Charles Moore
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The other phrase my father quoted from the broadcast was the last: ‘I, whose youth was passed in the august, unchallenged and tranquil glories of the Victorian Era, may well feel a thrill in invoking, once more, the prayer and the Anthem GOD SAVE THE QUEEN’. In his diary for 7 February 1952, my grandfather wrote: ‘So I have lived in six reigns.’ It is extraordinary to think that the period from the death of Victoria to that of George VI was almost ten years shorter than this Queen’s reign. To get a sense of the vast span of change the present Queen has encompassed, imagine that she reigned from 1892 to 1952, through all those convulsions, instead of from 1952 until now. One day, more than 50 years hence, some leader may speak of the ‘august, unchallenged and tranquil glories of the second Elizabethan era’, without sounding ridiculous.
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I have always been interested in what Americans think of the British monarchy. They might easily be unfriendly. After all, the States became United in opposition to the British Crown, and the constitution guarantees ‘to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government’. This is deeply believed, and I have met Americans who politely but strongly disapprove of our monarchy on principle. But on the whole, Americans tend to see more clearly than we the advantages of our system for us, if not for them, and they are ready to be charmed by it. The American Sally Bedell-Smith has just published an excellent and authoritative book about the Queen (Elizabeth the Queen, Random House). Without pushing the point too hard, she suggests that the Queen’s encounters with America may have helped her handle problems at home. Take the famous attacks by Lord Altrincham (John Grigg) and Malcolm Muggeridge in 1957. They marked the moment when the exaggerated adoration of the young monarch soured, and the Queen was seen as stuck in a ‘tweedy’, ‘tight little enclave’ of advisers. She was, said Mugg, ‘a generator of snobbishness and a focus of sycophancy’. The attacks struck home. The Queen and Prince Philip went to north America that October and, in Washington, asked to visit a supermarket, which they had never done before. There they marvelled at trolleys and checkout counters, and chatted to the customers. This was considered miraculously friendly and informal. In New York, an enthusiastic crowd of 1.25 million threw ticker tape, confetti and torn-up telephone books all over them. Macmillan wrote in his diary that the Queen had ‘buried George III for good and all’. But the wider reaction at home was, as the Daily Herald put it, ‘Why does she have to cross the Atlantic to be real?’ She learnt from all of this.
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As debate rages about the use of riches in hard times, it is good to report that Jonathan Ruffer’s plans to save Auckland Castle, the palace of the Bishop of Durham, are back on track. Last year (see my interview with Mr Ruffer, 2 April 2011), he offered to buy the castle’s Zurburan paintings of Jacob and his Sons, for £15 million on condition that they stay there, and that the castle become a centre of Christian culture and a haven for all those who help the poor in the north-east. Before Christmas, however, the Church Commissioners were insisting on £1.7 million for the leasehold, and Mr Ruffer, feeling that the project would die if the Church started to take money out of it, walked away. Luckily, the Church Commissioners relented, and the deal will be done in April. For all its rhetoric, the Church finds it just as hard as banks to surrender money when it thinks its own interests are at stake, so Mr Ruffer, though he works in the world of Mammon, has been doing God’s work. One hopes that the Commissioners, as they sell Rose Castle and Hartlebury Castle, will profit (not necessarily financially) from the lesson of Auckland.
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My nephew George, who is autistic, came and stood close to me, clearly pregnant with a difficult thought. After some hesitation, he asked: ‘Charles, what colour is God?’ This was not a race-based inquiry, I hasten to explain, but arises from the fact that George is very interested in gradations of colour, and also in God. I explained that we could not really know, because no one has seen God, but, because He is associated with light, you could say that He was white or gold. ‘Gold!’ said George eagerly, ‘Dark gold or light gold?’ I thought probably light gold. There is something about theology which leads children to ask penetrating questions. The same can be true of autistic people. George said to his mother recently: ‘God makes the wind and God makes the rain but He doesn’t have a surname.’ The Old Testament could scarcely have put it better.
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