'The Queen tapped into a nostalgia that has kept the monarchy strong' ⚫ Patrick Cockburn for ipaperviews
, I looked out of my window in Canterbury at the medieval church of St Dunstan’s, which is associated with two historic events that help to explain why the British monarchy has lasted so long while others have not.
Whipped by monks, Henry went to Becket’s tomb in the crypt and confessed that his “incautious words” had led to the killing. His penitence went down spectacularly well with onlookers and, in what was taken as an instant sign of divine approval, Henry’s armies started winning in the field. If the English monarchy differed from its contemporaries on the Continent, it was because of the frequency with which monarchs from Edward II to Charles I were overthrown. They learned a certain flexibility and, from the 19th century on, were protected from being targeted by their loss of real power. By the time that Kaiser Wilhelm II and Czar Nicholas II were destroying their dynasties by starting a catastrophic war in 1914, British monarchs had been reduced to the safer role of national icon.