Daily Telegraph in two minds about the quality of Jubilee oratory?

Just as I was posting the video of Prince Charles' Jubilee speech (HERE), my attention was drawn to an extraordinary example of editorial inconsistency, or perhaps indecision, on consecutive pages of today's Daily Telegraph.

On page 23, under the heading 'At ease with himself and the nation' with the subtitle 'The Diamond Jubilee celebrations have revealed a new and more loveable Prince Charles who caught the public mood brilliantly', Eizabeth Grice writes about the effectiveness of his oratory in the speech (HERE).

Then, in case you're dumb enough to have been taken in by her article, you can, on the very next page, read a correction by Harry Mount under the heading 'This great Jubilee had a missing ingredient' - which was - er - that 'The British have lost the skill of making memorable speeches to mark big occasions' (HERE).

Are we supposed to conclude from this that Prince Charles is not British, that his speech failed Mr Mount's memorability test (whatever that may be) or that Ms Grice's analysis was wrong and/or excessively flattering to the heir to the throne? 

Er, no. I think it's much more likely that this pompous medley of medieval history, Greek words for rhetorical techniques, punctuated by a few famous names from politics, church and the media were written before Prince Charles made his speech.

Otherwise, the author might have been inclined to modify his exaggerated and oversimplified claims that were arguably proved false by Prince Charles.

Or, had anyone in the Daily Telegraph editorial department noticed the inconsistency, we might have been spared having to read Mr Mount's odd sequel (p. 23)to the interesting and thoughtful piece by Ms Grice on the previous page (p.22).

High points for Prince Charles for his speech to (and on behalf of) his Mummy & Daddy

One of the virtues of YouTube is that you can get a sense for how a speech went down by inspecting the unsolicited comments that viewers have added.

Here are the first 10 (of 208) listed at the time I looked at this particular clip of Prince Charles' speech at his mother's Diamond Jubilee - and I don't think I've ever seen so many consecutive positive comments about a speech on YouTube:


"Charles - that was a class speech. Witty, humorous, thoughtful and loving. Good man."
"What I love most about this video is that we get to see the Queen show some emotion which unfortunately we don't get to see very often because she's the Queen. Proud to be British and proud to say we have her as our Queen!"
"King like speech so proud to be british well done charles"
"Never got the animosity to Charles. Glad to see he's turning the tide."
"He will make a great King!"
"makes you jolly proud to be british!"
"This was a really great speech. Witty, thoughtful, and charming."
"What a great weekend, and an equally superb speech from Charles, the best I have ever heard him give, hats off to you sir! I pray this will light the blue touch paper and we can find it in our hearts to start talking the country back up again."

"Great speech..really touching...given me a whole new level of respect for Charles and co."

"Him saying mommy humanizes him - great"

Sullen celebs in the background? 

I've written and blogged before about the dangers of allowing other members of an audience to be seen behind the speaker who's speaking.

Here, the Prince of Wales might think about awarding his stage managers the order of the boot - because the first negative, and, in my opinion totally reasonable, question on YouTube was "Why do Elton John and Paul McCartney look so grumpy?"

Royal Family planning?

Watching a Jubilee programme the other night, in which Prince Charles was showing some cine film from his early life taken by his parents, I was struck by the number of times he referred to his sister (Princess Anne) and/or something that he and she were doing - compared with no references at all to his two younger siblings, Princes Andrew and Edward.

Given the gap between the Queen's two batches of children, this was hardly surprising: Charles is less than two years older than than Anne, but is 11 and 15 years older than Princes Andrew and Edward respectively.

My father's theory

Had he still been alive, I'd have been able to interrogate my father on his theory about why the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh decided to have a second batch of children after an eleven year gap. 

His line was that, having decided against home tuition in favour of schools for their first two children's education, the Queen and Prince Philip had started to worry that letting them get a taste for the 'real world' might change their attitudes towards the desirability (or otherwise) of becoming monarch. 

At worst, what would happen to the House of Windsor if both Charles and Anne decided it wasn't the job  for them?

So the obvious answer (to him) was to have some more children to reduce the chances of our hereditary monarchy dying out through a shortage of willing recruits.

A grain of truth?

I've never heard anyone (other than my father) even speculate about what, if anything, the Queen and Prince Philip's family planning strategy might have been - let alone that there might have been a grain of truth to his theory.

Given that journalists and the media haven't been shy when it comes to speculating about so many other details about the private lives of the Royal Family over the past 60 years, I find this rather odd.

And, more than half a century since my father raised the question, it still intrigues me enough to hope that there might be a royal correspondent somewhere who can enlighten us on the matter...