allowed to languish and decay" because of the "appalling and criminal lack of resources" in state-financed schools...

...Spanish airport officials said that every summer several thousand British tourists start their vacation in the island drunk, having overindulged in cheap liquor during their flight from the UK...

...In the past 30 years, Britain has lost much of its industry and most of its postwar idealism and optimism...

...Anne may be described as equine, Charles weak, and Diana an anorexic stick-insect intent on dominating Charles, yet major issues and basic principles are generally avoided...

...The future Edward VIII was sent to Oxford not to study but, according to his college president, to "get to know what Englishmen are like, individually and in the mass...

...The clean-shaven George VI, struggling with his stutter in wartime broadcasts, won the public's sympathy...

...Soon after Andrew's big scene, London tabloids announced that his role as "leading royal romancer" had been taken over by his young brother...

...They persuaded the new middle classes that the only decent occupations for gentlemen were not creating and innovating but hunting, shooting and gambling...

...When they needed "grubby little men" like managers and engineers they hired them...

...Hence their willingness to become part of the entertainment industry—an extension of the role of the monarchy for which many Conservative politicians are grateful, despite the headshaking of traditionalists over the B-picture antics of Princess Margaret, Prince Andrew and two or three others, and despite the Queen's tiff with Margaret Thatcher, an affair too arcane to influence the average voter for long...

...Connections, cunning and a commanding manner were all that counted...

...a reaction common enough at slow amateur theatrical shows and sports meetings but unprecedented at a royal performance...

...They are aware, too, that the Queen's political function is performed more cheaply in other democracies, and that the children, siblings and cousins of most other heads of democratic states work for their living...

...At one point, when the proceedings stalled, the crowd sang (to the hymn-tune "Come all ye faithful") "Why are we waiting...

...Shea [two Palace officials] had made representations to me [on this occasion...

...TheEconomist reminded the Palace that the Prime Minister is the head of a democratic government and that "Mrs...

...There has, of course, been political exploitation of the monarchy in the past...

...Her press secretary described her as "very much to the Left on social issues," and certainly not sympathetic to current Conservative policies...

...Partly because of this decay, alumni of Winchester (considered England's counterparts ofFrance's much more numerous lyceens, whose education is free) and three other private schools are today more influential than ever, commanding more posts on the highest slopes of government, banking, diplomacy, and the judiciary than products of the whole state-financed system of education...

...In home affairs, the Queen was disturbed by the government's lack of compassion and feared that conflicts like the one with the miners might damage the social fabric...

...they, in turn, hold up an ideal of affluent idleness and Philistinism to lower-caste folk...

...Nevertheless, they behaved more responsibly than in 1936...

...given the crucial nature of the subject, I would have responded positively...

...As every soapwriter knows, when you marry off a character, the void between honeymoon and first hints of platethrowing has to be filled by a compensatory "romantic" theme, or you'll lose your C3 shopgirls...

...By tradition—and Victorian political design—it includes an enervating respect for aristocratic privilege and is the apex of a caste system that stunts the cultural growth and social potential of millions...

...This overt clash between the Palace and Whitehall was potentially the most important since the abdication of King Edward VIII in 1936, yet the UK's mass-circulation papers gave it less space than they had devoted to Andrew's wedding or Diana's dull little vacation in Ma-llorca...

...A Labor member of Parliament who questioned the government, unsuccessfully, about royal finances said it was like trying to prise information out of the KGB...

...On the historic day, Andy and his bride paraded, pulled faces and looked at the crowd for applause, trying hard to be entertainers though lacking the poise of professionals...

...Meanwhile, back at the refinery, a valve stuck...

...Most of their subjects are conditioned from infancy to consider a highly stratified society normal...

...Educated sectors of the middle and working classes are, however, becoming more meritocratic in outlook and resentful of the poverty and squalor blighting millions of lives...

...Through much of last spring and summer, the media pounded the public with gossip and hype about Andrew's wedding...

...Diana was a funloving, sunloving royal sea nymph (her one achievement at school, a prize for swimming, was emblazoned as if it had been a teenage Nobel award...

...but it took the brashness of the tabloids and competition between the BBC and commercial television to turn their activities into a series...

...This is an error of taste and common sense that the new Spanish regime, after a shud-dery study of the UK model, and Australia and New Zealand, helped by distance, have largely avoided...

...Charles has a huge real estate income that is taxed at a uniquely low rate...

...The Queen receives annual government grants totaling about $25 million, tax-free and adjusted for inflation, for her personal expenses and the upkeep of her residences and other services...

...It has been described as the keystone of UK society and a guarantee of national unity—which doesn't mean much: There has been more social and political strife in the disunited kingdom during the last few years than anywhere else in Western Europe...

...According to the BBC, although millions watched the wedding, the day's highest rating was won by a Cockney comedy series...

...The has been one of Whitehall's most successful ventures since the invention of the national debt...

...The Daily Express reported: "Prince Edward has been dancing the night away with a new girlfriend...

...The couple gyrated away to Juliana's disco for nearly two hours, [then] went to the royal yacht Britannia...

...Red-faced, fretful as a crab, you could tell he wished he wasn't there...

...Two wars with Germany made it advisable for them to loosen up a little and Anglicize their names, the Saxe-Coburgs calling themselves Windsor and the Battenbergs Mount-batten...

...As Anthony Sampson wrote in The Changing A natomy ofBritain, the royal family has become expert in the art of survival, and is less fooled by its mystique than its admirers: "The view from the Palace is like looking at Britain from backstage, where sets and footlights are seen as part of the illusion...

...However dreary her duties, she performs them graciously...

...From the fretful English, you could tell the Express man wished the same...

...Two more meaningful points in its favor are that it avoids the kind of vacuum at the top of the political heap that has occasionally permitted coups d'itatm other countries (although since 1950 no maj or democracy, with the possible exception of Spain in 1981, has been in danger of overthrow by a coup...

...but, by Gad, its postage stamps now rival those of Andorra...

...If Sir William or Mr...

...upmarket papers like the Times and Sunday Times have drawn attention to the "shocking and deplorable" condition of many school buildings and the overall neglect of education, which is mass-producing barely literate youths and compounding Britian's social problems and technological backwardness...

...This time there was no cover-up, though Andrew Neil, the editor of the Sunday Times, devalued his own courage by declaring: "On the only occasion when the Palace has asked me to change something prior to publication I complied...

...society has always allowed aristocrats who married for money or land to have mistresses), and they arranged for the flattered fathers-in-law to buy "noble" titles...

...Snobbery and conformism established the titled idler as a model...

...his daughter Elizabeth looked pleasantly like everyone's favorite librarian...

...Diana returned to England three days after Charles, letting it be known that despite having to go to Balmoral she would seize every opportunity of flying south to London to have fun with her friends...

...the silver jubilee of George V, with its flag-waving and high-octane beer ("coronation brew"), helped a "National" (Conservative) government win the 1935 election...

...The Queen's birthday stamp bore three portraits of her taken at 20-year intervals...

...More serious is the social canker in the British monarchical system...

...The risks the royal family runs are slight...

...Thatcher doesn't have to waste time on protocol: Visiting heads of state and diplomats are packed off to the Palace for tea and doggy small-talk with the Queen...

...Frank Whittle, a pioneer of jet-propulsion who spent a decade running his head into the ignorance and apathy of UK officials and managers, advocated a project to encourage all Brits who wanted a meritocratic society to go to Australia, while those who preferred a stagnant aristocratic society would stay in what would become a less industrialized United Kingdom...

...Somewhere out there an economist is probably compiling a table to illustrate the relationship between royal soap output on the one hand and GNP, educational standards, unemployment, and crime statistics on the other...

...The Commonwealth was becoming "redundant, if not slightly absurd...

...You may recall the problems of getting Prince Charles hitched to a satisfactory girl and Prince Andrew unhitched from an unsatisfactory one (unsatisfactory to the Palace, not Andrew...

...Until the 1940s, though, the royals had been remote—for most people, little more than bearded weirdies on postage stamps and stiff groups in press photos and occasional newsreel clips, Germanic in appearance and sometimes accent...

...Her income from her private real-estate empire and investments, also tax-free, is a state secret...

...During the long run-up to the abdication, the British media suppressed all news of the crisis: Many members of Parliament first learned of it from American and Continental papers...

...Spanish newsmen reported the visit with more restraint, but hoped it wouldn't attract to Mallorca more British tourists who have acquired a bad name there for rowdiness...

...and in 1953 Winston Churchill made a Tory fiesta of Queen Elizabeth's coronation that contrasted almost meretriciously with the austerity of his Labor predecessor...

...The Queen's children, too, receive generous financial treatment...

...It contains some awful military or personal dictatorships, operating within one-party states...

...and the Queen's 60th birthday and...