TRIGGERnometry - August 08, 2026


The Truth About the Royal Family with Royal Reporter Robert Hardman


Episode Stats


Length

1 hour and 21 minutes

Words per minute

177.39

Word count

14,373

Sentence count

753

Harmful content

Misogyny

20

sentences flagged

Toxicity

5

sentences flagged

Hate speech

12

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Structurally, within Britain, the monarchy has no power. Is that really true?
00:00:07.000 While they might not have executive power, they unquestionably have influence.
00:00:11.000 Can you think of anyone who's ever met 14 presidents?
00:00:13.000 There is what you might call a negative power because the armed forces owe their allegiance to the monarch.
00:00:21.000 No politician can get their hands on it.
00:00:23.000 Same with the judiciary, same with the civil service, same with the honour system.
00:00:26.000 All these things that are in the hands of the wrong people can lead to tyranny.
00:00:30.800 She had various grades of sort of objection, which would start with one raised eyebrow
00:00:35.720 and then a double raised eyebrow.
00:00:38.120 And then the ultimate one was, are you sure?
00:00:41.660 And I'm sure, are you sure was like a sort of code for, I think a better way to think
00:00:46.220 about this.
00:00:47.220 It's not rational.
00:00:48.720 It's how we've evolved and it just, it works.
00:00:52.840 Robert Hartman, welcome to Trigonometry.
00:00:56.620 You are, of course, journalist, but also a chronicle of a number of royals.
00:01:00.240 The latest book you have is about Elizabeth II.
00:01:03.200 Delighted to have you on.
00:01:04.720 The royal family is actually a subject that's probably been undercovered on trigonometry and fairness.
00:01:09.260 It's partly because Francis and I are both a little bit foreign
00:01:12.460 and maybe can't quite understand why the royal family is such a big deal.
00:01:18.980 Why is it such a big deal?
00:01:21.060 It's sort of an integral part of, I think, of what we are, who we are.
00:01:26.440 People don't wake up every day and think, oh, you know, we live in a monarchy.
00:01:30.960 But it does have an underlying force of stability, continuity.
00:01:36.520 It's why it allows Britain, it helps Britain sort of punch above its weight diplomatically.
00:01:43.520 Every world survey, global survey, when they analyze country by country,
00:01:49.640 what does the rest of the world think of first when they think of Britain?
00:01:52.820 They think of the monarchy. They think of the royal family.
00:01:54.800 When I've talked to umpteen diplomats, as soon as they go abroad,
00:01:58.640 the first thing anyone says to them in their posting is,
00:02:01.080 how is the king? How is the princess? How are the royal family?
00:02:06.360 And when you look, when you stand back and look at the post-war history,
00:02:10.600 as I have done for this book of Britain.
00:02:14.620 And you see the part that the Queen has played in that,
00:02:18.120 in the dismantling of empire
00:02:19.580 and the transition from monocultural to multicultural society.
00:02:24.180 At every level, the monarchy has sort of played this part.
00:02:26.960 And they are this thread that runs through it all.
00:02:30.120 And I think it's best summed up, actually,
00:02:31.880 in the very sad day of her death in 2022.
00:02:38.040 And it was an extraordinary week.
00:02:40.120 We just changed our head of government three days earlier, two days earlier.
00:02:45.100 Suddenly, we were changing our head of state.
00:02:47.480 Now, in most countries, if you change your head of government or your head of state,
00:02:50.960 that can often lead to a degree of protest, turmoil, or whatever,
00:02:54.760 whether it's Washington January 6th or other countries.
00:02:58.260 We'd done both. We'd changed the whole lot in one week, and not a shot was fired.
00:03:02.660 There wasn't a protest. There wasn't an angry word.
00:03:04.860 Things just carried on, and there was a lovely letter in the Times newspaper that week.
00:03:10.120 saying, dear sir, there's a pint of milk in my fridge.
00:03:13.720 It's seen two prime ministers, two heads of state,
00:03:16.260 and it's still going strong.
00:03:17.640 I wonder what the marmalade's seen.
00:03:20.020 And I just think that sort of summed up,
00:03:21.840 that level of just sort of heft, stability,
00:03:28.600 it's a sort of bedrock.
00:03:31.120 And we don't think about it all the time, but it's there.
00:03:33.700 And if it's ever challenged, boy, do people suddenly go,
00:03:37.140 oh, hang on, no, we've got to defend this.
00:03:38.600 Yeah. And I've always felt a kind of natural understanding of the connection to history. I mean, it's a thousand year history of this country at the very least. Is that one of the reasons it has such a strong sentiment? It evokes such a strong sentiment in this country because it's maybe one of the very few things left now that really connects the people of this country to it.
00:04:01.320 Well, the history kind of feeds into all that. It's soft power. I've interviewed the man who codified, if you like, invented soft power, Professor Joe Nye of Harvard University, who sort of defined this sort of concept of doing things through influence and charm and persuasion versus brute force and coercion.
00:04:24.320 He said, well, Britain, you've got two absolutely inalienable soft power assets.
00:04:28.880 One is the English language and all that goes with it, the literature, the culture,
00:04:34.180 Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dickens, et cetera.
00:04:36.200 But he said the other is the monarchy, the royal family.
00:04:38.240 That's something that other people don't have.
00:04:39.900 That gives you an enormous advantage.
00:04:41.960 It says what puts you in the top of the or near the top of the sort of soft power index.
00:04:48.400 So all these things feed in.
00:04:50.520 Yes, the history is part of it.
00:04:53.720 And it's also, you know, most of the world speaks English. 0.75
00:04:58.420 That's for a reason.
00:04:59.840 There's a sort of ongoing debate about the evils of the British Empire, the perceived evils.
00:05:03.980 I mean, the fact is that at a time when lots of countries were spreading their wings around the world,
00:05:10.620 Britain was doing it largely by dint of having a very successful navy.
00:05:15.300 And the net result is that, you know, large parts of the earth speak English.
00:05:18.540 And at the time, that was done in the name of the crown.
00:05:21.500 And to this day, the head of state of this country is the head of state with the biggest footprint on Earth.
00:05:27.840 I mean, the king is a head of state of more of the Earth's surface than, you know, President Xi or Vladimir Putin or anyone else,
00:05:35.100 by dint of being also king of Canada and Australia and New Zealand and Papua New Guinea and 15 countries in total.
00:05:40.900 So it's the crown is a very sort of unique among the monarchies in the world.
00:05:48.380 There are 27, I think it is, monarchs in the world.
00:05:53.060 But the one that doesn't really need an introduction
00:05:57.320 when you say the queen or the king,
00:05:59.260 I think most people assume you're talking about this one.
00:06:02.280 That's really interesting.
00:06:03.260 And you mentioned soft power a number of times.
00:06:05.640 It's interesting because structurally within Britain,
00:06:08.700 the monarchy has no power.
00:06:11.200 But in terms of its influence,
00:06:12.960 you mentioned interviewing President Trump for the book.
00:06:16.580 that's I think a very good example
00:06:19.780 of where someone who's a very prickly character
00:06:21.760 to put it very mildly in Donald Trump
00:06:23.680 difficult for some British
00:06:25.780 leaders to get on with
00:06:27.000 actually
00:06:28.280 the monarchy was an instrumental
00:06:31.760 part of maintaining that
00:06:33.580 relationship wasn't it? It absolutely
00:06:35.380 was, I mean the only reason
00:06:37.260 I got through the door of Mar-a-Lago
00:06:39.860 was because I was there to talk to him about the Queen
00:06:41.640 I mean as a British journalist I wouldn't have
00:06:43.540 got near the place but
00:06:44.540 But, you know, we had a slightly dicey start when he sort of he asked me if I was going to play golf first and I don't play golf. 1.00
00:06:51.240 You don't play golf when you're British. What? But we I said, well, we're here to talk about the late queen because he was the last state visitor of her reign. 0.98
00:07:00.000 I mean, she met pretty much everyone of any substance from the mid early part of the 20th century right up to 2022.
00:07:08.840 and he was her last state visitor he came in 2019 and then covid hit then she was ill so he was the
00:07:15.500 last and uh we had uh several chats actually it was purely because of his affection for her um and
00:07:22.720 it was very interesting he didn't didn't want to talk about british politicians at all we talked
00:07:26.300 about all sorts of other things and when you sit down with the president i ended up having breakfast
00:07:30.580 with him and dinner and a few other chats as well and other people are there and the conversation
00:07:35.680 is going this way and that. But when it gets on to Britain, it's usually through the prism
00:07:39.480 of the monarchy. And President Trump is very proud of the fact that he's half British. His
00:07:45.680 mother was a McLeod from the Isle of Lewis. He feels a sort of connection. And that doesn't
00:07:52.020 manifest itself in the relationship. People talk about the special relationship. It's
00:07:56.120 not particularly special between the White House and Downing Street. I would say it is
00:08:00.780 special and historically special between the White House and Buckingham Palace. And the
00:08:05.020 late queen met 14 presidents. There's no one in history, no one ever has met and known
00:08:11.480 14 presidents. And I, for another book, I interviewed President George Bush, Jr. And
00:08:19.400 I said, can you think of anyone who's ever met 14 presidents? Because you were one and
00:08:23.160 so was your dad. I said, no. I said, Henry Kissinger might have met a dozen, max, maybe
00:08:28.100 10. But the Queen had that depth of familiarity, and so does the King. I mean, the King, our
00:08:35.440 present King, first went to the White House in 1970 as a student and had a 90-minute tutorial
00:08:41.560 in the Oval Office with Richard Nixon, who was president at the time, and has met and
00:08:45.940 known every president since. So you get that degree of connection with all these governments
00:08:51.480 and countries and personalities around the world, and it's extraordinary. I mean, a visit,
00:08:57.600 A meeting with Elizabeth II was a kind of bucket list, top ten for every world leader
00:09:04.480 really during their time in office.
00:09:06.000 And that's why Donald Trump was very happy to sit down and talk about it.
00:09:11.760 And I was going to ask you about the power.
00:09:13.720 I mentioned that structurally within the British political system, the monarch has no power.
00:09:20.500 But is that really true in the sense that when the Prime Minister comes for a cup of tea,
00:09:25.700 the monarch might be, Prime Minister, have you considered, you know, this, does that happen?
00:09:30.240 Yeah.
00:09:30.760 It does.
00:09:32.360 Obviously, there's executive power, and no monarch's going to sort of tread on that.
00:09:35.980 I mean, you know, it's often said that the monarch would have to sign his or her own death warrant
00:09:41.300 if Parliament decided it, and they are obliged to follow formally the advice of the Prime Minister.
00:09:48.280 The Prime Minister gives the monarch said something on advice.
00:09:50.860 It's like it's effectively in order.
00:09:52.680 They are a public servant.
00:09:54.100 But at the same time, while they might not have executive power, they unquestionably
00:09:58.140 have influence, and they can sort of steer the direction of things.
00:10:03.040 They can sort of set a tone.
00:10:05.980 And it is a sort of formidable power, with a small p, just to be able to do things like,
00:10:12.780 I mean, we just saw it with the King's state visit to the USA the other day, or with the
00:10:18.960 late Queen's state visit to Ireland in 2011.
00:10:21.740 are moments where the monarch can do stuff that politicians just can't do. It's to sort
00:10:28.500 of reset the dial. It's to sort of set a direction. I mean, you know, the late queen was not a
00:10:35.720 confrontational person, but she was one of the few people in public life who was very
00:10:40.880 happy talking about her faith, for example. And I think she set a sort of a dialogue,
00:10:46.020 a sort of a capacity for a sort of multi-denominational, multi-faith dialogue that, you know, wasn't, we don't discuss very much.
00:10:55.120 But I think, and I've spoken to various faith leaders in the course of writing my books,
00:11:00.780 and they will say that the way that she would, you know, she was often the only major public figure in British public life
00:11:08.880 who would be seen very happily chatting to newly elected black leaders
00:11:15.060 or religious leaders or Muslim leaders or whatever.
00:11:18.060 And that sent a sort of subliminal signal of sort of harmony, if you like.
00:11:23.460 So they do have these powers.
00:11:26.040 They can, you know, whether it's setting trends or, I mean,
00:11:31.760 the king's lifelong devotion to the planet, for example.
00:11:37.700 and it was deemed pretty eccentric when he first started talking about pollution
00:11:43.660 and the threat to the climate back in the 70s.
00:11:46.700 It's become an orthodoxy and certainly I've seen him at things like the COP summit
00:11:54.380 where people come up to him and say, we kind of got this whole thing going because he did.
00:11:58.820 He sort of set up a sort of pre-summit summit in 1990 in Brazil
00:12:03.020 which led on to what was called the Earth Summit, which led on to the first COP summit
00:12:07.480 Now we're on to COP, I don't know, what are we on now, 30 or something?
00:12:10.760 You know, he's been there all along.
00:12:12.360 So, yeah, the power is there in terms of influence.
00:12:17.360 And it's also because, and this is a very fascinating story that you talk about in the book, 0.68
00:12:23.360 is that she has influence, but she can also not engage with politicians, if she so chooses.
00:12:30.640 The most, I would say, notorious example of that is with Boris Johnson.
00:12:35.300 So let's talk about that a little bit, because I don't think people are aware of that story.
00:12:39.020 Yeah, there is definitely what you might call a negative power.
00:12:44.580 And one of the great strengths of the monarchy is that because the armed forces owe their allegiance to the monarch,
00:12:51.460 no politician can get their hands on it.
00:12:53.400 Same with the judiciary, same with the civil service, same with the honour system.
00:12:56.280 All these things that are in the hands of the wrong people can lead to tyranny and whatever.
00:13:01.980 that doesn't happen in the UK
00:13:05.620 but as you say that sort of non-engagement
00:13:08.560 I mean when Boris was sort of being pushed
00:13:11.700 he was about to resign
00:13:14.720 everyone was sort of terrified that he might actually just sort of go and call an election
00:13:18.680 he couldn't just do that
00:13:19.920 he would have to get the approval
00:13:23.400 the formal approval from the sovereign
00:13:28.020 And so, I mean, obviously, the monarch is never going to stop the elected prime minister from doing what the elected prime minister wants to do on the basis that they're doing it for the right reasons and it's being done in the right way.
00:13:42.360 And so, yeah, at that time, there was a worry that, you know, Boris might just pick up the phone and go, I'm thinking of having an election.
00:13:49.640 The Queen might say, oh, that's very nice.
00:13:51.200 Right. I've got her approval. That's fine. Phone down. Let's have an election.
00:13:54.840 It didn't happen.
00:13:55.800 he resigned anyway
00:14:00.580 and as it happens
00:14:03.340 I had huge respect for the Queen
00:14:04.620 so I don't think that was ever likely
00:14:07.200 that he was going to sort of bamboozle her
00:14:09.580 but yeah
00:14:10.960 you have
00:14:12.820 just by dend of it
00:14:16.500 almost a raised eyebrow
00:14:17.620 the Queen had sort of 0.99
00:14:19.220 as I said she wasn't a confrontational person 1.00
00:14:22.000 she didn't like having arguments
00:14:23.120 she wasn't like Queen Victoria 1.00
00:14:24.460 who'd like to sort of you know get quiet how what are you doing wasn't her style um but uh she had
00:14:30.540 various grades of sort of objection which would start with one one raised eyebrow and then a
00:14:35.980 double raised eyebrow uh and then uh and then the ultimate one was are you sure and i'm sure
00:14:43.100 are you sure was like a sort of code for i think you better go away and think about this
00:14:47.420 uh and and you know there were moments like that i mean i i and they might be little things but in
00:14:52.860 particular areas like defence for example there's quite a lot of are you sure about some of the
00:14:57.660 defence reforms um i mean sometimes you just come straight out with it i remember
00:15:02.220 interviewing george osborne for for a previous book and the queen had um come up to him at a
00:15:07.660 state banquet and said said something along the lines of what are you doing with my bag piping
00:15:12.380 school the smallest establishment in the british army is a british army school of bag piping in
00:15:18.300 in uh in scotland and george osborne said uh i i'm not sure man but i'll find out he went into
00:15:23.980 his office the next day that is there a school of bagpiping are we closing it down and if we are
00:15:29.340 we're not anymore uh and the uh army school of bagpiping survived to pipe another day and one
00:15:35.100 of the things that really comes across in the book robert is this is a person and who played
00:15:42.220 her position to perfection right the way through from when she became monarch to when she passed
00:15:49.260 away a number of years ago and if you look at the world from when she when she was on the throne for
00:15:56.380 the first time winston churchill was prime minister right the way through to liz truss
00:16:01.340 you can say diplomatically different types of prime ministers but the way that the world has changed
00:16:09.100 is remarkable, but she almost navigated it to perfection, didn't she?
00:16:13.620 No, you're absolutely right, Francis.
00:16:15.380 She was...
00:16:18.120 It's why, in a way, talking about a second Elizabethan age,
00:16:21.540 it doesn't really work, because it was such a huge span of time.
00:16:24.460 When she became queen, half the nations on earth that exist today
00:16:28.860 just didn't exist then.
00:16:31.840 They've evolved since.
00:16:33.240 New boundaries, titles, constitutions, flags, names. 0.77
00:16:36.720 I mean, Yugoslavia was around then.
00:16:38.480 It's not a thing anymore.
00:16:39.420 There were two Germanys. 1.00
00:16:41.520 And she reigned through all that. 0.90
00:16:45.060 When she first came to the throne, the Korean War was still going on,
00:16:48.240 which was essentially, more or less, in fighting terms,
00:16:51.560 an extension of the Second World War.
00:16:53.180 And that was happening.
00:16:55.360 We were still on rations when she came.
00:16:57.700 As you said, Churchill was in Downing Street.
00:16:59.420 And so she's reigned through, you know, the jet age was just starting.
00:17:04.480 And she reigned through the space age.
00:17:05.840 and then along came the digital age.
00:17:07.380 You know, she's been through all that.
00:17:09.360 And yet, at no point did she appear to be running out of steam.
00:17:14.180 There was no cry in her later years saying,
00:17:16.220 oh, we better pension her off. 0.69
00:17:17.540 You know, it's time for her to step aside. 1.00
00:17:19.840 In fact, the older she got, the more her authority kind of went up.
00:17:23.720 She was sort of more and more revered.
00:17:25.700 She was a sort of timeless figurehead.
00:17:30.160 And I think that does go with monarchy.
00:17:32.140 We do have that sort of sense of, you know, the king is dead, long live the king.
00:17:36.060 You know, it just goes on, and you don't retire.
00:17:40.920 I mean, towards the end of her life, there was a bit of a run on monarchies in the sort of 20-teens, if I can call it that.
00:17:48.140 About 2013, 2014, you had the king of Spain suddenly said, I'm handing over to the next generation.
00:17:54.320 The king of the Belgians said, I'm done.
00:17:56.100 The queen of Holland said, over and out.
00:17:57.640 Who else?
00:17:58.640 There was the Emir of Qatar, did the same, all in the space of a year, and then finally
00:18:04.860 the Pope.
00:18:05.860 The Pope abdicated effectively, the Pope is a sort of sovereign figure.
00:18:10.220 And all that in the space of a year, and these are figures who were of a similar age to the
00:18:14.360 Queen.
00:18:15.360 And it just didn't occur to her, it didn't occur to us as a country, that she would stand
00:18:21.020 aside because she took an oath, it's a job for life.
00:18:25.400 I think that goes with that. She was very good at adapting. She did adapt. She moved
00:18:30.580 with the times. She was never ahead of the times. And the King's the same. He once said
00:18:35.120 to someone, I don't want to be ahead of the curve, but I don't want to be behind the curve.
00:18:38.480 You've just got to move with it. And that's what she did. I mean, the monarchy, you look
00:18:44.900 at the monarchy she inherited from her father in 1952. It was a sort of almost Edwardian,
00:18:51.380 if not Victorian structure and lots of people doing absolutely unnecessary jobs that weren't
00:18:57.380 needed with sort of crazy titles the thing was essentially at the top end it was all done on
00:19:02.820 kind of connections i mean the monarchy now is run it's it's entirely uh the the management of
00:19:08.100 it is is is meritocratic the jobs the duties the roles the pay it's all benchmarked against sort
00:19:13.940 of other public sector so i mean she did take this this institution and move it into the into the
00:19:20.100 into the modern era but at the same time keeping that element of mystique which is which is part
00:19:25.140 of what it's about you know you've got to have scarcity value um there's got to be a a sort of
00:19:30.500 thrill a sense of excitement when you walk through the door of of say buckingham palace otherwise
00:19:35.460 it's not it's not special and and people know that there is this what i call the sort of royal
00:19:39.860 paradox that we want the royals to be just like us but we also want them to be completely different
00:19:45.620 we don't just want to see them
00:19:48.700 wandering down the street
00:19:49.480 with a Sainsbury's shopping bag
00:19:50.980 we don't
00:19:52.060 people keep going about
00:19:52.900 oh you know
00:19:53.340 we've got to have a bicycling monarchy 1.00
00:19:54.680 like the Scandinavians
00:19:55.900 I once interviewed the king of Norway 0.91
00:19:57.620 I said do you ride a bicycle
00:19:58.740 he went no
00:19:59.180 are you always going on
00:19:59.880 about bicycling monarchy
00:20:00.820 he said I've ridden a bicycle
00:20:02.180 since I was a teenager
00:20:03.380 but you know
00:20:04.580 we had this idea
00:20:05.320 that they should somehow
00:20:06.740 be more democratic
00:20:07.840 well I mean the whole idea
00:20:08.860 of monarchy
00:20:09.160 it's not fundamentally democratic
00:20:10.840 it's a monarchy
00:20:11.840 that's all the point of it
00:20:13.140 well it's fundamentally
00:20:14.080 kind of exclusive right
00:20:15.540 That's the point of it. It's superior in some ways. It's one area where you kind of tolerate
00:20:21.420 pomp in this country.
00:20:22.400 Well, you encourage it. If you said, you know, we're going to have a coronation without crowds,
00:20:27.160 or I tell you what, let's just flog the crown jewels, or, you know, why bother with the
00:20:31.360 trooping the color? I mean, these are all things that people love. They understand that
00:20:37.640 that these aren't exercises in sort of military power
00:20:42.440 or they're not demonstrating some sort of lording over everybody else.
00:20:47.560 I think it was a rather powerful moment in the king's coronation.
00:20:52.960 And you see him, he's sort of stripped down to his shirt, he's anointed,
00:20:57.540 and then he's plonked in this throne and then gradually he has all these sort of things heaped on him.
00:21:01.660 He's got sort of scepters and funics and armholes and rings and the coronation glove.
00:21:07.060 And then finally, you know, he's actually sitting, he can't move because he's got so much stuff.
00:21:11.700 And then the crown goes on his head and you get a sense of, yes, you're wearing the biggest diamond in the world.
00:21:16.460 These are priceless treasures. But actually, you are a servant.
00:21:21.000 You know, this is, this is, you're putting all this on because it represents what you have to do.
00:21:26.280 It's not, it's not like, yeah, have the biggest jewelry set in the world.
00:21:29.400 It's like all this is, this is sort of symbolic.
00:21:33.000 And I think sometimes people forget that,
00:21:36.140 but they are ultimately, as I said earlier,
00:21:38.300 they're public servants.
00:21:40.500 I'm going to be honest with you.
00:21:42.140 I used to think grilling was simple.
00:21:44.480 Meat goes on, meat comes off.
00:21:46.420 You look vaguely competent in front of your mates.
00:21:49.200 Jobs are good and...
00:21:50.060 Then I tried to grill anything that wasn't a burger or a steak.
00:21:53.380 My frustration before Hexclad
00:21:55.800 was that while the actual meat takes 20 minutes,
00:21:59.000 scraping the grill afterwards takes 45.
00:22:01.980 At some point, I stopped inviting people over for barbecues
00:22:05.180 because I couldn't face the cleanup.
00:22:07.620 Turns out the problem isn't you, it's the grill.
00:22:10.400 Standard grates were never designed for anything smaller than a steak,
00:22:14.740 which is why your prawns end up in the coals
00:22:16.940 and your salmon ends up in three pieces.
00:22:19.220 Hexclad solved this with their barbecue collection.
00:22:21.800 The grill pan combines the searing power of stainless steel,
00:22:25.560 the durability of cast iron and non-stick underneath,
00:22:28.980 so nothing wields itself to the surface.
00:22:31.440 It's perforated, so heat and smoke still get to the food and you still get that proper grilled
00:22:36.880 flavor. But your veggies, your seafood, your fish, none of it is falling through the grates anymore.
00:22:42.660 If you want more control over delicate stuff, there's a grill topper, which gives you a full
00:22:47.200 flat surface for things like fish or thin cuts that fall apart the second you try and flip them.
00:22:52.620 And if you want the whole setup at once, there's the barbecue bundle, the grill pan,
00:22:57.400 plus a hybrid cutting board and carving set so you're not running back into the kitchen every
00:23:02.260 five minutes. Over a million customers, more than 50,000 five-star reviews. Gordon Ramsay uses this
00:23:09.500 at home and in his own restaurants and that man is not easily impressed. Every piece comes with
00:23:16.000 a lifetime warranty so you're not replacing this next summer. Don't spend another season fighting
00:23:21.280 in your grill. For a limited time, our audience gets 10% off with our exclusive link. Head to
00:23:27.460 hexclad.com slash trig. That's H-E-X-C-L-A-D.com forward slash trig. Tell them Trigonometry sent
00:23:37.660 you. Do you think some of the challenge though comes from the fact that at one point those
00:23:42.760 things were about signaling Britain's superiority and strength? And the more that goes into the
00:23:50.880 past and the more Britain adapts to its current role in the world, which isn't that, that
00:23:55.860 may affect how the monarchy is perceived?
00:23:58.480 Well, it's a very good point, Constantine.
00:24:01.540 I mean, it goes back to this point, you've got to move with the times.
00:24:04.620 So yeah, once upon a time, obviously monarchs were absolute and there's been a sort of gradual
00:24:11.840 transfer of powers along the way to what we have now, which is a constitutional monarchy.
00:24:18.420 So, you know, people understand that the monarch is not, as I said, it's not executive power, but it's a break on unreasonable authority.
00:24:30.480 And it just, it's a pressure valve.
00:24:33.140 If we, if people in this country hate the government and they hit the streets and get very angry, that's fine because they can vent that at an election.
00:24:44.780 They can chuck all that hatred at the Houses of Parliament.
00:24:49.420 But the head of state is at the other end of the mouth.
00:24:51.320 The head of state is different.
00:24:54.200 This is a unifying, it's a sort of bonding force.
00:24:58.800 And I think it's very healthy.
00:25:01.500 Some people say politics is so confrontational, everyone's shouting or whatever.
00:25:07.800 I don't think that's particularly bad.
00:25:08.960 I think you've got a very active, sometimes febrile, but very dynamic political arena at one end of SW1.
00:25:18.800 And then you've got this very solid bit of the other that just sort of makes sure that everything kind of ticks along and leads the politicians to get on with it.
00:25:25.760 And I just think it works. It's not rational.
00:25:28.980 I mean, if you were starting a new country tomorrow, you wouldn't think, oh, we've got to find one family and give them everything shiny and posh in perpetuity.
00:25:37.720 I mean, you wouldn't, but it's how we've evolved, and it just, it works.
00:25:43.400 I mean, there's a rather interesting survey that comes out every year,
00:25:47.060 which I always like looking at, called the UN Development Index,
00:25:50.100 and it's essentially the UN's sort of index of what's the best country in the world,
00:25:55.440 and it has various metrics, such as life expectancy, education, income, GDP, all this stuff,
00:26:01.940 and they put it through the sort of algorithm.
00:26:04.720 them. And every single time, in the top 10, about half are monarchies. In the top 20,
00:26:11.400 I think it's 12 out of 20 are monarchies. And when you consider it's 193 countries,
00:26:17.320 but only 40 are monarchies, that's a disproportionate result.
00:26:22.560 And these are constitutional monarchies?
00:26:24.120 These are constitutional monarchies. These are not the absolute ones like Saudi and
00:26:28.400 whatever, they're coming a bit further down. But if you look in the top 10, Britain isn't
00:26:32.600 in the top 10, actually, but you've got Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Australia, which of course
00:26:40.680 the king is king of Australia. And then you look at the top 20, Britain's in there, I
00:26:44.280 mean, number 15, I think New Zealand and Canada come in there. So, yeah, of course, it's absurd
00:26:50.560 to say that by having a hereditary state, you've got a longer life expectancy. I mean,
00:26:54.260 I wouldn't posit that as a sort of logical argument, but you can look at that sense of
00:27:01.360 stability and continuity, what a modern constitutional monarchy, that sort of sense of confidence,
00:27:08.620 if you like, that it gives a country.
00:27:11.120 By the way, the top one is Switzerland, I think, and I mean, you've got others in the
00:27:14.660 mix, including, you know, Ireland's right up there, it's very clearly not a monarchy,
00:27:18.720 you can't stand a monarchy.
00:27:20.320 But overall, it just, it shows that when people say, oh, it's sort of so backward, why don't
00:27:27.660 we grow up as a nation?
00:27:28.740 We've got to grow up as a nation and modernize and why we've got this sort of throwback system.
00:27:34.420 To which I'd say, well, if you want to grow up as a nation, just look at all these countries,
00:27:38.940 you're saying Norway and Sweden and Denmark, Japan.
00:27:41.060 Japan doesn't just have a monarch. It's got an emperor, for God's sake.
00:27:43.920 You know, they seem to deal right with that.
00:27:45.640 So it's just a system that, like I said, it's evolved.
00:27:51.300 I think it would be incredibly unsettling, damaging, and frankly, constitutionally suicidal
00:27:58.220 to try and dismantle it. It just works. Don't fix it.
00:28:01.620 I love the fact that we're talking about dismantling
00:28:03.960 because what Queen Elizabeth saw over her reign
00:28:06.280 was essentially dismantling the last vestiges of empire.
00:28:11.580 So why don't we talk about that? Because that's very interesting.
00:28:14.040 Yeah, I mean, that's a fascinating... I'm glad you raised that
00:28:16.180 because, I mean, that was her...
00:28:18.460 What set her apart from all the other monarchs
00:28:21.500 when she came to the throne was all her predecessors
00:28:24.480 were expected to make Britain great,
00:28:28.140 not again, because it already was great.
00:28:30.200 It's this idea of you've got to consolidate power.
00:28:34.200 We've got to make the empire strong
00:28:36.780 and hold on to all these possessions. 0.98
00:28:39.220 She comes in, and the British Empire
00:28:42.240 has effectively gone in 1947
00:28:45.520 with the partition of India,
00:28:47.920 and just evolving is this new concept
00:28:51.540 of the Commonwealth, the modern Commonwealth.
00:28:54.480 And her job is not to consolidate an empire.
00:28:57.960 Her father was crowned emperor, so it was his father and his father and his mother and everybody.
00:29:05.300 She wasn't. The empire had gone.
00:29:07.360 She was all about dismantling it, but doing it amicably.
00:29:10.700 So basically, there was still a lot of the world what was a British colony in 1952.
00:29:18.720 And I think she would regard her greatest achievement as creating the Commonwealth, as moving from an imperial structure to a post-imperial structure, one that's happened amicably and constructively.
00:29:35.920 But what I think we are seeing now is a change in tone.
00:29:39.780 So it was a very forward-looking thing.
00:29:41.620 A lot of these young countries were becoming democracies.
00:29:44.780 They wanted help.
00:29:46.380 She loved sort of holding these Commonwealth summits, these leaders.
00:29:50.540 I think felt, because these were young countries finding their feet,
00:29:55.040 and here was this big establishment figure, the Queen,
00:29:57.240 who would meet them and treat them as equals.
00:29:59.160 And there was a real sense of kind of harmony at these Commonwealth events.
00:30:07.180 Mrs. Thatcher fell out with the Commonwealth famously in the 80s,
00:30:11.540 But the rest of them, they felt a sort of kinship.
00:30:17.940 And it did all sorts of good things to Commonwealth.
00:30:20.980 I mean, I think it was one of the driving forces in dismantling apartheid, for example, in South Africa.
00:30:27.160 And as we've gone on now, there's been a sort of change of attitude.
00:30:33.060 Instead of looking forward and thinking, you know, these countries are growing and becoming stronger and more independent,
00:30:39.820 Now there is a sort of a rearward glance and saying, well, hang on, the only reason you're in the Commonwealth is that you were colonized and that this was a bad thing and that this must now be atoned for.
00:30:50.820 And so you have this reparations debate starting to sort of build. And I think it's a very difficult one for both the government, the British government, but particularly for the monarchy to handle, because obviously empire was conducted in the name of the crown.
00:31:07.960 and the Crown, there's a direct linear link.
00:31:10.760 Because I think it was the Prime Minister of Barbados
00:31:13.400 who said that they no longer want the royal family
00:31:17.560 being the official head of state,
00:31:19.180 which I don't think even 30 years ago
00:31:21.600 that would have been entertained as an idea.
00:31:25.180 But it became very mainstream, very quickly, that conversation.
00:31:29.240 It did. I mean, it happened actually just before the Queen died.
00:31:33.760 It happened at the end of 2021 when Barbados, as you say,
00:31:37.080 When all these former colonies went independent, they were all given the option.
00:31:45.440 What do you want to be? Do you want to be a presidency or do you want to carry on with the crown?
00:31:52.420 And a lot, most actually said, no, I want a president. I want to stand on our own two feet.
00:31:56.560 But a lot could see the advantages in having the crown as this sort of, you know, you're trying to build a new nation.
00:32:05.100 It's actually quite useful. It's quite cheap as well.
00:32:07.080 You haven't got to start worrying about having a separate residence and all the rest for a president
00:32:10.780 because your head of state pays their own bills.
00:32:14.040 And there was a very interesting conversation in the 70s, or 80s in fact,
00:32:19.740 when the then Prime Minister, I think it is Prime Minister of Antigua, Lester Byrd,
00:32:25.320 was talking to Fidel Castro and said to him,
00:32:29.980 I'm thinking of dumping the monarchy and we're going to become a republic.
00:32:34.900 And Castro said, well, hang on a second. Why do you want to do that? Well, we know we're going to stand on our own two feet. And Castro said, well, does the Queen interfere in your politics? And he said, no. And is she good for business? Is she good for tourism? Yes. Well, why do you want to do that?
00:32:52.040 And I know this happened because Lester Byrd regaled this conversation to Sir Sonny Ramfarl,
00:32:57.100 who was one of the great Secretary Generals of the Commonwealth, who told me for my book.
00:33:02.800 So, you know, it's gospel. Fidel Castro was a fan of the monarchy. You know, go figure.
00:33:09.020 There you go. That's the title of the episode.
00:33:10.940 Some business advice from one of the most famous communists in the world.
00:33:15.000 I would imagine a lot of the psychodrama that we now see with the royal family,
00:33:18.980 because there's the monarchy and then there's the royal family,
00:33:21.000 somewhat separate things, actually, in some ways,
00:33:23.780 is actually very much par for the course in terms of history.
00:33:26.680 I mean, the royal families have always had the spares and the others
00:33:32.280 and all of this scheming and plotting and whatever.
00:33:35.120 But we live in a very different age now where the power of the media
00:33:38.820 and social media and the ability for people to see into that world,
00:33:42.760 to discuss that world, it must be so difficult for them to manage
00:33:47.140 all of the different things that we've seen.
00:33:49.960 I mean, I think the death of Princess Diana
00:33:51.800 was the beginning of it,
00:33:53.360 but now, of course, you have, you know,
00:33:56.160 Harry and Meghan,
00:33:57.480 then you have Prince Andrew and all of this stuff.
00:34:00.400 What impact will all of this have
00:34:03.220 on the royal family and on the monarchy?
00:34:05.500 Well, you're absolutely right
00:34:06.560 that it's a completely different media landscape.
00:34:09.540 I mean, of all the changes, I think,
00:34:12.000 that Elizabeth II reigned through
00:34:15.120 was the media landscape. 0.86
00:34:16.940 And when she started, it was completely reverential and the monarchy called the shots.
00:34:23.700 And then by the end, it's 24-7 news, rolling news, social media, everything else.
00:34:29.080 And that does make it difficult.
00:34:31.760 However, I think as long as the public can understand that they are a family, they're
00:34:39.660 an institution and they're a family, and every family has its tricky members.
00:34:46.020 And so, you know, the king, some more trickier than others.
00:34:51.940 And when you think about it, I mean, the ride at the end of the Queen's reign,
00:34:55.660 you had the start of the kind of Andrew catastrophe unfolding with his news interview in 2019.
00:35:02.420 And I think luckily she didn't have to see how that would unfold after her death.
00:35:07.940 But right away at the start of the King's reign, I mean, he took the throne in September 22.
00:35:14.440 By late October 22, you had the first sort of trailers appearing on Netflix for Harry and Meghan's six-parter basically complaining about the monarchy.
00:35:25.280 You had the whole new series of The Crown depicting Charles in a very unflattering light,
00:35:30.840 someone who was sort of constantly at war with his wife and trying to unseat his mother from the throne.
00:35:35.900 You had all these things bubbling under, and then that only got worse because as the Harry and Meghan show kind of went out,
00:35:45.420 there was lots of publicity with it, them saying how horrible life was in Britain and the monarchy didn't treat them very well.
00:35:50.980 And then as soon as that was over, it was straight into the launch of Harry's book, Spare, which was full of unflattering remarks.
00:36:01.420 And all that, of course, followed on from the Oprah Winfrey interview where the couple had accused the monarchy of all sorts of things, notably racism.
00:36:11.400 And you'd think at the start of a reign, that's really not very helpful.
00:36:16.980 You just come in, you're a new king.
00:36:19.020 But when you look at the polling, this is what's interesting.
00:36:21.400 The polling pretty much flatlines all the way through that.
00:36:24.300 You've got about a three-month period of what someone at the palace described to me as headwinds from California.
00:36:31.420 And sometimes those headwinds were quite strong.
00:36:34.140 But it just didn't make any great difference.
00:36:37.620 You know, overall, most people could understand,
00:36:40.500 yeah, the family's got problems,
00:36:42.900 but as an institution, as a form of government,
00:36:45.820 we're broadly, we're happy with it.
00:36:48.240 And then you get things like the whole Andrew saga.
00:36:51.140 And the king, I think, I mean, he reacted,
00:36:54.740 I was surprised at the severity of the punishment
00:36:59.040 that was doled out to Andrew,
00:37:00.820 almost immediately, as soon as it turned out in that Newsnight interview that he'd lied
00:37:06.040 about severing his links with Epstein, he wasn't just told, you're not HRH or you're not Duke
00:37:13.860 of York anymore. I mean, he was stripped of everything, the whole lot, all the honours,
00:37:16.980 everything. He was born a prince, but even that was taken away from him. His birthright
00:37:22.080 was stripped from him everything went and uh that was uh that was decisive um and uh barring i mean
00:37:32.080 given that the you know that he's been arrested so who knows what where things go from here um the
00:37:37.760 king is the head of judiciary so that he has to tread carefully but i mean you could hardly have
00:37:43.040 dispatched andrew to a more uh more of a sort of internal siberia if you like than a sort of
00:37:48.320 farmhouse at the end of a lane in the middle of nowhere in Norfolk. That's where he is. So
00:37:52.260 yeah, he's a blot on the royal name, Andrew, but he's still, people can understand that the
00:38:01.120 monarchy is different. I don't think it's done any great damage to the idea of constitutional
00:38:08.520 monarchy. I mean, it's clearly embarrassing for the House of Windsor. But, you know, the monarchy
00:38:15.720 moves on where it would have been i think very dangerous if he'd been in in line to the throne
00:38:20.600 if there actually any serious chance of him being our head of state at that point i think you know
00:38:24.920 the monarchy would have been in great trouble but he's not he's he's disposable and and one day he
00:38:30.760 will be gone do you think that part of the plot and this is maybe the one blemish on the impeccable
00:38:36.920 legacy of of the late queen as you say is that she was not the one that dealt with prince andrew
00:38:43.320 now andrew as harshly as the king has now done and in fact some say was very protective of andrew
00:38:51.400 which look if you have kids you've seen your wife it's very difficult for a mother to to to discipline
00:38:58.920 her children particularly even when they've done something terrible but is that perhaps a fair
00:39:03.960 critique i think it is it it is it's fair to apportion a degree of blame to the late queen i
00:39:12.200 I think the way that she's effectively now, because she's conveniently no longer around,
00:39:17.960 we just pin everything on her and say, it's all her fault.
00:39:20.120 Andrew is her fault.
00:39:21.040 I totally disagree with that.
00:39:22.940 I mean, I went into some detail in this in the book.
00:39:25.880 I mean, there's no question Andrew was behaving monstrously long before the Epstein stuff came to light.
00:39:32.460 Really?
00:39:32.940 Yeah, yeah.
00:39:33.500 What was he doing?
00:39:34.240 He was just throwing his weight around.
00:39:36.220 You know, he was just boorish.
00:39:38.060 He'd be rude to people.
00:39:39.040 I mean, I interviewed David Cameron for the book, who told me one of the hardest things he had to do,
00:39:43.520 and it was quite early on in his premiership, was to go to the Queen and say,
00:39:47.560 I'm afraid I'm sacking Prince Andrew as a trade envoy.
00:39:51.320 When he left the Navy in 01, the Queen was desperate to keep Andrew in the Navy
00:39:56.220 because there wasn't really anything for him to do.
00:39:58.000 And then the Navy said, look, we've run out of road here.
00:40:00.780 We can't give him anything to do. He's no longer ours.
00:40:04.400 So he left the Navy.
00:40:05.180 And it was the government, prodded along by, at the time, a very senior Labour figure called Peter Mandelson, who came up with the idea of a trade envoy.
00:40:18.400 And so, you know, the Queen was obviously behind this.
00:40:21.760 I mean, great, it's a sort of, you know, we've got him a job, there's something for him to do.
00:40:25.600 But it was the government who came up with this idea of a trade envoy.
00:40:28.380 And all those years he was being a trade envoy.
00:40:31.740 It wasn't the Queen who was sort of saying to people,
00:40:34.840 oh, no, no, you've got to send Andrew here.
00:40:36.440 It was, you know, the Department of Trade and Industry
00:40:38.140 would send him to places.
00:40:39.200 He'd go on these trips under the auspices of the Foreign Office
00:40:41.700 who would organize them.
00:40:42.820 Everywhere he went, he was being accompanied by police officers
00:40:46.120 from the Metropolitan Police who aren't sort of the Home Office.
00:40:49.240 So, you know, you've got different arms of the government
00:40:52.120 are also involved, if you like, in this kind of Andrew,
00:40:56.720 on these tours where gradually things sort of unfolded
00:41:03.360 and he'd go off and he'd go on some of these trips
00:41:06.360 with Epstein and why weren't other people getting involved?
00:41:11.820 I mean, it's not for the Queen to know exactly what's in his diary
00:41:14.500 but it is for some of these public servants
00:41:17.340 and also people at the palace.
00:41:19.220 They should have known what was going on.
00:41:21.000 And finally, by the end, obviously the things came to a head.
00:41:26.720 He was seen with Epstein after Epstein had been convicted.
00:41:33.180 And at the same time, as Cameron said, he was just useless as an envoy.
00:41:37.000 He'd just go into a trade fair and say the wrong thing.
00:41:40.960 I mean, it was at one telecoms event.
00:41:44.420 He went, what's orange?
00:41:45.660 And everyone sort of put their head in their hands.
00:41:48.140 You know, he just wasn't delivering, if you like, for the country.
00:41:53.340 So, you know, as I say, a lot of people, I think, let Andrew go on for too long.
00:42:01.500 And the Queen, of course, she would accept that she had a part to play.
00:42:07.600 And it's a very fair point, Constantine, that people were always worried about upsetting the Queen.
00:42:12.020 We'd better not be too mean to Andrew because we might upset the Queen.
00:42:15.620 That was definitely a thing.
00:42:17.620 But, you know, even after all that, and I've got the story in the book of how he actually
00:42:24.500 hit a very senior member of staff in a row about he wanted to hold a conference at the
00:42:30.920 palace and he couldn't, and the master of the household who had to explain, I'm sorry
00:42:35.560 you can't do that, you know, and he ended up hitting him.
00:42:39.060 And the Queen was appalled and Prince Philip ended up writing a letter of apology to this
00:42:44.480 chap that Andrew wrote, a sort of grudging
00:42:46.620 note. So everyone
00:42:48.320 knew what he was like.
00:42:51.200 And therefore, it's
00:42:52.460 fair to say, well, why didn't people
00:42:54.260 act earlier? But I would say
00:42:56.120 there were a lot of people who could have
00:42:58.400 acted earlier.
00:42:59.700 I was just going to say, but there are people listening to this,
00:43:02.460 Robert, who's like, look, fair enough.
00:43:04.980 He was an adult. He had a responsibility.
00:43:07.600 There was, you know,
00:43:08.540 responsibility was also spread
00:43:10.320 amongst other people. But look,
00:43:12.560 Virginia Gaffray, the accusations that came out,
00:43:18.900 the Queen lent Andrew 12 million quid
00:43:21.500 in order that these charges just go away.
00:43:24.960 I mean, we're in Michael Jackson territory here, aren't we?
00:43:28.380 Going into this year, I told myself I was finally going to stop guessing about my health.
00:43:32.960 Like most people, I want more energy, better focus,
00:43:36.040 and to be still strong and sharp years from now.
00:43:38.480 But every time I've gone to the doctor, I walk out with basically nothing.
00:43:42.440 Everything's fine.
00:43:43.560 Drink more water.
00:43:44.600 Sleep a bit more.
00:43:45.680 No real insight.
00:43:46.860 No plan.
00:43:47.660 Just vibes.
00:43:48.640 That's why Superpower stood out to me.
00:43:51.120 Superpower makes it simple to actually understand what's going on inside your body.
00:43:54.960 You do one blood draw, either at home or in a nearby lab, and they analyze over 100 biomarkers.
00:44:01.240 That's heart health, hormones, metabolism, vitamins, minerals, and even environmental
00:44:05.320 toxins.
00:44:06.260 What I love is that you don't just get numbers.
00:44:08.000 You get a personalized action plan, supplements, nutrition guidance, lifestyle changes,
00:44:13.160 and even your true biological age that you can track over time.
00:44:17.520 Price-wise, this is a no-brainer compared to the alternatives.
00:44:21.040 Superpower used to cost $499.
00:44:24.140 Right now, it's $199, while other testing services charge $500, $1,000, sometimes more,
00:44:30.420 for similar, often inferior, information.
00:44:32.900 Your blueprint activated with Superpower.
00:44:35.560 Superpower is just $1.99, and for a limited time,
00:44:38.520 you can get an additional $20 off with our code TRIGGER.
00:44:41.740 Head to superpower.com and use code TRIGGER at checkout
00:44:45.220 for $20 off your membership.
00:44:47.520 After you sign up, they'll ask you how you heard about them,
00:44:50.200 so make sure to mention Trigonometry to support the show.
00:44:53.240 Once again, head to superpower.com
00:44:55.720 and use our code TRIGGER at checkout.
00:44:58.200 He was an adult. He had a responsibility.
00:45:01.120 There was, you know, responsibility was also spread
00:45:03.840 amongst other people.
00:45:05.620 But look, Virginia Gaffray, the accusations that came out,
00:45:12.420 the Queen lent Andrew 12 million quid in order that these charges
00:45:17.200 just go away.
00:45:18.480 I mean, we're in Michael Jackson territory here, aren't we?
00:45:21.100 Well, we certainly don't know.
00:45:22.960 We don't know exactly how much it was.
00:45:24.620 We don't know exactly how.
00:45:25.960 Was it a loan?
00:45:26.700 Was it a gift?
00:45:27.480 Who paid what to who?
00:45:28.540 I mean, there's there's there are a lot of questions.
00:45:31.580 I don't pretend there aren't, but, you know, at the time, companies would, I mean, I'm not a lawyer, but I mean, you know, people pay off people.
00:45:44.960 It looked terrible. It still looks terrible. And we still don't know the exact details of it.
00:45:51.100 but uh yeah i mean you know that that's that that was uh i think a grave mistake it was uh at the
00:45:59.020 start of the diamond no no not the diamond the platinum jubilee um and there was a sort of sense
00:46:05.020 of well let's let's just make this go away but of course it didn't like i say it's very very hard
00:46:11.260 for a mother to disown her child is just it was it was the hardest thing i talked to people who
00:46:16.860 worked with her, they said that that moment she had to, after his Newsnight interview, where they
00:46:21.420 had effectively, she had to kick him out of public life, that was very, very painful for her.
00:46:29.180 Because also, she was a princess of York. I mean, you know, her dad was Duke of York. She was born
00:46:37.580 the daughter of the Duke of York. That's why that title to her, you know, meant everything. That's
00:46:41.820 why she was so pleased and proud to give it to Andrew on his wedding day. You will now be the
00:46:45.660 the Duke of York. You know, this is an extra special thing. It's one of the reasons why
00:46:51.260 everyone is very glad that she was not around to see him lose that title.
00:46:56.200 And what do we know about Prince Andrew now in terms of what he was up to, how he was
00:47:04.780 able to get away with it, and also why he was doing it in the first place?
00:47:09.500 Well, I mean, it's an ongoing legal process, so I mean, I suspect we're going to find out some more.
00:47:19.400 You know, like I said, I mean, he was given a very long leash, long reign to do what he was, you know, to hang out with Epstein, to go to all these places.
00:47:31.440 And as things have unfolded, a lot of it's not just about the accusations to do with
00:47:40.340 young girls, but it's to do with state records, state documents, you know, who was telling
00:47:46.960 what to whom.
00:47:47.960 So yeah, I mean, it's by no means over.
00:47:52.320 It's an ongoing scandal.
00:47:54.080 It's definitely one of the, I would say, one of the gravest sort of royal scandals of modern times.
00:48:02.980 But like I said, it doesn't involve the direct line to the throne.
00:48:06.840 And there's going to be a lot of people listening to this who are going,
00:48:09.920 well, we've spoken about the Queen, we've spoken about Empire,
00:48:14.520 we've touched on, probably the wrong way of describing it, Prince Andrew.
00:48:20.180 Ex-Prince Andrew.
00:48:21.120 Ex-Prince Andrew.
00:48:22.420 But what about Meghan and Harry?
00:48:25.440 Yeah, Meghan and Harry.
00:48:26.540 I mean, again, that is a...
00:48:29.020 Well, we have touched on them already.
00:48:31.300 But, you know, they've parted company with the monarchy,
00:48:34.940 I think, following Harry's events of recent days.
00:48:40.640 What's he so upset about?
00:48:42.040 He's got multiple issues to do with, you know,
00:48:46.740 I think essentially he feels that he hasn't had,
00:48:50.060 um hasn't been dealt fairly by by britain by the media by the government and natively by the
00:48:55.820 monarchy by the institution i think yeah what does he want that he didn't get uh there's a
00:49:01.740 treatment uh to he feels that that i mean you have to ask him but i mean if you read his book
00:49:06.940 you listen to his interviews he feels that uh when when at times when um he felt he needed
00:49:12.700 sort of the help, the support of the institution for whatever reason, that it was lacking.
00:49:21.240 He felt that, you know, and it is a hierarchy.
00:49:23.700 I mean, you read throughout the book, there are these little sort of, you know, slights,
00:49:27.840 he sort of takes offence, William got the bigger room, William got the bigger bed,
00:49:31.740 he got the this, the that.
00:49:33.740 I mean, you know, it's in there, read the book, but it's a hierarchy, you know.
00:49:38.420 I mean, it's not a huge surprise.
00:49:40.740 The one who's the heir is going to get the big stuff.
00:49:44.820 One of the reasons the late Queen was very sympathetic to Harry, and she really was,
00:49:50.560 he talks about having a special relationship with her, and I think that's true, is that
00:49:54.460 she had a great affinity with spares.
00:49:57.020 Her father was a spare.
00:49:58.020 He wasn't born to be king.
00:49:59.760 She always, throughout her life, she would be incredibly tolerant when Princess Margaret
00:50:05.620 was behaving at the time. She can be very difficult. But the Queen had great sympathy
00:50:11.240 with her. She was a spare. Andrew was a spare. Harry's a spare. She could see that if you're 0.96
00:50:16.720 the firstborn, it all sort of goes on straight. It goes down crane tracks. It's all coming
00:50:23.000 to you, everything. If you're not, it's a more sort of nebulous situation. You're in
00:50:29.160 this sort of vague, and no one's quite sure what you can and you can't do. And so that,
00:50:33.000 as we saw with Harry.
00:50:34.960 I mean, there was a time when Harry was absolutely
00:50:37.200 the most popular member of the family by a mile.
00:50:40.120 I would say peak Harry, peak, peak Prince Harry
00:50:42.980 was late summer of 2012.
00:50:46.580 We'd had that wonderful summer.
00:50:47.960 We'd had the Diamond Jubilee.
00:50:49.300 We'd had the Olympics.
00:50:50.240 It had been a huge success.
00:50:52.240 Queen opened the Olympics with James Bond, famously.
00:50:55.360 It was while I was in the stadium that night.
00:50:56.820 It was great.
00:50:58.520 And then it came to ending the Olympics.
00:51:01.260 The Olympic rules say the Games will be closed by the head of state.
00:51:04.700 Well, the Queen said, no, actually, I'm going to Balmoral.
00:51:09.060 I've opened Olympics before.
00:51:10.580 She'd opened the 1976 Olympics.
00:51:12.800 I mean, the House of Windsor has more Olympics than any other family in the world.
00:51:16.640 They've done the 1908, the 48, you know, the 2012 Olympics.
00:51:20.100 So the Queen said, no, I'm going on holiday.
00:51:23.360 One of the family is going to close the Olympics.
00:51:25.700 And it's a big deal.
00:51:26.880 Billions of people are watching.
00:51:28.000 you kind of hand over to the next Olympic city, and everyone assumed, well, that's a job for Prince
00:51:32.560 Charles, or possibly Prince William. And with very short notice, it was just quietly announced,
00:51:38.320 Prince Harry will close the games. And everyone thought, that's interesting. I mean, why? Why
00:51:43.360 Harry? What we didn't know at the time, but what he knew and what the Queen knew, is he was about
00:51:48.400 to go off on active service to Afghanistan for the second time, and it was dangerous. No one
00:51:55.920 talked about it but you know he might not come back you know he wanted him to have his moment
00:52:00.560 and that was a very it was a very proud moment for harry it was a uh it didn't involve very much
00:52:05.680 having you turn up at the olympics but you are effectively you are sitting there in the place of
00:52:09.120 the sovereign acting as head of state and that was a big moment for him and he was very chuffed
00:52:13.360 about that and yet just a few weeks later um he he's about to go off to afghanistan and he goes on
00:52:20.720 on this boy's trip to Las Vegas, where they fall in with some party girls. One of the party girls
00:52:26.760 takes a picture on her phone of them all playing strip billiards, and the picture gets out into
00:52:31.840 the internet, and suddenly it goes viral. And no one cared. I mean, no one thought,
00:52:37.980 look, here's a single guy. He's about to go off and fight in a war. He's in Vegas. He's having a
00:52:42.380 good time. Great. Good luck to you. But he took it very badly. He felt really let down. He felt
00:52:47.120 that the press had this you know this shouldn't have happened um he he felt that the the he just
00:52:53.220 felt he let every the whole lot down the army the family the monarchy the country and and i think
00:52:58.540 that was a moment where he he started he i just detected a sort of a a a more sour demeanor you
00:53:04.880 know he went from happy harry to sulky harry at that point it's a very interesting response because
00:53:09.740 you think you'd take some responsibility for your role in all of this wouldn't you oh well i think
00:53:13.800 He did. I mean, he gave an interview a few months later where he just said,
00:53:19.140 look, it was my fault. He wasn't blaming anyone for what had happened.
00:53:25.560 He was very unhappy. He felt that the press shouldn't have published these pictures.
00:53:32.780 I mean, the response from the public, as I said, was, well, we don't care.
00:53:36.140 There was a website went up on the Facebook page called Give a Naked Salute to Prince Harry,
00:53:42.080 and it was full of members of the armed forces
00:53:43.680 all being naked
00:53:45.740 sort of with their backs to the camera
00:53:47.720 you'd have all around the armed forces
00:53:50.260 I mean everyone thought
00:53:51.600 he's a playboy prince, so what?
00:53:54.500 But I think
00:53:55.960 from that point on
00:53:56.880 I think that marked
00:53:59.180 his growing distrust
00:54:01.900 of the media
00:54:02.600 and then he felt that that
00:54:05.060 obviously impacted on Meghan
00:54:07.960 I think they felt that
00:54:09.320 after the marriage
00:54:11.660 that they weren't getting the same support levels from the institution
00:54:15.880 that William and Catherine were getting.
00:54:18.920 And I think it was very badly handled.
00:54:20.580 When there came a point where they were going to split the offices,
00:54:23.500 they shared an office until just after Harry and Meghan got married in 2018.
00:54:31.000 And fairly soon after that, the palace was being refurbished.
00:54:34.760 And there was a bit of forward planning.
00:54:36.780 And that forward planning was, look, at some point,
00:54:39.460 you know, the Prince of Wales, Charles, is going to become king.
00:54:43.440 And at that point, William becomes the new Prince of Wales.
00:54:46.940 Harry, you come under the cost centre of the monarch, not the Prince of Wales.
00:54:51.840 So you need to have your own office.
00:54:53.780 And it was just done very badly.
00:54:55.180 It was just sort of treated like in a sort of managerial way,
00:54:57.680 which was sort of, right, go and find yourself some new office space.
00:55:00.100 You know, it was handled, yeah, it was a bit corporate.
00:55:06.100 And I think when you're dealing with a, yeah, it's an institution, people sometimes call it the firm, people call it the monarchy, PLC or whatever, but fundamentally it's a family unit.
00:55:15.860 And I think that officialdom didn't do that very well.
00:55:20.460 And Harry and Meghan, I think, took that very personally.
00:55:23.280 And then gradually they felt that they weren't getting the support that William and Catherine were getting and that actually, why are we doing this?
00:55:30.940 Let's get out of here.
00:55:31.620 How much of this comes down to the horrific events of 1997 and the way that his mother died
00:55:39.080 and his anger and resentment to the press, maybe to his father as well,
00:55:43.740 with the way he perceived the way that his father treated his mother?
00:55:47.400 Well, actually, if you read his book, Spare, he's actually very fond when he's writing about his father.
00:55:54.460 I mean, he's very affectionate.
00:55:55.540 Pa, you know, he loves his father.
00:55:57.740 I mean, I think, yeah, the death of his mother, unquestionably, still to this day, I think, really informs his attitude towards the press, the media generally, but the press in particular.
00:56:14.460 I mean, the fact is that Fleet Street were not involved.
00:56:18.060 Fleet Street weren't in the Alma Tunnel on August the 31st, 1997.
00:56:24.080 I mean, it just, you know, but he sees it as a sort of part of a...
00:56:29.780 Wait, was that car not being chased by paparazzi at the time?
00:56:33.580 Yeah, yeah.
00:56:34.000 It was the French paparazzi were pursuing a car being driven by a drunk driver.
00:56:40.300 I mean, I think we can unpack that.
00:56:43.380 I mean, there'd been multiple investigations and inquiries and all the rest.
00:56:47.060 But, yeah, there was a car chase.
00:56:48.460 But what I'm saying is you can see why he would think the press caused a death, right?
00:56:52.320 Yeah, if you assume that the sort of paparazzi right up to the, you know, Fleet Street are all one and the same thing,
00:56:59.720 then, yeah, you can draw that inference.
00:57:03.280 And I don't blame him, and I don't think most people would.
00:57:05.480 I mean, you know, a young boy, and you want somebody to blame.
00:57:10.520 I mean, I think there are multiple people to blame in that.
00:57:13.380 Unquestionably, the paparazzi were an integral factor.
00:57:19.080 But whereas Prince William has moved on, he understands that, you know, the press, a free press, has a role to play in a constitutional democracy.
00:57:30.000 And you just, you deal with that. I mean, it's a fact of life. I think Harry finds it much harder.
00:57:36.860 And, you know, on the one trip that he did do with Meghan, the one sort of big tour they did soon after they got married,
00:57:44.760 They did this big kind of Pacific tour and the press all came along.
00:57:49.080 And, you know, the press call, that press call, I mean, none of them had been around at the time of Diana's death.
00:57:55.840 I mean, this was years later.
00:57:57.880 And on these trips, these are hard work for the press.
00:58:01.840 They're not jolly by any means.
00:58:04.140 And there's a sort of, there's always an understanding, you know, the press do their job, the royals do their job.
00:58:12.060 But if Charles and Camilla were on a trip, or William and Catherine were on a trip, there'd be a bit of sort of, hello, how are you?
00:58:20.160 At no point, there was no engagement at all with the media.
00:58:23.240 And on the final leg, the Prince's private secretary said, you really do need to just go and say, at least to say hello to the press.
00:58:31.300 I mean, you know, they'd been following, they'd been working, you know, around the clock for two weeks, and it would just be a courtesy.
00:58:38.040 so he sort of grudgingly went to the back of the plane
00:58:41.000 and sort of hacks are sitting in sort of the cheap seats at the back
00:58:45.000 and sort of poked his head through the curtain and said
00:58:48.120 thanks for coming, not that you were invited
00:58:50.900 shut the curtain
00:58:51.980 so the press thought well okay
00:58:53.840 how do you respond as a professional
00:58:58.140 when you're in that sort of situation
00:58:59.980 it doesn't mean you instinctively warm
00:59:02.580 and then and then you know at the time of uh of archie's birth palace or the put out statement
00:59:10.980 saying that the duchess has gone into hospital and in fact she'd already had the baby and come
00:59:15.780 home i mean that was just it was just i mean it was wrong it wasn't as raw i mean it was a lie
00:59:20.740 um and people don't like being um lied to um and and so there was there was just a level of
00:59:27.380 distrust, mistrust and it got worse and eventually they thought, we're out.
00:59:33.760 You actually seem fairly sympathetic to Harry, I think, on balance.
00:59:37.540 What about Meghan?
00:59:38.540 Has she played a constructive role in the royal family?
00:59:41.040 Well, I mean, people talk about Megxit, which I think is unfair because it implies it's
00:59:45.260 all down to her.
00:59:46.260 I mean, I would say it's 50-50, I mean, it's as much him and one hears, I know, from talking
00:59:51.480 to people.
00:59:52.480 where actually Meghan would be sort of advocating a more kind of constructive role.
00:59:57.200 And often, I mean, Harry's response to at least two people I know when they said,
01:00:03.280 look, you do need to sort of forge a better relationship with the media.
01:00:07.420 He just said, well, they killed my mother.
01:00:09.020 And that's the end of the conversation. 0.97
01:00:10.280 So Meghan, you know, she could be practical. 0.80
01:00:13.060 She could see how the need to find some sort of common ground.
01:00:20.480 But no, I think, you know, she, when they decided it was time to go, I think she was very much,
01:00:30.240 you know, you just look at the Oprah Winfrey interview, which was so damaging, I think,
01:00:35.440 to relations. That was essentially her interview. He comes in at the end, he sort of comes bounding
01:00:41.280 in after about 40 minutes, and then slightly messes up all her narrative anyway, because she
01:00:47.040 He sort of talked about how, you know, how while she was pregnant, a member of the family had started asking about the baby.
01:00:54.840 And then Harry kind of comes into the sofa and goes, yeah, that was right at the start of our relationship.
01:00:58.200 You think, hang on, no, that's not going to stand up in a court of law because she just said it happened, you know, in 2019.
01:01:04.280 And you said it happened in 20. So, yeah, I mean, of course, she has a part to play in it.
01:01:10.300 It's just really sad. I think they could have been such an asset to the monarchy, particularly to the Commonwealth.
01:01:16.760 I mean, that's what the Queen thought when they were getting married.
01:01:22.600 I mean, she made both of them.
01:01:23.880 She gave them these very sort of senior positions as sort of Commonwealth youth ambassadors.
01:01:29.820 She had all sorts of high hopes.
01:01:32.480 She set aside one of the oldest and most important of her patronages, which is the Association of Commonwealth Universities, which is one of the oldest.
01:01:40.580 I think it's the oldest university, sort of pan-global international university association.
01:01:46.580 And the Queen had been a patron of that for her whole reign.
01:01:49.580 And she said, no, let's give that to Meghan.
01:01:51.080 This would be very useful.
01:01:51.960 They'd give her a platform. 0.58
01:01:53.200 She can go and talk about important issues in an apolitical space. 0.86
01:01:57.680 So the Queen really had high hopes and was very touched on Meghan's wedding day.
01:02:02.100 And Meghan's veil at her wedding.
01:02:04.640 She'd had all the flowers of every single nation of the Commonwealth embroidered into her veil.
01:02:09.480 And it was a charming touch.
01:02:12.500 And the Queen thought, this is great.
01:02:13.920 We're going to have a slimmed-down monarchy, William's obviously going to have a lot of
01:02:17.940 stuff to do here, and Harry and Meghan can go and travel the Commonwealth and keep the
01:02:24.460 Commonwealth.
01:02:25.460 Don't forget, the Commonwealth, when she started, it had eight members.
01:02:29.300 When she died, it had 56.
01:02:30.300 I mean, it's an extraordinary institution, and she could see that they'd be great for
01:02:35.680 that.
01:02:36.680 Then, of course, that didn't happen, and then they kind of started turning on the Commonwealth
01:02:41.600 in some of their interviews.
01:02:43.800 interview i think harry said yes it's got a lot to answer for one he thought oh wow that's that's
01:02:48.920 not gonna um this is slightly off message um but you know um and actually on that point just on i
01:02:56.600 i know we talked about the commonwealth earlier but but another important point is it's people
01:03:01.000 still want to join it and all the new the new countries joining it were never part of the
01:03:04.520 british empire anyway so while people might want to kind of have this sort of revisionist argument
01:03:09.320 about the evils of the british empire which unquestionably had things to answer for no
01:03:12.920 I'm not saying he didn't, but when, you know, you've got countries like Gabon and Togo, Mozambique
01:03:18.140 and Cameroon and Rwanda, which held a recent Commonwealth summit, none of them had anything
01:03:21.980 to do with the British Empire at all, but they want to join it because it's a great network.
01:03:26.800 None of us plan our summers around insurance. We plan them around whatever life actually throws
01:03:31.980 at us. We had our second child this summer, which reorders your priorities fast. Nobody sent a
01:03:37.040 warning. At this point, who knows where we'll be next summer? That's exactly the type of situation
01:03:41.880 where you want to use something like PolicyGenius.
01:03:44.540 They're not an insurance company.
01:03:46.140 They're a marketplace.
01:03:47.500 The free service that compares life insurance quotes
01:03:50.020 from America's top insurers side by side.
01:03:52.880 The licensed team handles the paperwork.
01:03:54.960 No guesswork, just clarity on coverage,
01:03:57.220 price, terms backed by thousands of five-star reviews
01:03:59.840 on Google and Trustpilot.
01:04:01.080 With PolicyGenius, you can find 20-year life insurance policies
01:04:05.040 starting at just $276 a year for $1 million in coverage.
01:04:09.940 Head to policygenius.com slash trig to compare life insurance quotes from the top companies
01:04:15.040 and see how much you could save. That's policygenius.com slash trig.
01:04:20.360 How much of this, and this is a pretty blunt question, is I've got mates who went to Sandhurst
01:04:27.080 with Harry or knew Harry in the armed forces and they went, the consensus is always the same.
01:04:32.780 Lovely bloke, not very bright. How much of this is he's been, now he's away from the Royal
01:04:39.800 family he's had cameras put in his face he's giving interviews and he's just exposing himself
01:04:46.900 time after time after time well uh it's it's it's a fact i mean he's not uh academically top of the
01:04:57.900 tree i mean we we we but but i but i people sort of say oh yeah harry's thick i i disagree with
01:05:05.240 I've watched him at close quarters and he's got great emotional intelligence and he's very good
01:05:10.780 at working a room both he and William are actually but he you know he can he can go into
01:05:16.840 a space full of very old very young people he's never met before who are all tongue-tied who've 0.79
01:05:22.120 got nothing to say and some some royals find that and have found that very difficult and it's a bit 0.78
01:05:27.580 sort of have you come far and it's all a bit stiff and Harry is really good at going going in and
01:05:34.720 chatting and and so i think the he may not i mean his a levels were not great i think he got
01:05:40.560 two of them and and it was enough to get into the army um but uh at a personal level he's
01:05:47.280 he's he's a very he's good and he's not i think he's got he's got good instincts i mean his his
01:05:53.440 uh in terms of he he does have a sort of sense of uh uh you know if he's at an event okay what's
01:05:59.600 the point of this and who are the key people here and that person over there is looking a bit lost
01:06:04.080 So he's good at that. So I think he has strengths. But I think you're right. Having left the confines, as he would put it, of the monarchy or the structures and all that goes with it, there is a sense of a lost soul who's sitting out there in California and just listening to whichever PR person they happen to have hired that week.
01:06:26.500 I mean, they seem to get through spokespeople at a rate of knots.
01:06:33.060 You're always reading about yet another new appointment to their empire,
01:06:38.420 and then that person sort of moves on within a matter of months.
01:06:41.320 So you've only got to look at this court case.
01:06:44.860 He's just lost.
01:06:45.680 I mean, absolute catastrophic blunder.
01:06:48.360 Well, tell people about that, Robert.
01:06:49.500 This is his case, along with others, against the Daily Mail,
01:06:54.780 It was a paper which I write, so I declare an interest, but I wasn't involved in the
01:07:01.780 actions, but it was almost sort of felt at times like he's had his court cases against
01:07:14.540 the media before.
01:07:15.540 I mean, he's fought multiple cases, but this one was really very flimsy from the start.
01:07:21.120 he pressed ahead. And as it went on, it was in court, it was quite clear that the proof that he
01:07:28.760 was relying on just wasn't there. But he plowed on. And now, even after it's over, he's issued a
01:07:36.120 statement saying, you know, attacking the judge and saying, you know, it was a whitewash. And
01:07:40.200 that makes life very difficult for repairing fences with his father, because the king is the
01:07:47.720 head of the judiciary. And this is one of the reasons why the king always had to be
01:07:53.200 quite careful talking to Harry when he's involved in, you know, various legal actions.
01:07:58.840 I mean, Harry has been suing the British government. That puts the king in an impossible position
01:08:03.780 because he's the head of the judiciary. So, you know, if Harry is sort of going to sort
01:08:10.420 start putting out statements accusing judges and ministers and whatever of whatever uh that's
01:08:18.020 that's just not what royals do so uh so no harry i think he has been um badly advised and um i
01:08:25.860 don't really see any end to that i think he'll go back to california and let's i don't know what
01:08:30.020 will happen next well it sounds to me i've i i hadn't paid that much close attention i sort of
01:08:35.300 start to feel sorry for him really just sounds like obviously the death of his mother was such
01:08:39.620 it would be a traumatic event for anyone, but it's unresolved and it's unprocessed trauma,
01:08:44.500 which I imagine is driving much of this. It's sad, really, more than anything.
01:08:50.420 It is. I mean, you know, read his book. I mean, it's an extraordinary book.
01:08:55.140 There's a lot in it that doesn't quite stack up. I mean, there are assertions he makes,
01:09:01.780 which are just factually wrong. You know, one could say, well, they're just untrue.
01:09:07.680 But, you know, he is, I just go back to, I remember sitting there on his wedding day, May 2018.
01:09:15.220 It was such a happy day.
01:09:16.660 This country had had a miserable couple of years after the whole Brexit saga,
01:09:21.300 and politically everyone was sort of at each other's throats, and everything just felt a bit rubbish.
01:09:27.040 And then suddenly we had this sunny day and this great event, and it was fabulous.
01:09:31.100 And you had the first biracial member of the royal family, and it was great, and everybody loved it.
01:09:36.740 And I think everyone felt, okay, this is a sort of reboot moment for the monarchy.
01:09:44.340 Well, actually, not, I mean, the monarchy had been on a high, really, ever since, I think, I would argue, since 2011,
01:09:51.180 which was sort of William's wedding, the state visit to Ireland, the Obama's coming to Britain and followed by the Olympics and Jubilee and everything.
01:09:58.320 And all the way through, there's been this sort of great run of great things.
01:10:02.520 And this moment just felt like a happy day for the country.
01:10:06.740 and it just didn't last.
01:10:09.600 I just think it's sad
01:10:11.700 and I think there's not much we can do about it.
01:10:15.200 No, we've got to move on.
01:10:16.500 Well, that was the thing that I found really surprising
01:10:19.060 because, as I say,
01:10:19.940 someone who's not a close observer of these things like you,
01:10:22.040 I remember them having this wedding
01:10:24.000 which was universally adored by everyone, clearly.
01:10:29.260 And then fast forward, not a very long time at all,
01:10:32.100 suddenly they're complaining about how they've been treated,
01:10:34.820 everyone's racist, like all this stuff.
01:10:36.740 And it just didn't match my visual experience of what I saw,
01:10:40.980 obviously, like, not being on the inside, you know?
01:10:43.200 Yeah, well, that was their perception.
01:10:46.540 I think you talk to people who worked around them at the time,
01:10:50.540 and I think there was a kind of a cultural clash.
01:10:55.540 I mean, you know, particularly, you know,
01:10:57.120 Meghan had come from a kind of can-do Californian, right?
01:10:59.620 Let's get on and do this situation.
01:11:01.080 I mean, and that's going to be difficult
01:11:03.940 when you suddenly come up against the royal household, which does things at its own pace,
01:11:10.340 and it might be, compared to what she's used to, a bit dozy, a bit indolent. I know tiny little
01:11:19.620 things would be irritating. There was some problem with a lock on a door in their cottage,
01:11:26.180 and it just took weeks to sort it out because it had to be done by this official and that official
01:11:29.940 because it's an old listed building.
01:11:32.020 You could see why it would drive them,
01:11:38.440 and drive Meghan in particular. 1.00
01:11:40.840 It would sort of infuriate them. 1.00
01:11:44.080 But the Queen went out of her way to make it work for them, as I say, 0.95
01:11:48.980 and I think she just felt that they hadn't given it enough time.
01:11:52.880 These things aren't, it's not all sort of happiness and sweetness and light.
01:11:57.680 There's hard graft involved.
01:11:59.400 and there is, it is a hierarchy
01:12:01.320 and that's the way it is
01:12:02.980 and I think the media sort of stoked up this
01:12:05.420 idea of the Fab Four, people talked about
01:12:07.340 the Fab Four, which was
01:12:09.160 just wrong, I mean it was never going to work
01:12:11.560 because inevitably
01:12:13.280 you know, you're going to have the Fab Two
01:12:15.480 and then the next two and they're going to move
01:12:17.380 at different levels because it's a monarchy
01:12:19.100 it's a hierarchy, it's how it goes
01:12:21.660 And I think one of the great sadnesses
01:12:23.560 particularly for the Queen towards the end of her reign
01:12:25.880 was the knowledge
01:12:27.600 that this book was coming out, Meg's it.
01:12:30.200 That must have been incredibly painful for her.
01:12:32.620 I think it was painful, but we need to put it in perspective.
01:12:36.980 I mean, she'd been through everything.
01:12:40.700 I mean, when you've, as a 14-year-old,
01:12:44.100 watched your father, who wasn't meant to be king,
01:12:47.960 trying to kind of hold a country together
01:12:49.680 when at any minute you're likely to be invaded,
01:12:52.280 and if you are invaded, and don't forget,
01:12:54.280 I mean, the Romanovs are still fresh in the family mind.
01:12:56.940 I mean, it's not long since they were put up against a wall and shot.
01:13:00.320 You know, your father and mother nearly get killed twice in a week.
01:13:04.880 You've been through all that.
01:13:06.160 You've seen the sort of stresses.
01:13:09.460 You've suddenly taken over this job at a very early age as a 25-year-old mother of two within years.
01:13:15.560 I think we have a sort of rosy picture of the early part of her reign.
01:13:18.140 It's all just lovely and wonderful and everyone's nice and it's super.
01:13:20.600 I mean, the Suez crisis really rattled her.
01:13:23.580 That was only three years into her reign.
01:13:26.940 And, you know, there'd been along the way a lot of serious, difficult moments.
01:13:32.120 I mean, as I say in the book, she had something akin to a, not quite a nervous breakdown,
01:13:36.740 but certainly nervous exhaustion in 1969.
01:13:41.220 I'd see, I mean, some utterly appalling moments in the 80s,
01:13:45.480 which a lot of people, I think, might have just chucked in the job.
01:13:51.100 I mean, I still look back.
01:13:52.160 I think the most extraordinary moment of her entire reign, if not her entire life,
01:13:56.440 was that morning in 1981 where 1982 sorry um where she woke up to find a a strange man barefoot at
01:14:05.020 the end of her bed dripping blood and holding a broken ashtray and uh and she's ringing the alarm
01:14:11.480 bell and nothing happens nobody comes and i mean how terrifying is that that she manages to keep 0.98
01:14:16.520 him talking and keep him calm it's michael fagan it's this this um loser drug addict um mentally 0.95
01:14:25.520 ill man who's broken into the palace she doesn't know who he is this is at a time when the ira are 0.99
01:14:30.000 trying to blow up the royal family they killed lord man baton only three years earlier there
01:14:34.740 are bombs going off anything could could be behind this and she's got to sit there and here is this 0.75
01:14:40.980 this madman um at the end of her bed and she finally someone comes in the maid comes in and 0.98
01:14:47.340 goes flipping heck man what's he doing here and he gets taken away uh what does she do uh she's 0.93
01:14:54.160 an investiture at 11 o'clock that morning she knows that several hundred people are on their
01:14:58.320 way there they bought new hats and shoes and it's going to be the biggest day of their life so she
01:15:02.240 just gets on with it and no one had the faintest idea 11 a.m there she is bang on time at the
01:15:07.520 investiture and it was only when it came out in the papers the next day people thought oh my god
01:15:11.760 what's she just been through um and and you know she she was brave they are you have to be brave i
01:15:17.680 think to do this job she was very brave she only had one phobia which was helicopters but she got
01:15:22.320 over that. And remarkable. So going back to your point about how much of the Harry business
01:15:31.120 must have been a shock. Well, yeah, the 90s, that was a bigger deal because Annas Horribilis,
01:15:36.940 that did involve the direct line of succession. I mean, the fact that the heir to the throne's
01:15:40.780 marriage was falling apart, as were the marriages of her other children. There were huge rows about
01:15:45.740 tax, about money. The royal family was not in a good place. And then in 1997, as we've discussed,
01:15:51.500 the death of diana i mean these were not existential threats to the monarchy i don't think
01:15:57.580 it was ever as bad as that but they were very very grave challenges uh much i think far graver than
01:16:04.620 than either andrew or harry who let's face it are secondary to the the direct line so um yeah she
01:16:11.900 was upset at the end but she would she'd seen it all she had the most extraordinary life um and
01:16:17.820 And she always abided by her father's dictum to her as a former naval officer,
01:16:24.580 which is, this storm too shall pass.
01:16:26.680 That was always, look, the sun will come out.
01:16:29.460 We've just got to get through this.
01:16:30.600 She was incredibly stoical.
01:16:32.460 And that being the case, what is now the future of the Royal Family?
01:16:35.860 You have a relatively new king in place.
01:16:37.860 He's, you know, of age, you might say.
01:16:41.240 And then you've got the potential eventual succession of Prince William.
01:16:45.920 What do you make of how this is going to pan out from here?
01:16:48.780 What do you think?
01:16:49.520 I think it, as ever, will have to adapt.
01:16:53.180 It will have to move with the times.
01:16:54.540 There will be challenges.
01:16:55.860 But overall, it's a 1,000-year-old institution
01:16:58.820 that has endeared with one brief interlude
01:17:03.080 when Charles I parted company with his head.
01:17:07.420 But Britain fairly soon afterwards resumed its love
01:17:10.860 for having a constitutional monarchy.
01:17:12.760 Well, actually, it wasn't particularly constitutional with Charles II, but it will carry on.
01:17:19.600 It will have to adapt. I mean, it is shrinking.
01:17:22.660 The next generation is going to be the current prince and princess of Wales,
01:17:28.540 and, you know, helped by some of their older cousins.
01:17:31.800 But, I mean, if you look at the sort of the working unit,
01:17:35.200 William and Catherine, by some margin, the two youngest, their children,
01:17:39.720 should their children want to do it, by the way.
01:17:41.780 I mean, there's no guarantee that George and Charlotte and Louis will necessarily want a life of royal duty, but we hope they do.
01:17:54.600 It's going to be a challenging time.
01:17:58.600 And I think we, as the public, we have to manage our expectations.
01:18:03.060 We have to realize that we've got a smaller royal unit, so they can't do necessarily all the things that we're used to the royals doing.
01:18:10.460 We can't just expect them to keep turning up to open hospitals and cut ribbons and do all that stuff because there aren't enough of them to get around.
01:18:16.280 So we have to deal with that.
01:18:19.300 But I mean, overall, the fundamental role of having this figure to whom the armed forces and the judiciary and the civil service is in charge of the honours system,
01:18:29.340 all that stuff, and is separate from government and has this soft power role, which just works.
01:18:38.520 I was in Washington with the King the other day, and you just see how, watch the monarch
01:18:46.900 address in Congress, and it just shows how it works, and it's not rational, we wouldn't
01:18:54.080 create it tomorrow, but it's there.
01:18:57.180 And yeah, there's a perfectly respectable argument towards having an elected head of
01:19:02.740 state and saying that it's run its course.
01:19:08.180 There's a perfectly straightforward democratic solution to it,
01:19:11.220 which is any political party could put in their manifesto
01:19:13.640 at the next election, we will have a referendum on the monarchy.
01:19:16.720 See where that gets you.
01:19:18.060 None of them will do that because they know that the public
01:19:20.560 fundamentally are very happy with this system
01:19:24.640 and they know it's got its faults and they know nothing's perfect.
01:19:28.800 But, you know, boy, be careful what you wish for.
01:19:32.940 Robert, what a perfect place to end the interview.
01:19:35.720 Final question is always the same.
01:19:36.960 What's the one thing we're not talking?
01:19:38.180 that we really should be?
01:19:39.420 I was talking about this before I came here with my wife, Diana,
01:19:43.380 because I think there were lots of things, but she put this,
01:19:47.460 and I totally agree, is loneliness, actually.
01:19:51.220 It's loneliness, particularly as people get older.
01:19:53.860 I think there is less human connection there,
01:19:57.700 and we see it at every level.
01:19:59.140 We see people working from home, social media,
01:20:03.060 the way that people know that they have sort of friendships
01:20:05.380 through web platforms instead of face-to-face.
01:20:10.660 I think that's something we've got.
01:20:14.340 We just need to, like this, we need to sit down with other people
01:20:18.660 and look at them face-to-face, and we need friends.
01:20:24.680 That we do. Robert, thank you so much.
01:20:26.960 Head on over to triggerpod.co.uk where Robert's going to answer your questions.
01:20:31.160 is king charles's failure to be defender of the faith i.e the church of england as per
01:20:37.600 his coronation oath and his insistence of being a defender of all faiths a betrayal of his mother's
01:20:43.280 legacy.