The Crown Jewels: The Official Illustrated History

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It’s not that they aren’t great people. A lot of them are; they’re wonderful people. But to me, it’s an utterly absurd basis on which to involve somebody in the process of legislation. Toyes and Trifles” the destruction of the English Crown Jewels’, History Today, 52 (7), July 2002, pp. 31-7

Jardine, Cassandra (18 April 2009). "Heritage TV or a restoration comedy?". The Daily Telegraph . Retrieved 6 November 2014.Keay worked for English Heritage from 2002–2012, including seven years as Assistant Curator of the Historic Royal Palaces, [8] responsible for Hampton Court, the Banqueting House, Whitehall, and the Tower of London. [2] As its Director of Properties Presentation, she was involved in the restoration of the Elizabethan Garden at Kenilworth Castle, which featured in a 2009 BBC television series about English Heritage. [9]

Edward VIII was never crowned. William IV didn’t want to be and had to be persuaded against his will. Even Edgar had been king of the English since 959, waiting 14 years to summon the religious leaders to crown him in Bath – perhaps to mark his newly “imperial” status as ruler of several Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, according to the historian Roy Strong. In modern times, meanwhile, no other modern European monarchy still has a coronation – their kings and queens simply get on with it. KEAY: I think Handel, whose music, I hope, we will be hearing at the coronation, which is coming up next year. None of these things involved a political union. They were just two countries that happened to share a sovereign. That’s the reason why, of course, although England and Scotland have been part of Great Britain as a political union since 1707, it was never a complete one. The legal systems have always been completely separate, completely distinct, the education systems, much else besides.He adds, “There will be about 2,000 guests instead of the 8,000 there were at Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation. I don’t think hereditary peers will be there, but I’m sure there will be a representative group of peers and they will probably wear parliamentary robes. Read More Related Articles What did this change mean for the people of England, winners and losers in the civil war? Using a series of contemporary men and women as vantage points, The Restless Republic charts extraordinary story of the republic of Britain. Ranging from the corridors of Westminster to the common fields of England, from the radicals in power to the banished royalists and from the dexterous mandarins to the trembling religious visionaries the book will illuminate a world in which a new ideology struggled to take root in a scarred landscape. It is the story of what happened when a conservative people tried revolution. She was educated at Oban High School in Argyll and Bedales School. She then read history at Magdalen College in Oxford. [1] [2]

KEAY: Well, they produced new ones because the old ones had been melted down. It was a bit more of a necessity than a desire for novelty. There wasn’t any desire for novelty. If they could have had the old ones, they would have had them. When the new ones were made in the 1660s — which is the collection that we now have — the instructions were they should be exact replicas of the things that were destroyed.

Yes, it's jewel porn, but The Crown Jewels is also a fascinating insight into English history, told through the lens of the magnificent objects used in a British coronation. Early in the book [Spoilers!], you learn that most of the current "things of state" date after The Restoration of the mid-17th century. Objects previous to Charles II are few and far between because the Commonwealth/Protectorate sold off almost everything from the Tudor period and before. But within this limitation, the history of state jewels (including some silver-gilt ceremonial service items) is told in detail. KEAY: Well, not necessarily. A lot of people who have big historic houses — a lot of them have them in charitable trusts and do things which mean there is public benefit, more generally, from them. It depends what sort of wealth tax and how it’s calculated, what the basis of it is. But I think there are lots of ways you could formulate something that didn’t penalize those who were clearly taking a very responsible attitude to historic buildings. an exceptional book about an exceptional time… Keay brilliantly conveys what it was like to live amid the contrasts and contradictions, the heady optimism and the bleak despair, of that tumultuous age … A triumph. It is hard to imagine a better introduction to the volatile world of the 1650s’ John Adamson, author of The Noble Revolt Keay grew up in a remote home in the West Highlands, the daughter of authors John Keay [1] and Julia Keay. [1] She is the granddaughter of Conservative politician and former chief whip Humphrey Atkins. [2] Underneath the metal structure is a purple velvet cap, that is trimmed with ermine. The crown weighs in at almost 2.2kg and therefore cannot be worn for long.

KEAY: Well, there are all sorts of things. The Scottish Enlightenment is such a completely gripping, extraordinary phenomenon that this tiny little country — my birthplace but micro little place on any worldview — through the course of the early and into the later 18th century, had such incredible influence around the world. I think the buildings of that period, the political thought, the poetry — all these things we should all know more about, we should teach it more to our children, and we should celebrate it.

It did make for a big shift. But there’s something called the Historic Houses Association in the UK, which is a kind of club, a trade association for people who are private owners of big historic houses and open them to the public or do public events in them, and they have an annual conference. If you go to it, you really wouldn’t think the English or British country house is in trouble. There are thousands of people there. Whereas, if you go — equally interesting, but just very different — somewhere like Manchester, which is amazing — world’s first industrial city, had this extraordinary explosion in the 19th century. The railways were invented there. Everything was developing in a very different direction. Similarly, if you look at the late 17th century with baroque buildings, and then you look at the design, for example, of our Crown Jewels, which were made — most of them — in the late 17th century, you see common motifs in terms of decoration, in terms of floral devices, in terms of the massing of objects, and the relationship between different elements. That is not the same as asking what the point is of the monarchy – because even kings and queens, in the strictest terms, don’t need coronations at all. Placing a crown on Charles’s head or anointing him with oil won’t make him the king – legally and constitutionally he has been doing the job since the moment his mother died last September.