Moving images of the British monarchy, in fact and fiction, are almost as old as the moving image itself, dating back to an 1895 dramatic vignette, The Execution of Mary Queen of Scots. Led by Queen Victoria, British monarchs themselves appeared in the new 'animated photography' from 1896. Half a century later, the 1953 coronation of Elizabeth II was a milestone in the adoption of television, watched by 20 million Britons and 100 million North Americans. At the century's end, Princess Diana's funeral was viewed by 2.5 billion worldwide. Seventeen essays by international commentators examine the portrayal of royalty in the 'actuality' picture, the early extended feature, amateur cinema, the movie melodrama, the Commonwealth documentary, New Queer Cinema, TV current affairs, the big screen ceremonial and the post-historical boxed set. These contributors include Ian Christie, Elisabeth Bronfen, Andrew Higson, Steven Fielding, Karen Lury, Glyn Davis, Ann Gray, Jane Landman, Victoria Duckett, Jude Cowan Montague, James Downs, Barbara Straumann, Deirdre Gilfedder, Jo Stephenson, Ruth Adams, Erin Bell, Basil Glynn and Nicola Rehling.
chap 4 22/3/04 12:53 pm Page 109 4 Ecclesiastical monarchy or monarchies? Why did the French episcopate prove so tenacious in opposing the regulars’ calls for independence through the seventeenth century? Like the bishops’ quarrels with the curés, these were crises of authority in which the episcopate fought to assert its disciplinary supremacy over the religious orders. Yet the struggle between the bishops and the regulars was just one manifestation of a much larger complexity: the place of the episcopate in the church’s governing hierarchy. Not only did
The eighteenth century was long deemed ‘the classical age of the constitution’ in Britain, with cabinet government based on a two-party system of Whigs and Tories in Parliament, and a monarchy whose powers had been emasculated by the Glorious Revolution of 1688–1689. This study furthers the work of Sir Lewis Namier, who, in 1929, argued that no such party system existed, George III was not a cypher, and that Parliament was an administration composed of factions and opposition. George III is a high-profile and well-known character in British history, whose policies have often been blamed for the loss of Britain's American colonies, around whom rages a perennial dispute over his aims: was he seeking to restore royal power or merely exercising his constitutional rights? This is a chronological survey of the first ten years of his reign through power politics and policy making.
INTRODUCTION: THE HERITAGE OF MONARCHY AND THE ROYALS ON FILM From Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V Shakespeare adaptation in 1989 to the story of the final years of the former Princess of Wales, in Diana in 2013, at least twenty-six English-language feature films dealt in some way with the British monarchy. 1 All of these films (the dates and directors of which
In his review of The King’s Speech (Tom Hooper, 2010), Guardian critic Peter Bradshaw remarks that the Oscar-winning film shows ‘some cheek at presenting an English monarch as the underdog’. 1 However, although melodrama traditionally ‘sides with the powerless’, 2 it has become a common mode through which the British monarchy is represented in contemporary British
, resulting in the resignation of the then BBC1 controller Peter Finch. Our Queen , a rare offering in this genre from ITV, revealed a tension between the filmmaker, Waldman, who wanted to observe the monarchy, and the advisers, who sought to conserve its reputation and therefore wished to limit his access. 1 As the latter unsurprisingly triumphed, an almost inevitable celebratory mode was conveyed. The
Abbey, celebrated a British monarchy revitalised by the duke and duchess. A century earlier in 1901, William’s great-great-grandparents the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York, the future King George V and Queen Mary, were on a worldwide tour of the British Empire. The most ambitious royal tour of the empire to date, their travels had been planned by Joseph Chamberlain and the duke
(infamously Alan B’Stard in the even broader 1987–92 ITV comedy The New Statesman ). The country’s head of state – its hereditary monarch – rarely makes a showing in Britain’s contemporary political dramas. One reason for the monarchy’s absence is that, compared to the American presidency, many consider its formal function to be barely ‘political’. Indeed, according to one of Britain’s leading
became both smaller and less mined with obstacles, the identity of rulers shifted in engagement with the shifting identities of the ruled and the growth of a culture of citizenship. The changing public presentation of the people was complemented by a shift in that of monarchy, military, judiciary, legislature, church, and executive. The identity of government from London moved from monarchy to constitutional monarchy to representative government. As each element changed, the balance between them changed also. The components of the polity were very different in 2010
Chap 10 19/8/02 11:49 am Page 219 10 George III, Lord North and the defeat of ‘faction’ (1770) The political contest at the beginning of 1770 marked the culmination of the events of the first decade of George III’s reign. The King’s opponents pitted the power of the House of Commons against that of the Crown, but circumstances tipped the balance in favour of the monarchy. The success of Lord North enabled George III to defy ‘faction’ and make good his royal claim to have a Prime Minister of his own choice. When Parliament met on 9 January neither the eve