Review: The Last Queen by Clive Irving

I thought that with the passing of England’s Queen, this might be a good time to read this book that’s been sitting on my shelf for a few months.

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The Last Queen: Elizabeth II’s Seventy Year Battle to Save the House of Windsor

by Clive Irving

👑 3.5 crowns out of 5 👑

Just based on the title and subtitle, one might presume the book would lay out all the ways the British monarchy has failed to evolve with the times and has tried to maintain the public’s goodwill. And yet. The book is equal parts “assessing the state of the monarchy” and anecdotes from Irving’s work life in the 50s and 60s. He mines his association with Lord Snowdon for filler an almost obsessive amount. And if you ever wanted a primer on London newspapers of that era, this is the book for you. These parts didn’t interest me as much as when he attended his main thesis directly.

Eventually Irving gets around to explaining how the monarchy has weathered many existential crises over the past century and how it may or may not be able to withstand many more due to its inherent anachronism. But it’s really only one portion of the book and is interspersed among other stories. Many of these stories illustrate how royal outsiders (Lord Snowdon and Princess Diana) used their position and popularity to help modernize the monarchy in big ways and small, and in doing so, offered great examples of how the institution could evolve and stay relevant but defiantly it has chosen not to.

Over time, the British monarchy has gone from enjoying almost full support from an adoring public (as during the reign of Victoria) to enduring constant and increasingly hostile questioning about their purpose. Irving describes the general cultural change that has chipped away at the British people’s love and tolerance for the monarchy. Despite token gestures and occasional policy updates, the RF is seen as increasingly out-of-touch as time goes by. Public opinion of the monarchy, arguably a side effect of how the media portrays them, has changed drastically since WWII and Irving believes that the public will soon completely run out of goodwill for them altogether. He calls the House of Windsor “paralyzed by ritual, ossified in the glories of the past.” This has always been true but people are far less willing now to put up with class distinctions and the excess of wealth and privilege the RF seem to enjoy.

I did appreciate that the book pulls no punches. As you might expect from someone who wrote for a number of Fleet Street newspapers, Irving calls out the royals for their missteps and lack of character but never in a way that feels undeserved or vengeful. And rather than providing a one-sided vilification, he manages to strike a balance by also offering a framework for understanding and compassion when warranted. I actually found it a very honest and fair depiction of the members of the RF, although it does occasionally delve into salacious tabloid gossip territory. Nevertheless, his perspective on the Queen and the RF does seem to be well-informed and astute. Overall, much of the content was interesting but I found the book to be a little more chaotic in its presentation  than I had expected. It also had a lot of semi-relevant content that didn’t directly (or at all) pertain to the thesis and I found that disappointing. In the very last paragraph of the Afterword, Irving finally comes to his point and suggests that the way for the monarchy to stay alive is through transparency. While I agree with this in a way, I think it’s a rather minor part of what should be a complex multiple-element process that Irving himself illuminated throughout other parts of the book. It felt like he had forgotten all the points he’d made. Transparency is the least of their problems.

3.5 👑 out of 5