Prince Philip wasn t just a great man, but a symbol of the nation
The end of such a life, precisely because it has been a mark of continuity, seems to herald the end of an era
11 April 2021 • 7:00am
The spontaneous reaction of so many to the death of the Duke of Edinburgh is of sadness at the ending of a remarkable life. But it shows something more: that people feel the significance of this moment in the life of the nation, and many wish to make it in some way part of their own lives, as they would the death of a friend or relative.
Thoughts from the ammo line
Ammo Grrrll considers TRUTH IN ADVERTISING FOR POTENTATES’ NAMES. She writes:
Evidently in the past, the “masses” had more intestinal fortitude and pitiless honesty than our current citizenries. They picked some doozies of monikers for their leaders, names that got into the history books. Some of them were either just descriptive or benign – Leif the Lucky, Eric the Red come to mind. Others were downright complimentary: Good Queen Bess, and Catherine the Great, not to mention Thelma the Terrific, a minor princess in Bohemia, or possibly, a woman I just made up.
But my favorites are the unflattering nicknames. The French seem to be especially good at this, which figures. Nobody can do a peevish, sour look like the French. For example, there is Louis the Fat. As someone who has routinely been 10-20 pounds overweight for at least 50 years, I have a certain amount of sympathy for a king whose most salient feature is his blubber.
The first time I met Lady Georgiana Gascoyne-Cecil, daughter of the present Marquess of Salisbury, she was sitting astride the sink in the pantry at a friend’s party in Notting Hill.
There was a long queue for the lavatory, and she just couldn’t wait. But far from showing any sign of embarrassment over her predicament, she was chatting and laughing away with friends and strangers in the queue, apparently wholly at ease.
Indeed, she behaved as if this was a perfectly natural thing for a young woman to do (this was back in the late 1990s) in full view of mixed company.