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Amol Rajan
posted 17 November 2006

Ah, Paxo. The brainthrob of Middle England has written another book for his adoring fans, and this one's about royalty. Amid great pomp and fanfare, and grossly exaggerated pre-publication publicity, the face of Newsnight has, we are told, changed his mind about the royals. He'd keep them. He used to be a republican, yes, but now, with age on his side, he has given up on the idea that members of a democracy should be citizens, rather than subjects. He has decided that, after all, the royals are a harmless bunch, just plain fun really and, further, that their forefathers used to kill each other in brutal and exciting ways, with important implications. And so he has written a book. Cue serialisation in the Daily Mail, and Christmas shoppers sighing with relief.

The trouble is, making a book out of changing one's mind on a political question - namely: is a constitutional monarchy compatible with an active, functional democracy? - warrants a clear argument, with a detailed consideration of counter-arguments. But this book does not even attempt to provide that. Labelled On Royalty, it is a bizarre combination of personal anecdote, chequered English history, and unsure political campaigning. The entire first eleven chapters act as a frustrating postponement of the twelfth and final chapter, in which Paxman for the first time properly puts forward his case. But by then he gives the impression of a man who has shrugged his shoulders in indifference, given up on politics, and resigned himself to the permanency of an institution he and his fellow subjects are too weak to dispose of - leaving us to ask what the previous eleven chapters had to do with this dim view.

The principal problem with this book is that its purpose is vague, and its title is the most immediate symptom of that. If you are going to write On something, you had better keep the whole of that something in view as you write. When, for example, JS Mill wrote On Liberty, which was published in 1861 (though almost certainly conceived half a decade earlier), he described the heritage and parameters of a clear political principle, and explained the benefits of its observance. In doing so, he attempted, with varying success, to fill the holes in the moral philosophy outlined in his earlier work, Utilitarianism.

On Royalty has no such clarity of vision. As historical 'narrative', it is more interested in isolated events than in patterns or causal relations, meaning the author can't really interrogate why changes in society take place - even though he can document them severally. Fascinating issues, consistently hinted at, never receive full scrutiny. For example, in chapter 6, Paxman discusses the relation of monarchs to God, noting that, whereas in primitive societies monarchs had the task of being godlike figures, since at least the Middle Ages European monarchs have had the task of being God's anointed. This is an acute observation. What's the difference? Godlike status implies the capacity to wield godly powers and suggests an unquestionable authority. Being God's anointed implies being merely a representation of God, without having his powers or authority, and being therefore subjected still to the wishes and whims of an external corporeality. There is, then, a subtle but significant difference between these two roles, and the switching of monarchs from one to the other is an important stage in political history. But Paxman isn't interested: he tells us merely that Henry VIII was the first British monarch to make himself supreme head of the church, which was really just a practicality undertaken because he wanted a son, and wished to marry Anne Boleyn.

The nuanced distinction between godlike figures and God's anointed monarchs should appeal to the curious reader. That monarchs should be God's ambassadors to earth, rather than Godlike in themselves, stems from a Christian worldview, in which kings and queens fill the vacuum left by God's son on earth, and appear as messengers from a realm free of imperfection, here to cleanse us and offer a glimpse of salvation. In being God's anointed rather than gods themselves, monarchs such as Henry VIII accepted their incapacity to attain equality with God, and therein their submission to His arbitrary power. This was not only a religious statement - re-affirming the impenetrable omniscience of the Creator - but also a political statement, asserting that supreme power resided outside of human action, and was ultimately enforced upon humans according to the whim of God. But, what is more, the popularisation of the view that monarchs are God's anointed became a political manoeuvre - one that according to David Starkey, allowed Henry VIII to 'introduce genuine totalitarianism for the first and last time in English history'. Political motivation - or, what is sometimes called megalomania - is, then, capable of inspiring the movement of monarchies into modernity.

Sometimes, megalomania inspires the murder of monarchs too. 'Killing a King', chapter seven, is an extraordinary interlude in this book. Paxman spends eighteen pages detailing the execution of Charles I in 1649, an act largely inspired by the pursuit of a redistribution of power among his subjects, by those same subjects. There is absolutely nothing new here; no original research, no vivid description of the event, no new angle or approach. What is probably the most plentifully described event in English political history receives a bland re-telling. Generations of other historians have done it better. Why repeat their tale, without inspiration? Obviously the event is not without tremendous significance, but far from weaving it into the fabric of modern monarchy, Paxman surveys the event in isolation - and lengthily too. Similarly, the ninth chapter, 'We Are You', is a hotch-potch of totally unrelated issues, beginning with an excursion through George Bernard Shaw's The Apple Cart and ending with a discourse on the weakness of British republicanism, via the book's only consideration of the cost of monarchy to a taxpayer. There is no cohesion between these things, and the chapter title is utterly redundant.

The book has other deficiencies. It is too Eurocentric. There are very minor and occasional references to Hirohito, Persia, and the like, but they are so infrequent that the claim to be writing on the whole of royalty seems disingenuous. The writing is littered with arcane platitudes: 'The secret weapon of monarchy is not secret at all', 'But in the end all princes and princesses, kings and queens, succumb to mortality', 'People want inspiration, but if they cannot have inspiration, they'll settle for certainty, constancy and devotion'. Why can a people not have inspiration, Paxo? Dare you ask?

The disappointment of this work stems from the fact that its motivation, a political assertion that the British monarchy should remain intact, is presented in the form of a retreat from politics. The attempt to answer a political question by saying that politics can't provide the answer is unsatisfactory, and it is in this sense that Paxman is overtly conservative. He readily accepts that 'the arrangements are antique, undemocratic and illogical'. 'But', he goes on, 'monarchies do not function by logic. If they work, they do so by appealing to other instincts, of history, emotion, imagination, and mythology'. It is true, Paxman accepts, that by either an act of parliament or by a revolution, the British monarchy could be dismantled, but we must wait for his final words before we're really clear of his sentiment: 'But why bother?'

This is the base sentiment of the former republican. Nothing would be achieved by abolishing the monarchy; there would be no resulting increase in the liberty of the British people. Plenty would be lost: not least a line that stretches back over a millennium. In any case, several earlier crises for the monarchy - most notably those associated with the Abdication Crisis in 1936, when Edward VIII married the American divorcee Wallis Simpson, and the divorce of Prince Charles from Diana, Princess of Wales, finalised in August 1996 - came to nothing. So why bother?

The problem is not the answer but the question itself. Paxman is simultaneously asking two of the fundamental questions of politics - who should be the head of a state, and why? - and saying that politics is incapable of providing a satisfactory answer. His premise is a belief that the citizenry of a democracy could not achieve their collective ambition even if they wanted to. Throughout this book there is, then, a subtle and persistent conservatism that from time to time will manifest itself in scepticism about the political agency of members of a democracy. At times, this can seem to go as far as mild misanthropy, as when he approvingly quotes the Shakespearean scholar G Wilson Knight's assertion that a Crown is necessary 'as a window for ever letting God's air to the sick room of human politics', or when he says 'the important consideration [in asking whether the monarchy should exist] is not so much the biological facts about an individual as the collective delusion of a society. The important thing is that people believe'.

In his discussion of the charity work of the British monarchy, he says that 'the voluntary sector's enthusiasm for royal patronage reflects the belief of a previous age, when kings made things happen: by comparison, the state seems lumbering, bureaucratic, and mechanical'. This, presumably, is because normal people run it. Elsewhere, in quoting with approval the psychoanalyst Ernest Jones, Paxman suggests there is 'a sense in which kings and queens are as much the product of popular choice as any politician', which is plainly absurd, because it has never been put to the vote. Jones had said that whether the head of state is monarch or president, 'in neither case do they [the people] actively select a particular individual; what happens is that in certain circumstances they allow him to become their ruler'. There's that 'collective delusion' again, the smile of the dumbstruck masses. Paxman admits that 'what he [Jones] suggested was popular choice might as easily be described as inertia', and he is right. Throughout this work Paxman's attack on the ability of a people to overthrow their monarch, attached as it is to evidence of the failure of previous republican movements, becomes tantamount to an endorsement of political passivity.

Some would say that is perfectly reasonable; it is the simple, conservative approach to a complex political problem. The trouble is, it makes for rather depressing reading. Given the fact that nothing elsewhere in his history of (mainly British) European monarchy is original, and nothing in his personal account of meetings with royals is interesting (Diana 'was wearing a pale-blue two-piece suit and was much taller than I had expected'; Charles sometimes has seven boiled eggs made for his breakfast, and arranged in descending order of internal liquidity), one finishes this book feeling hardly enlightened and rather disappointed. With all of his penetrating intellect, one wishes our Paxo (whose book The English is as fine an analysis of that breed as Orwell's) had written a sharper, more focused defence of monarchy, rather than this confused pick'n'mix of political history and personal anecdote, whose rightful name is 'An Apology for (British) Royalty'. The problem with apologising for other people's existence when they haven't asked you to is that you come across all servant-like and sycophantic for doing so, almost like you're applying for a job, or an honour. But Paxo's place in the airwaves and, one day, in the Upper House, was secured years ago. So why bother?