The Truth About the Royal Family with Royal Reporter Robert Hardman
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Why do the hosts say the British monarchy is such a big deal and what is its purpose?
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Go to hillsdale.edu slash trigger to enroll. It's totally free. Read the classics, study the West. That's hillsdale.edu slash trigger. Structurally within Britain the monarchy has no power. Is that really true?
they might not have executive power, they unquestionably have influence. Can you think of anyone who's ever met fourteen presidents? There is as what they c what you might call a negative power because the armed forces owe their allegiance to the monarch. No politician can get their hands on it. Same with the judiciary, same with the civil service, same with the honor system. All these things that are in the hands of the wrong people can lead to tyranny. She had various grades of sort of objection, which would start with one raised eyebrow and then double raised eyebrow. And then uh and then uh the the ultimate one was Are You Sure? And I'm sure Are You Sure was like a sort of code for I think you better go away and think about this.
It's not rational. It's how we've evolved and it just it works.
Robert Harman, welcome to Trigonometry. You are, of course, journalist, but also a chronicler of a number of royals. The latest book you have is about Elizabeth II. Delighted to have you on. The royal family is actually a subject that's probably been undercovered on trigonometry in fairness, and partly because Francis and I are both a little bit foreign and maybe can't quite understand why the royal family is such a big deal. Uh why is it such a big deal?
It's it's sort of an integral part of I think of what we are, who we are. Um uh people don't wake up every day and think, ooh, you know, we live in a monarchy. Uh but it does have an underlying force of stability, continuity. Um it's why uh it it g it allows Britain, it helps Britain sort of punch above its weight diplomatically. Uh every uh world survey goes. Global survey on and when they analyze it a country by country, what does the rest of the world think of first when they think of Britain? They think of the monarchy, they think of the royal family. When I've talked to umpteen diplomats, you know, as soon as they go abroad, the first thing anyone says to them in their postings is, you know, how is the king?
You know, how is the princess? Yeah. How how are the royal family? Um, and when you look, when you stand back and look at the post-war history. As I have done for this book of Britain. And you see the part that the Queen has played in that, in the dismantling of empire and the transition from monocultural to multicultural society. At every level, the monarchy has sort of played this part. And they are this thread that runs through it all. And I think it's best summed up actually in the day of the very sad day of her death in In in twenty twenty two. Um and it was an extraordinary week. We just changed our head of government three days earlier, two days earlier. Um suddenly we were changing our head of state.
Now in most countries, if you change your head of government or your head of state, that can often lead to um you know, a degree of protest, turmoil or whatever, whether it's you know, Washington, January the sixth or other countries. We we'd done both. We'd changed the whole lot in one week and not a shot was fired, there wasn't a protest, there wasn't an angry word. Things just carried on. And there was a lovely letter in the Times newspaper that week um saying, um, Dear Sir, there's a pint of milk in my fridge.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Why do the hosts say the British monarchy is such a big deal and what is its purpose?
0:00–5:29
2
How does the monarchy exercise influence without formal executive power?
5:29–10:20
3
What role did Queen Elizabeth II play in dismantling the British Empire and building the Commonwealth?
10:20–21:20
4
How have modern media, the Diana tragedy and the Harry‑Meghan saga changed public perception of the royal family?
21:20–37:21
5
Why was Prince Andrew’s downfall described as a ‘blot on the royal name’ and what went wrong?
37:21–48:22
6
What grievances does Prince Harry have with the institution and how have they affected his relationship with the monarchy?
48:22–1:02:40
7
What challenges and opportunities lie ahead for King Charles III and the future succession?
1:02:40–1:13:47
8
What is the one important topic about the royal family that isn’t being discussed?
1:13:47–1:21:31
Speakers
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