ninme

First we had Anatole Kaletsky telling us we should base our economic policy on Donald Rumsfeld, now we have Libby Purves telling us we should base our everything on the Duke of Edinburgh. Talk about the vindication of the scorned.

The Times - Like the Duke, just get on with it
Sixty years of marriage confer a special wisdom. The husband of the Queen can offer us useful lessons in life, by Libby Purves

The same applies to societies and nations. No bloody point grumbling, as the Duke would say, just get on with it. We have spent too much time recently in communal therapy, gazing at our own navel, apologising for the past or excoriating it. According to our position and views we love to blame every social ill on long-vanished nobs, mineowners, colonists, crusaders, slavers, boarding schools, hippies, architects, trendy teachers, Mrs Thatcher, polluters, whatever. It does no good. Soon it will even be time to stop looking back and blaming everything on Tony Blair, though the self-righteous staring-eyed interviews running on the BBC right now may delay our ability to let that one go.

Looking back to learn lessons is one thing; looking back to buttress a sense of inevitable gloom and decline is quite another. Historians have the job of showing the past to us clearly, so that we don’t repeat mistakes, and that is an admirable thing to do. But history is never an excuse for limpness, self-pity and bad behaviour in the present. You have to start from where you are and make the most of it.

The Duke of Edinburgh, for all his irascibility and frequent lack of tact, has done this. Himself deprived of adventure and risk and seat-of-the-pants control of his life (and of the frigate HMS Magpie) he found lesser sources of adrenalin in sailing and carriage driving, and founded his awards scheme to enable the rising generations to feel that buzz and grow in confidence. Just turned 30, he was faced with a compulsory job for which he was not remotely suited by nature: a ceremonial and supporting role alongside a female constitutional monarch. Scoffers will say the Royal family is “pampered”, but if they are honest even scoffers must admit that no amount of Ruritanian titles, gold braid and valets could compensate for such loss of control and choice in their own life.

Yes, he married the job; but he had every right to expect twenty years of comparative freedom before the consort role kicked in. George VI was only 56, his father made it to 70 and his grandmother to 80. But the Duke refuses, to this day, to moan about it. And he remains married, smiling, interested, and faithful to the strange job we foisted on him. Raise a glass to him today.

Hurrah!

Update:

There’s nothing worth commenting on, but this is just too good to let slip away:

BBC - Lining royal ‘route to happiness’

I like the bit about the police at the end.