Cameo Consorts

After yesterday's post on Britain's longest-serving royal consorts, it seemed only fair to include the top ten shortest serving. Unsurprisingly, five of Henry VIII's six unlucky wives made the list.

1. Lord Guildford Dudley (13 days) The controversial husband of Jane Grey, Dudley was married off to her as a teenager as part of his father's attempts to retain power if the young King Edward VI died without heirs. The Dudley family's attempt to preserve the Protestant monarchy by placing their teenage daughter-in-law on the throne ended in abysmal failure when Mary Tudor seized the throne with popular support. Jane and Guildford were both executed a year later, both still teenagers. Traditionally Guildford has been presented as a weak and self-indulged character, with a teenage fondness for wine and women. An account of his execution was posted on this blog in February.

Prince Philip and the long-lasting consorts

Last night, ITV broadcast a very interesting interview with His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh, who turns ninety this year and who is now also the longest serving consort in the British monarchy's history. Born Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark in 1921, Prince Philip married Princess Elizabeth after serving in the British Navy during the Second World War. When she succeeded her father as Sovereign in February 1952, he thus became the first male consort in the Crown's history since the death of Prince Albert in 1861. With a consortial tenure of fifty-nine years, today Prince Philip is the patron of over eight hundred charitable organisations, as well as being the founder of the acclaimed Duke of Edinburgh Award, a three-tiered physical activities programme for young people aged between fourteen and twenty-four. After watching the interview, I thought I'd profile the other "top ten" longest serving consorts in British history.

1. Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (59 years) The handsome Greek prince and former officer in the British Navy had many family ties to England when he fell in love with the heiress to the throne, Princess Elizabeth, during the Second World War. A keen supporter of modernising the monarchy, he has served as consort since 1952.

2. Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (57 years) A conservative and conscientious German princess who married King George III in 1761, the year after he became king. A pen-pal and admirer of Marie-Antoinette's, Queen Charlotte remained steadfast during the enormous pressures of her husband's kingship, including the American Revolution, the overthrow of the French monarchy, the 1798 rebellion in Ireland, the war with France and, of course, the King's long battle with mental illness.

3. Philippa of Hainault (41 years) An elegant and demure Dutch princess who married King Edward III in 1328, she deliberately set herself up to be a model of royal dignity and restraint, in contrast to the unhinged glamour of her mother-in-law, Isabella. When she died in 1369, her confessor wrote, "She gave up her spirit, which I firmly believe was caught by the Holy Angels and carried to glory in Heaven for she had never done anything by thought or deed which could endanger her losing it."

4. Eleanor of Provence (36 years) The notoriously extravagant younger sister of the Queen of France, Eleanor was blamed for crippling the medieval monarchy's financial and political credit by her lavish lifestyle and constant intriguing. However, she also showed herself to be a resilient and tenacious tactician when it came to defeating the rebellions against her husband, Henry III.

5. Eleanor of Aquitaine (35 years) Eleanor married the future King Henry II of England after having only recently divorced her first husband, the King of France, a few weeks earlier. The marriage was tempestuous and ended in a civil war. Beautiful, ruthless and courageous, she was already a legend by the time she died in her mid-eighties. (Her early life is profiled in my blog-post, Daughter of Riches.)

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge meet the President and First Lady

Thanks to Lord Belmont for posting photographs on his blog about the meeting between Their Royal Highnesses the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, who recently returned from their honeymoon, and the President and First Lady of the United States, who are visiting the United Kingdom.

The meeting took place at Buckingham Palace, earlier today.

The past is a foreign country: The Queen's speech in Dublin

There are moments when you are aware that we are all living through History and that it can happen very quickly. At an almost bewildering rate, something which once seemed impossible and best left to the imagination of fiction writers suddenly becomes hard fact. One such moment was the speech given by Her Majesty The Queen at the official state dinner in Dublin to mark Her Majesty's visit, along with His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh, to the Republic of Ireland last week. It was the first time a British Sovereign had visited the republic and the first time a British monarch had set foot on southern Irish soil since the Queen's grandfather, King George V, visited Dublin in 1911, one hundred years ago. By the time King George returned to Ireland, it was to Belfast in 1921 to formally inaugurate the new Northern Irish parliament and mark the partition of the island, the only solution available to prevent civil war - a tragedy which was not avoided in the south, where many republicans attacked the new Irish government for accepting the partition of the island.

The ghosts of Partition and civil war lingered in the air during the Queen's visit, but not too much. The ghosts, too, of those slaughtered in thirty years of Troubles in Northern Ireland, including the Duke of Edinburgh's uncle, Lord Mountbatten, murdered by an IRA bomb in 1979, could not be totally ignored. But, with the Queen and President Mary McAleese, herself born in Northern Ireland, visiting the Garden of Remembrance where the President laid a wreath for those who had fought for the independence of Ireland and the Queen laying down a wreath of poppies for the Irish men and women who had given their lives for the British Empire and for Ireland in the First World War, the ghosts of the past did not seem to make themselves heard too loudly. Which made a pleasant change. Like Argentina, Ireland has a notorious inability to let go of the past and an alleged refusal to undergo any form of historical exorcism. Sometimes, I think, forgetfulness can be no bad thing. Especially here. We're a religious country, apparently, but for many years we haven't really embraced the biblical teaching that you shouldn't blame a child for the sins of his ancestors. We cling too much to what went before us, with dates like 1641, 1649, 1690, 1798, 1847, 1912 and 1916 all spoken about as if they are moments in the recent past. And all of it carrying the dangerous, unspoken warning of "careful it doesn't happen again!" Protestant women and children might once again lie slaughtered and dashed off the rocks, Irish families will once again endure famine and be forced out onto the moors to starve. Magdalene Laundries will spring up the length and breadth of Ireland or the Black and Tans will sweep through the streets again. Who stole what from whom, who started which conflict, who has the right to be here and who doesn't, who lied, who cheated, who bombed where and when. For some reason, given the horrors that stalked Irish history, we don't like to forget. We cling too much to that which went before us. Ireland's past was, until last week, the eternal present.

And then, all of a sudden, you feel goose pimples shoot up and down your arm when the Queen begins a speech in Irish. It's then that you realise that the world has changed and that Ireland isn't a place of  ghosts, rebels, blood and loyalists. It's 2011 and it's a great place to live. It's a small country, one of the smallest of the English speaking nations, and yet its national saint's day is a holiday in one of the largest; Irish charm, hospitality, friendliness, ease of living, inappropriate sense of humour and the indefinable quality of craic is known and praised throughout the world. On both sides of the border, despite the south's current economic crisis, high standards of living are enjoyed and in the north, economic prosperity is made all the more remarkable when, as the Queen reflects, it's been just over a decade since it emerged from what was one of the most vicious political conflicts in western Europe after the Second World War. In Ireland, everyone's supposed to know what you are, who you vote for, what sports you follow and which type of passport is sitting in your bedside drawer. Our identities have all been very clearly drawn, right down to the way you pronounce the letter "h." We're pros at telling through a dozen subtle signals what type of church you pray in on a Sunday and, based on that, which national anthem you'll stand for. And then, the Queen of England speaks Irish.

The "wow" of President McAleese was pretty much my reaction too. Any attempt at staying jaded had vanished. Both ladies deserve tremendous applause for their work last week and in fostering Anglo-Irish relations. We're neighbours, not enemies. Garret Fitzgerald, the man who served as Taoiseach of Ireland in the 1980s, and who had striven to improve relations between northern and southern Ireland as well as between England and Ireland, died during the Queen's visit, but Irish newspapers are reporting that before he died he had the opportunity to see the Queen dining with the Irish President. I certainly hope it's true.

Throughout her visit, the Queen acted with grace and charm, as did President McAleese and the vast majority of the Irish public, who were keen to show the visiting British royals the (rightly) world famous Irish hospitality. The finest local produce (Guinness obviously included!), the major sites of Dublin and the Irish countryside, the premier politicians from both north and south of the border and welcoming crowds helped drown out the protests of those thirty or so hardline

The Queen's speech in Dublin was the highlight of her visit and it made me very proud of both identities I hold, as a British subject and as someone born on this side of the Irish Sea. You can, finally, feel to be both. This speech, for me, is one of my favourites and one of the Queen's best. I hope people enjoy it.

"Popular": publication update

I'm really excited to announce that my first novel Popular will be published in the United Kingdom and Ireland on July 7th 2011 and then in Australia and New Zealand on August 29th!

Popular is profiled on Puffin Australia's blog Between the Lines, HERE.

The Fall of Anne Boleyn (Day 19): The Last Curtsey

Above: A later woodcut showing Anne Boleyn's execution in the French style. In the corner, the artist depicts the betrothal of Henry VIII to Jane Seymour within the next twenty-four hours.

"So here he was – the last man in her life. In her time, she had known men of great faith, men of towering intellect, of compassion, purpose, charm, chivalry and sangfroid; she had also known men of cruelty, of ego, ruthlessness, duplicity, hypocrisy and vice. There had been men who had loved her, men who had hated her, men who desired her, men who feared her and there had been men who had done all four. Now, at the very last, it was this complete stranger who was to participate in the final tragedy of Anne Boleyn and to give her a death that would buy for her an immortality that many other queens might envy. Looking at him, Anne saw a quiet, respectful angel of death, a man a million miles removed from the macabre, gothic fantasy of a leather-clad, mask wearing exterminator; he, for his part, saw a fragile and rather lovely young woman, who no more looked like the strumpet, the harpy or the harlot than his wife, his sister or his daughter."

For this blog's full account of Anne Boleyn's execution, click HERE.

The Fall of Anne Boleyn (Day 18): Preparing to die

Above: British actress Merle Oberon in the role of Anne Boleyn in the Oscar winning The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933.)

"... As London slumbered and the summer stars twinkled over the head of the vast metropolis where so many of her family's triumphs had once been celebrated, the remarkable life of Anne Boleyn was drawing quietly to its close. All that was left were the events of the morrow, which would ensure that as her life ended, her legend began and the story of Anne Boleyn would thus commence its long, powerful course through British culture, history and national myth, carrying with it potent, intoxicating images of love, betrayal, lust, drama, religion, obsession, death, hope, deceit, power, wealth, tragedy and the final blood-soaked finale on the Tower Green."

May 18th was the last full day Anne Boleyn spent alive and I blog about it, HERE.