Around our Sceptered Isle

Letters and Miscellany

A TRIUMPHANT ROYAL VISIT

The November visit of Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall was the prince’s first state visit to America in 20 years. The Windsors’ official diary was filled with 22 engagements during the nine-day visit. After touring Ground Zero at the World Trade Center in New York, the couple dedicated the centerpiece in the new British Memorial Garden in Hanover Square—commemorating the 67 Britons who lost their lives on 9/11.
In Washington, the Prince of Wales and his charming duchess lunched with the president’s family and were honored at a White House dinner with 130 guests. After several days of engagements in Washington, the royal couple visited the devastated Louisiana coast on their way to a stay in northern California.
Apart from the usual round of official evening receptions, the prince and duchess’ calendar was dominated by visits reflecting Prince Charles’ keen interest in organic farming, responsible agriculture and the environment. On the eve of the royal arrival, I predicted an environmental theme to the prince’s visit on Fox News’ O’Reilly Factor, but it was a disarmingly easy call. These are not new interests of his Royal Highness; the prince has been a consistent spokesman on these issues for 25 years.
In general, press coverage of the state visit was fair and positive. There was too much fuss comparing this visit of Charles and Camilla’s to the glitzy whirl excited in 1985 by the prince and late Princess Diana. Which of us cuts the same dashing figure we did two decades ago? Besides, our own president is the early-to-bed teetotaler. So, who’s not the life of the party? As for the duchess, she was indeed poised and gracious, and represented Britain well. Camilla and the prince are obviously comfortable and happy together.
This visit was widely praised as a triumph for the royal couple. Their success is well-deserved. In the next issue of BH, we will take a closer look at Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall.

MURDER BY HIRSCHFELD

We did promise to reveal the legend for the Al Hirschfeld characters from the Neil Simon movie Murder by Death in last issue’s “Last Orders, Please!” And characters indeed they are. From left to right this motley stellar assemblage includes: Truman Capote, Nancy Walker, Alec Guinness, Maggie Smith, Estelle Winwood, Elsa Lanchester, Peter Sellers, Peter Falk, Eileen Brennan, James Coco and David Niven.

BREAKFAST WITH THE ARCHBISHOP

The meteoric rise of George Carey in the hierarchy of the Church of England—from parish vicar to archbishop in a decade—is one fascinating tidbit of Jennie Dorn’s great feature story in this issue. What brought Lord Carey to national attention was a book he wrote called The Church in the Marketplace. It recounts his experience in ministry at St. Nicholas Church, the parish church in the marketplace of the ancient cathedral city of Durham.
While I was rambling around Northern England in 1980, I arrived in Durham late one summer evening and found myself staying at the vicarage. St. Nicholas was amidst a fund drive to provide a major refurbishment to their marketplace church. The Rev. and Mrs. Carey opened the vicarage as a B&B—their contribution to the effort. I spent two nights with the Careys, and while he was serving me the breakfast bacon and eggs, the vicar and I chatted about theology and the state of the British church. A dozen years later, George Carey was the Archbishop of Canterbury. In a quarter century of staying in hundreds of B&Bs, inns and hostelries from Penzance to Inverness, oddly enough I still vividly recall that visit.

SHARING THE POST

A lovely note from long-time reader Joyce Hanson shares: “I am a Charter subscriber of British Heritage and have a collection of every magazine going back to the first issue. There is a delightful picture of Her Majesty, Queen Victoria, on the front cover. I would very much like to donate this entire, wonderful collection to any history buff or library interested in having it.” We would love to see this collection of BH find an appreciative home. If you have one, do let me know.
Jan Zarate dropped me a good-natured line to point out that in our “Great Migrations” story of the Cavaliers, while Edgehill is in Warwickshire, her native Banbury is actually “situated in a seemingly odd-shaped projection in the north” of Oxfordshire. Well spotted, Jan, and thanks for the kind comments.
On our “Great Migrations” story of the Quaker coming, Peter Williams notes that the Delaware Valley had already become a magnet for Welsh Quakers when William Penn received his charter. He points out that Penn himself had wished to call his colony New Wales.
Bettie Frey wrote suggesting it was unfair not to include a translation in November’s editorial for: Plus ca change; plus c’est meme chose. Unfair we would never want to be. The aphorism renders, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” It’s nice to hear that it was important to know.
A number of readers raised a legitimate question regarding the identity of James II. He was, of course, the Merrie Monarch’s younger brother, son of Charles I.

WINNING THE ASHES!

It had been 18 years since England last beat Australia in an international Test match. This year, jubilant English cricket fans celebrated as England won the honored series for the first time since 1987. England has “won back the Ashes”!
The Ashes is one of cricket’s fiercest and most celebrated rivalries. Back in 1882, Australia beat England at the Oval for the first time. The Sporting News bemoaned England’s loss by running a satirical obituary: “In affectionate remembrance of English cricket, which died at the Oval on 29th August, 1882, deeply lamented by a large circle of sorrowing friends and acquaintances R.I.P. N.B.—The body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia.”
When the England 11 next toured Australia, the press called the contests a quest to regain the Ashes. After England won the series, a group of Melbourne women presented the team with a terracotta urn reputed to contain the ashes of burnt cricket bails symbolizing “the ashes of English cricket.” While the original urn remains on display at Lord’s, Test cricket between England and Australia ever since has been played “for the Ashes.”

SALUTING BRITISH HEROES

Trafalgar Week, commemorating the 200th anniversary of Lord Nelson’s fatal victory at the Battle of Trafalgar (see Chris Sharp’s terrific feature in November 2005), was celebrated across Britain in many ways. I had the privilege of being a guest on BBC Radio Five Live’s Up All Night call-in talk show. The topic was British heroes. With presenter Dotun Adebayo and Professor Nicholas Rogers of York University, I chatted about British heroes with callers from Essex to Edinburgh. While it’s hard to beat Nelson as a national hero, on a personal level British heroes proved more local. Among the heroes mentioned were WWI nurse Edith Cavell, legendary Yorkshire cricketer Geoffrey Boycott and a lifeboat crew who sacrificed their lives in the North Sea. I proffered Florence Nightingale and Eric Liddell as fine examples, and wondered whether William Wallace and Owyn Glendywr qualified as British heroes. It was a fun evening.

ROYAL YEAR AT WINDSOR

Do mark your diary. On February 15, February 22 and March 1 PBS will air nationally a new three-part series, Windsor Castle: A Royal Year. For almost a thousand years, Windsor Castle has been fortress, family home and witness to British history. Now, for the first time, we get a look inside the world of the royal family at home in Windsor. It’s an unprecedented visit behind the scenes—chronicling an upstairs-downstairs year in Windsor Castle life. I’ll bet you didn’t know that it took the royal clock-keeper 16 hours to change the 456 castle clocks backward and forward during the switch between British Summer Time and GMT. From Windsor Chapel across the vast Crown Estate, a droll, endearing Prince Philip leads us on a visit with the family, staff and rhythms of life in the world’s largest inhabited castle. I have seen this, folks, in my royal capacity as editor. It is a truly majestic series. You really won’t want to miss it.

ALBION’S SEED LOOKS AHEAD

Claire Hopley’s wonderful retelling of the North British and Ulster migration of the mid-1700s concludes our series on the Great Migrations. Over the last several issues we’ve looked at the Puritan settlement of Massachusetts Bay, the Cavalier migration to Tidewater Virginia, the Quaker colonization of Pennsylvania and, in this issue, the forging beyond our Atlantic shores by the North British. While all distinctly British, these colonial migrations brought disparate regional cultures, customs and worldviews with them. From these four distinct traditions and their melding, a uniquely American cultural identity was forged.
As the British empire rose through the 19th century to become economically and politically dominant throughout the world, a different kind of migration came from Britain across the Atlantic. The Industrial Revolution of the late 18th and 19th centuries not only fueled the economy of Britain’s colonial empire, but also had a decisive impact upon the development of America’s industrial economy. In the process, England’s industrialization changed life for everyone forever. In our next issue, we begin a series of features on Industry & Empire.

PREPARING A 400TH BIRTHDAY PARTY

The 400th birthday would be Virginia’s Jamestown. Next year marks the quatercentennial anniversary of the founding of Jamestown Colony in 1607. Since 1807 Jamestown has traditionally celebrated its birthday in a big way every 50 years. During the last commemoration festivities in 1957, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth paid her first state visit as monarch to those colonial shores.
Plans are well underway on both sides of the Atlantic for a yearlong celebration being acclaimed as “America’s 400th Anniversary.” The Jamestown 2007 British Committee, headquartered in Maidstone, Kent, plans to commemorate the founding of the Virginia Company of London, the sail of the Jamestown fleet in 1606 and more. In this country, Jamestown 2007 is the coordinating agency overseeing a full calendar of events in Virginia’s Historic Triangle and along the Eastern seaboard. Over the coming months, BH will cover the story as it unfolds. Web site: www.Americas400thAnniversary.com

LOOKING FOR A GOOD PINT?

Ale drinkers can celebrate. It should come as no surprise that Britain has more microbreweries per capita than any country in the world. With more than 500 micros and 35 family-owned breweries plus several larger regional producers, Britain’s beer drinkers now have a greater choice than at any time since the early 1970s. These statistics come from the latest edition of the Good Beer Guide 2006, published annually by the consumer-led Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA). For real ale aficionados, the guide also includes descriptions of some 4,500 pubs serving cask-conditioned real ale, all surveyed regularly by CAMRA’s volunteer members. It’s a rough job, as they say, but somebody’s got to do it. Bottoms up.

POEM OF THE SEA

The winner in Seabritain’s 2005 Favorite Poem of the Sea poll was announced in November at the Old Royal Naval College, Greenwich. Yes, indeed, John Masefield’s “Sea Fever” garnered the most votes. Remember, you did hear it here first! In alphabetical order, the nine other finalists were:
“At the Fishhouses” by Elizabeth Bishop
“Cargoes” by John Masefield
“Convoy” by Charles Causley
“Christmas at Sea” by Robert Louis Stevenson
“Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold
“The Drunken Boat” by Arthur Rimbaud
“The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“The Seafarer” anonymous, Anglo-Saxon
“The Song of the Waterlily” by Martin
Newell.

Correction from January 2006 BH
We regret our errors: The Philadelphia city plan on pg. 44 and the compass rose on pg. 42 should be credited to The Granger Collection, New York. The Pennsylvania government page, on pg. 45, should be credited to North Wind Picture Archive.