Harry wrote:

A possibly apocryphal moment, which the ungossipy Lukacs does not treat us to, has Attlee pointing out to Greenwood that if Churchill loses to the Tory grandees civilisation in Europe will be gone,

Is it appropriate to refer to Chamberlain, the son of middle class Birmingham demagogue Joe Chamberlain, and Halifax, a rather jejune aristocrat with a title dating back to the Victorian period, as “grandees” to be opposed to Churchill, who was born in fricking Blenheim Palace? I suppose they had better Tory credentials than that two time turncoat Churchill, but still…

Did you know that the song was written by an expert in prosthetic manufacture, the son of East End jewish commmunists, who spent part of the thirties in Berlin measuring a senior Nazi (I forget which) for orthapedic shoes? If you don’t know what song I’m talking about, watch the trailer. IF you still don’t know… sorry.

54: I didn’t mean Anglophobia specifically, I meant disdain for one’s own national (possibly ‘traditional’ culture); it’s not very public in Indonesia, but I’d say it’s there (can I quote good statistical research on the topic? No, for a variety of reasons exactly to do with the construction and maintenance of official nationalism).

56: Indeed. I was referring to Eden’s infamous quote in which he (quite accurately) describes England as America’s ‘junior partner,’ which I now see he first expressed as a fear in 1940.

Apparently, when Winston Churchill died, the country came to a halt. As his coffin made its way to Westminster Abbey up the Thames, the construction cranes in the City, each in turn dipped its head.

Simon Schama has a very moving description of it in his History of Britain (book and TV series, the masterful chapter ‘The Two Winstons’ (ie Winston Churchill and Winston Smith, of 1984)).

When the Queen goes, it will be like that again. Hardened Monarchists will wipe their eyes. It will be, truly, the end of an era.

I don’t know if you’ve ever read Alastair Cooke’s piece on Harry Truman (after leaving the White House) at a New York restaurant, and a spontaneous crowd gathering outside. I can’t find it on the web. But it catches what people felt about Truman. For the Queen, it will be the same.

I am of the camp that thinks we have good monarchs, and bad monarchs, and the institution is what counts. That view is simply informed by history.

I even see merit in Prince Charles: very much ahead of his time on environmentalism, and organic food. It’s hard to imagine David Cameron (shiny new environmentalist leader of the Tory Party) in a country that hasn’t had Charlie banging on about organic food for the last 30 years.

His personal life is a mess and he behaved like a cad to his wife. So was virtually every monarch in British history.

However we live in the media age, where the old certainties do not prevail. Once the upper classes knew these things, and the media kept its mouth shut. Now the whole country is obsessed with why Prince William dropped Kate Middleton (the consensus: her mother was ‘common’ and ‘social climbing’).

Her Majesty is, as you correctly identify, an enduring reminder of the things about our country that we value, and that we treasure. Call her the living Winston Churchill. She’s probably personally shaken hands with a million of us, and maybe 10 million have been at a gathering where she has spoken or appeared (I’m guessing these numbers but have confidence in the first number: I doubt there are too many people in Britain who don’t know someone who has shaken hands with the Queen).

She has ruled over us through some of our darkest moments, and tremendous social and economic changes in our country. And yet she is still Her Majesty. When we speak of the Defence of the Realm, and a loyalty to The Realm, we mean her, not Tony Blair.

When we sing the national anthem it is, indeed, God Save the Queen. Can you imagine God Save the President? Or God Save the Prime Minister?

That same affection pervades the Commonwealth. Clearly not in Australia, perhaps, but in other countries.

It’s quite possible by the time Charles ascends to the throne, there will be no United Kingdom, simply England (and I presume, Wales and Northern Ireland). The question of whether we wish to keep up with this antiquated form of government may fall open (we are finally doing away with a hereditary House of Lords).

But until that moment, we are still very much Her Majesty’s subjects. Like most things in England, the public face is to deny the private truth: patriotism is not something worn here on the sleeve, in an American style, where it is the civil religion, apparently. But it would be wrong to underestimate it.