A Right Royal Time-Warp

It's a very long time since Mark Twain voiced the opinion that "the institution of royalty in any form is an insult to the human race" and you would have thought by now that we, the insulted, would have had enough. Yet it was only a few days ago that the King of Spain finally saw fit to abdicate while, later in the week, our own monarch paraded to parliament in a newly-built, gilded, horse-drawn carriage, acting as though nothing should ever change. Royal dynasties, having clawed their way into their privileged positions, are reluctant to relinquish them and have developed sophisticated ways of persuading their subjects that they are entitled to lord it forever.

Nor is it difficult for them: our attention is easily distracted from the republican imperative. In these early days of summer, for instance, there is a lot of excitement being whipped up for music festivals. Carried along on this wave of enthusiasm, I found myself studying a guide to what's on offer, noting that festivals have become so popular and prolific that competition to attract audiences has led to innovations such as specialising in genres, staging in spectacular locations and even improving sanitary facilities. Trawling through the listings, however, it became apparent that most were age-inappropriate for me and that my only realistic option for a music-fest was listed on the back pages where Jazz and Folk had been inserted as a sort of public information service. Even then I had second thoughts about booking tickets: to binge for a whole weekend on concentrated cultural pleasures may, for many of us, be a necessity dictated by the working week. But how much more satisfactory it is to sprinkle the magic dust of music over everyday life than to snort it all up in one go.

I went to the Central Library (where the inscription at the entrance tells us that King George V was appointed by the grace of God to be the Emperor of India and the Defender of the Faith) to take a look at the newly accessible film archive. It's a treasure trove of British cinematic arts comprising documentaries, features, interviews and clips of all kinds dating back to the beginning of the industry. There are clumsy, publicly-funded information/propaganda films but there are also beautifully made gems. In the 1950s the British Transport Film Unit produced a series of regional features, beautifully shot in colour, scored with original music and  imaginatively narrated. Watching such films it is all too easy to become nostalgic for an imagined Golden Age when Britain, with all its traditions, seemed a better place than it is now. But this is dangerous fare: nostalgia and a fondness for tradition are feelings which monarchists can so easily exploit.

I also watched, on a whim, a five-minute piece about Dave Hill, guitarist with the 70s band Slade who, at the age of twenty, was rich enough to buy himself a big house. Dressed in full stage regalia - a gold suit and spangled forehead - he was showing a journalist around his new house, an immaculate Tudorbethan edifice located in prime stockbroker territory, in which he looked completely ill-at-ease. Despite the journalist's gentle promptings he appeared oblivious to the incongruity of the situation. Surely he could have found a funkier pad? I got the feeling that she, like me, was disappointed to find that Dave's outward appearance of non-conformity apparently disguised a deeply conformist core.

Maybe Dave had been talked into the deal by an estate agent; or maybe he was just smarter than both of us and had bought the place as an investment for the future.  But there remains the distant possibility that he was actually working his way up the ladder of respectability in expectation of an eventual invitation to Buckingham palace. His gold suit would have done nicely for the occasion.