When people learn that I'm an Anglophile, they sometimes assume that I
must love British comedy. Actually, with rare exceptions (e.g. Fawlty Towers),
I often don't, because I see British comedy, or at least certain types
of British comedy since the 1960s, as having contributed to the
undermining of a lot of what I do love about Britain. The sort of Brits I
saw on that stage and in that crowd, snarky towards everything,
reverent towards nothing, are the sort of Brits I don't like at all, the
sort of Brits who make me feel like perhaps it's just as well I don't
live there. And while Harold Macmillan (1894-1986) can certainly be
criticised, including from the Right, I for one felt deeply sorry for
him in this episode.
I quite liked the scene when Princess Margaret claims that her renovations to Kensington Palace will somehow make it more modern and "egalitarian," to which her sister the Queen witheringly responds, "you're the least egalitarian person I know." I can imagine that conversation happening.
But even in this superior (to its predecessor) episode, the end of which seemed to have been deliberately calculated to tug at my heart personally, there was at least one disturbing false note, and that was the Queen's cruel parting remarks to the outgoing PM Macmillan. While the Queen's relations with her Prime Ministers probably could aptly be described as friendliness rather than friendship, if there's one quality of which I do not believe the Queen has an ounce, it's cruelty, and I can't imagine she would have said anything like that to the ailing Macmillan, especially as it involved also disparaging Churchill who the young Queen revered.
I quite liked the scene when Princess Margaret claims that her renovations to Kensington Palace will somehow make it more modern and "egalitarian," to which her sister the Queen witheringly responds, "you're the least egalitarian person I know." I can imagine that conversation happening.
But even in this superior (to its predecessor) episode, the end of which seemed to have been deliberately calculated to tug at my heart personally, there was at least one disturbing false note, and that was the Queen's cruel parting remarks to the outgoing PM Macmillan. While the Queen's relations with her Prime Ministers probably could aptly be described as friendliness rather than friendship, if there's one quality of which I do not believe the Queen has an ounce, it's cruelty, and I can't imagine she would have said anything like that to the ailing Macmillan, especially as it involved also disparaging Churchill who the young Queen revered.
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