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Category - monarchy

  • 3 May 2011
    Blood, birthright and belonging: Obama and the royal wedding

    The ornate rituals in Westminster Abbey, and Donald Trump’s investigation of President Obama’s birth certificate have something in common, says Heather McRobie: a very pre-modern fixation on blood as a marker of belonging, and heritage as a prerequisite for legitimacy to rule.

  • 2 May 2011
    Generous love, scarlet tunics and warplanes

    The incongruity appeared to raise little comment. At a wedding - perhaps one of the most tender of human ceremonies in its manifestation of love and hope - all the principal male figures wore the uniforms of forces whose business is armed conflict.

  • 29 Apr 2011
    The Royal Wedding: What's love got to do with it?

    The pomp, circumstance and military trappings of the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton was light years away from the teachings of the vulnerable man Jesus who was executed by the Romans, says Sande Ramage. Despite that 'The Royals at the Abbey', with the full co-operation of the church, keep trying to blend two irreconcilable concepts.

  • 29 Apr 2011
    Republicans welcome support as police criticised over royal wedding arrests

    British republicans have welcomed a high turnout today at 'not the royal wedding' events in various parts of Britain.

  • 29 Apr 2011
    Wedding watchers asked to back a Living Wage for low-paid royal cleaners

    Royal watchers have been asked by a trade union to support a campaign to give disgracefully low-paid cleaners in the Royal Household a living wage.

  • 29 Apr 2011
    Kate and William are our equals

    BBC Radio 4, so often a voice of intelligence and relative impartiality, began the news this morning (29 April) with the extreme bias and simpering tones they reserve for reports on the Windsor family. It was announced that Kate Middleton would be "transformed" from a "commoner" into "Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Cambridge".

  • 29 Apr 2011
    C of E finds itself centre stage in 'William and Kate' show

    An estimated two billion people around the world tuned in on 29 April to watch the wedding of Prince William, grandson of Queen Elizabeth II, and Catherine Middleton.

  • 29 Apr 2011
    Wedded to a right royal theological confusion

    Reading the church media over the past week, and probably for the succeeding one, would leave many people with the impression that the boundary between church and monarchy is virtually indecipherable. I find this elision of faith in God with a longing for worldly pomp and circumstance deeply disturbing.

  • 29 Apr 2011
    The mytho-poetics of royalty

    Monarchy as an institution rooted in inherited wealth and pure eugenic privilege stands in contrast with, and contradiction to, the levelling Gospel of Jesus Christ, argues Simon Barrow. But a kind of mythology and ritualising in the popular imagination prevents both Christians and others from seeing what is really going on, and what is wrong with it.

  • 29 Apr 2011
    Crown or parliament? Time for reflection

    “Are you for King or for Parliament?” I was taught at a tender age to ask the burning question of mid 17th century England as a means of assessing an individual's take on society. It seems apposite once again.