Queen for a New Day

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Last year it took upwards of $46 million to keep the royal operation afloat, and even in a time of serious unemployment (10.3% of the work force are jobless), there are surprisingly few complaints that the country is not getting its money's worth. Almost 90% of polled Britons want to retain the monarchy, and recently, when Labor's William Hamilton made a solitary exit from Parliament after another of his frequent excoriations of the extravagant royals, Conservative M.P. Geoffrey Finsberg scoffed, "Those who share Mr. Hamilton's view will doubtless have left the chamber with him." What Hamilton wants is a wedding—or, in his phrase, "jamboree"—financed by the families of the bride and groom, "both exceedingly wealthy." In a rational debate, Hamilton might be hard to argue down. But this is a question of spirit, not logic. There is nothing at all rational about a royal wedding, which is part of its charm. It may also be—reluctant though anyone would be to admit it—part of its point.

The National Theater of Britain is not located, as the tourist maps would indicate, on the south bank of the Thames. The real national theater rests in the giddily solemn panoply of a state occasion. Old glories. Ancient splendors. Honored rituals. Nobody does it better. Or, for that matter, more shamelessly, which is how it is done best.

Center stage right now in history's longest running show is Lady Diana, who entered as an ingénue and was already a star before she got to the footlights. She not only stood up well to the glare, she turned it to good advantage. Hounded by an anxious press, she usually managed to hold her temper and fix her smile. "I love working with children, and I have learned to be very patient with them," she told Charles with a level coolness that seemed to be much older than 19. "I simply treat the press as though they were children."

The boys from Fleet Street responded in kind. They found the phone number of the $150,000 South Kensington flat her mother and father had bought for her and which she was sharing with three other young women. Reporters staked the place out and would call up till midnight and as early as six in the morning, badgering Diana for details of the romance. All this moved Mrs. Shand Kydd to write a letter of protest to the Times, and moved her daughter, finally, to tears. After a hectic pursuit from South Kensington to Mayfair, Diana sat and wept on a bench in Berkeley Square, comforted by a friend, while the repentant press slipped a note onto the seat of her red mini Metro: "We didn't mean this to happen. Our full apologies." "The press made Diana's life difficult," said her father, the eighth Earl Spencer, "but she behaved very well. It has proved to be a test, though it wasn't meant to be, and she came through with flying colors. I couldn't have done it myself at 19. I would have collapsed."