“Racism was outlawed in England in the 60s & it’s been allowed to thrive so why should black & brown mourn!! #queen”, tweeted — and then deleted — the former footballer Trevor Sinclair. An associate professor at Carnegie Mellon University, …
Why Canadian liberals cling on to monarchy
Will there be a Commonwealth left for King Charles III to rule over? In the week since his mother’s death, officials in Jamaica and Antigua and Barbuda have publicly questioned whether their countries should join the ranks of Barbados, which …
Who will stop Putin from going nuclear?
In the early hours of 26 September 1983, Stanislav Petrov, a 44-year-old Lieutenant Colonel in a Soviet Air Defence command centre outside of Moscow, was covering for a sick colleague when an alarm when off. According to Soviet satellites, five …
The taming of the republicans
If the media coverage of the monarchy seems fawning now, it is nothing compared to that of the Fifties. Even the corgi “had a smile on his face”, gushed the papers, as they sought to describe one Royal appearance. The …
Our divine monarchy is finished
Queen Elizabeth was the last revered European monarch. There are a few other Konigs and Reines in Europe, flying part-time as KLM pilots, cycling on their own to official occasions or forced to abdicate because of garden variety corruption. These …
Why Russia rewrote Lord of the Rings
“Here, our only way is to withstand the onslaught of Mordor,” declared the Ukrainian Minister of Defence in early March. “The area is free of orcs,” another Ukrainian official reported some months later. Meanwhile, President Zelenskyy pleaded that Ukraine not …
Richard Osman’s common people
In 1984, Clive James tabled the Barry Manilow Law: no-one you know likes Barry Manilow, while the rest of the world worships the ground on which he walks. This adage can now be updated. Until very recently, I didn’t know …
The truth about Elizabeth’s empire
History matters. And it is often the case that when we talk about the past, we are really talking about the present. We are trying to explain why we are where we are. The current debates over colonialism and the …
The tragedy of Australian republicans
The Australian Republic Movement (ARM) has always been nervous about making its move too early — it has been waiting for this moment for a long time. For the past decade, polls showed that Elizabeth II, who visited Australia 16 …
The great Net Zero lie
“Net Zero” was supposed to be a straightforward idea — one that could be achieved with a healthy dose of spreadsheet politics, shifting a few numbers from one Excel column to another. It made sense, then, when the UN delegated …
America doesn’t want a civil war
In the story America tells about 9/11, the attack was a tragedy, but a tragedy that united the nation. “We were able to come together as a country at that terrible time; we put aside differences,” said Hillary Clinton on …
The mythic power of King Charles III
When, in the early years of her reign, Queen Elizabeth II first met Europe’s last true monarch, Charles de Gaulle, and asked for his advice on leadership, the great statesman advised her: “In the place where God has placed you, …
Why Ukraine’s counter-offensive is working
“You better stay out of our country. The more Russians you send to Ukraine, the more of them we will kill, and the more death you will bring back to your homes.” Nataliya Zubar, native of Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv, …
America can’t understand monarchy
It was a coincidence that The Crown debuted on US television in November 2016. America had just elected a new president — boorish, unstable, indifferent to rules, contemptuous of the law, with a long history of sexual assault, fraud and …
Gen Z’s worship of the Unabomber
“The industrial revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.” Writing those words as the introduction to his 1995 anti-technology manifesto Industrial Society and its Future, Ted Kaczynski couldn’t have known that they would someday spawn …