Vancouver Province
for May 23, 2002

Tomorrow is the 24th of May. “The 24th of May is the Queen’s Birthday” we used to chant as children as we put red, white, ane blue crepe into our bicycle wheels and set off red, white, and blue fire crackers. The Queen was, of course, Victoria and she came to mind when I joined a group of 50 journalists (they obviously made an exception in my case) who toddled down to Highgrove in the heart of the Cotswolds to meet her great-great-great grandson, Charles, Prince of Wales.

The British Aristocracy is full of its little ironies. Take the strange case of the two Princes of Wales. Prince Charles, Prince of Wales, Duke of Cornwall and so on had a great great grandfather. Actually he had eight ot them but one was also the Prince of Wales having been the eldest son of the aforesaid Victoria and Prince Albert. He was called Bertie by his friends who included most of the good looking ladies of London Society, including the ravishing actress from Jersey, Lily Langtry and Lady Randolph Churchill, formerly the New York beauty Jenny Jerome, and mother to the great Winston. Bertie was considered a lightweight by his mother probably at least in part because he ignored his wife, Queen Alexandra, one of the great beauties of the age, in favour of the Alice Keppel, wife of one of the Prince’s more understanding friends. In all events, Victoria, even after more than 60 years on the throne, wouldn’t hear of abdication in favour of Bertie who thus became Kiing at what was for the time, the advanced age of 59.

Bertie fooled ‘em though. He became quite a good King – taking the name Edward VII - and his official visit to France in 1906 was considered the catalyst permitting the formation of the Entente between France and Britain which, in turn, brought Britain into the Great War on the side of the French. (Fie on those who churlishly point out that had the Entente not been formed, both Britain and Canada, to say nothing of Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and India, would have been spared the loss of a generation of young men, leaving the Germans and French to continue their historic quarrel without us.)

Queen Alexandra, proving herself to be just as much of a good sport as Mr Keppel, permitted Alice to visit Bertie on his deathbed.

Prince Charles, is also seen as unsuited to Kingship by his mother, who has just made it clear that at 76 and after 50 years on the throne she has no intention of stepping aside for her son.

But you ask, impatiently, what about this aristocratic irony?

Well, we all knw that Charles has a “significant other”, just like g-g-grampa had and she just happens to be the great-great-granddaughter of Alice Keppel.

But is it not also an interesting coincidence that Charles is also seen, by his Mum, as a lightweight just not up to being King?

Well, I think Elizabeth is just as wrong as Victoria was. Thanks to Charles, Paternoster Square by St Pauls has been spared an architectural catastrophe. Thanks to him, more and more British Agriculture is herbicide and pesticide free. Last week I met the Prince, for the second time, incidentally, and I listened as he spoke to us about farming and the countryside. And about social values. And the environment. And what we were doing to that environment. He had great passion in his voice and it was clear that not only did he mean what he said but that he would keep on saying it for the rest of his days, no matter what those days might bring him.

And that was the real and bitter irony – both of Britain’s last two Queens to some degree spoiled their fine reigns by not really knowing their sons.