Once you have read Andrew Lownie’s book Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York, you will never feel the same about the Royal Family ever again. All my life, I have viewed the British Royal Family as a dysfunctional collection of oddballs, living an unbelievably privileged life, albeit largely in the public eye, who the majority of the public like and, in some cases, love. I suppose I have just accepted their existence because it’s not worth the hassle of being a full-blown republican abolitionist. Lownie’s book is changing all that.
The House of York is basically Andrew Mountbatten Windsor and his ex wife Sarah Ferguson. I never much cared for either of them before reading the book. I’ve learned that they are both thick, arrogant, spendthrift, spoiled, entitled parasites, and that’s without even mentioning their strong connections to the dead paedophile and all round pervert Jeffrey Epstein. These are people who fly around the world in business class, staying in luxury hotels and houses, for ‘charity’ events that raise piddling sums compared to what they rake in for themselves.
In short, they reflect the class system that clearly still exists in Britain and, once you get inside their little world, you realise that system is spread far wider than you might imagine.
No one comes out of it well. Even the late Queen, Gawd bless her, asked far too few questions about her errant son and did little to prevent him living a life of idle luxury at the expense of others, especially the poor bloody taxpayer. Andrew and Sarah Ferguson are the very worst of us and even though they have been shamed out of the House of Windsor, they continue to live lives well beyond the imaginings of ordinary folk struggling to put bread on the table.
Today I read that King Brian’s son William will be attending the funeral of Norway’s King Harald. I somehow doubt that he will be getting the Ryanair flight to Oslo or staying in the Nordic version of a Premier Inn. His ‘job’ will be to look suitably serious, shake hands with a few people and then return home to resume his arduous career of shaking hands with people and waving. No wonder the Royals live forever.
William and his wife Kate Middleton do seem to be a pleasant, if somewhat bland, couple and I have nothing against them personally. I am just thinking that we don’t really need them anymore if their main job, apart from waving and shaking hands, is mainly to attract foreign tourists.
Lownie’s book should be essential reading for fans of and apologists for the Royal Family. Once you’ve read it, you will never, as I said, feel the same about them. Not all the family members are as obnoxious as the House of York parasites, but they are equally useless. And I am more and more convinced that it’s time to abolish, or at the very least dramatically cut, the Royals and to put them to work, real work like the rest of us have to to.
The artist known as Eclectic Blue is away.
