Charlie and Elizabeth are My Darlings
Together with Encounter and Socialist Com- mentary, my favourite monthly reading is Royinform, the bulletin of the Royal Stuart Society. Without it I should have quite forgotten that October 14 was the birthday of King James VII, or that October 24 marks the death, forty years ago, of Crown Princess Maria Gabriele of Bavaria, mother of Duke Albert, head of the royal houses of Wittelsbach and Stuart. The latest issue is full of excellent things: a plea, for example, from Mr. John Tudno Williams, of Aberystwyth, that the Welsh nation must set up not merely its own legislative body at Cardiff, but also two parliaments, at Machynileth and Harlech. In all this well-marshalled argumenta- tion I find even more pleasure than in C. P. Snow or Ian Fleming. Would it not be passing fair to be a king and ride in triumph down the Royal Mile? (But I suppose Monty Mackenzie has booked that.) The October issue of Royin- form reprints a considerable excerpt from a paper by Mr. John Yeowell on the relevance of Jacobitism today, read before the recent International Congress for Monarchical Studies in Edinburgh. (What were the Times, Guardian and Telegraph up to?) Fm relieved to see that Mr. Yeowell—arguing persuasively that `Jacobit- ism is today a personal faith, but it is not anachronistic'----convinced the Congress that one may regard oneself as the heir to heroes like Dundee, Montrose or Lochiel without, so to speak, feeling the necessity of blowing up pillar-boxes with Elizabeth R's monogram there- oo. `Just as a soldier saluting an officer is honour- ing the uniform and its symbolism rather than the wearer, so the Jacobite can recognise the Queen as the custodian of Legitimist principles. Thank goodness for that.
Previous page
