New Elizabethans revisited by Mary Hoffman

Coronation street party June 1953

When does History begin? Well, clearly from all the current coverage, sixty years ago counts as historical.

I am a bit of a New Elizabethan myself I suppose, having been alive for all of the current monarch's reign. I am in the photograph above, having dressed up for a  Coronationstreet party in Clapham Junction. The extraordinary thing about this photo to me now, though, and indeed the having of a fancy dress costume made by my mother ("No I am not Little Red Riding Hood - I am an Irish Colleen.") is that my oldest sister had died the week before, at the age of 19.

That's the perennial issue between the public and private faces of national events. Any child or adult  in that picture might have been experiencing a wide range of things besides enthusiasm for a new young queen. OK, not many as dramatic as mine, but the Coronation for me is always connected with that life-changing event. You can't tell that from my party smile.

The Royals did not let the death of the Queen's grandmother, Queen Mary, ten weeks earlier, impede the Coronation and my family did not deny me attendance at the patriotic tea-party.

Three months ago, I blogged about Radio 4 choosing 60 "new Elizabethans"

I grumbled then about how  the final list would be full of dreary Prime Ministers, sportspeople and pop stars and wondered how they would compare with the first Elizabethans.

You can read who have actually been chosen as the New Elizabethans here.

As I feared, there are Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, but also Roy Jenkins and Enoch Powell and even Alex Salmond, John Hume and David Trimble (this last one choice, like Lennon and McCartney). Won't the Welsh feel peeved about this obviously PC-inclusive  list of UK leaders?

To my surprise only Basil D'Olivera and George Best representing sport (so clearly no element of role model involved as far as the latter is concerned). I wouldn't have included any sporting heroes myself but if forced would have said Roger Bannister.

There are about a dozen nominees I have never heard of or know little about. The writers are:  Graham Greene, Doris Lessing, Philip Larkin, Harold Pinter, Roald Dahl and Salman Rushdie. What? Larkin rather than Eliot or Auden? They must be kidding. And it's not that one was born in America and the other defected there in 1939, because you don't have to be British to be on the list.

Germaine Greer and Rupert Murdoch are there, after all. So why not Steve Jobs as well as Tim Berners-Lee?

And why Crick without Watson (let alone without Rosalind Franklin)?

My list of writers would have included Margaret Atwood and Hilary Mantel. But then it's not supposed to be a list of any individual's preferences, is it? The criteria aren't really very clear. Someone who has been an influence on the nation? (Is that why the ghastly Simon Cowell is included?)

Pop music is limited to half the Beatles, David Bowie and Goldie, while Classical music is reduced to Benjamin Britten and perhaps also Margot Fonteyn (why not paired with that famous defector to the UK, Rudolf Nureyev as she was in life?) 

Barbara Windsor? Do they think her real name is Babs Saxe-Coburg-Gotha?

The person I am most furious to find on the list is Fred Goodwin (at least no longer "Sir") and the person I am most pleased to find is Doreen Lawrence, someone who really did and does make a difference to public and private lives.

But I would have included Shami Chakrabarti and Camila Batmanghelidjh too.

Not Queen Salote of Tonga

The New Elizabethans by Mary Hoffman

BBC Radio 4 is asking listeners to send in suggestions for the most influential and important people of the second Queen Elizabeth's reign, to celebrate her Diamond Jubilee this year here. 

Jim Naughtie will run a series of radio programmes about 60 such nominees from June onwards. Sixty names for the 60 years of ER2's reign. They don't have to be British, just to have had an influence on British life.

I'm sure there will be the usual dreary list of Prime Ministers, sportsmen and pop musicians; Naughtie has already suggested that Rupert Murdoch might be such a name. Well, there's no denying he has had an influence!

You have till 9th March to make your nominations to the official Radio 4  site. So far listeners have suggested:
Barbara Castle, John Rutter, Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys, Rose Heilbron QC, Raymond Damadian, Vivienne Westwood, Elizabeth David, Ted Hughes, Leo Baxendale, Tim Berners Lee, Richard Attenborough, Stephen Fry, Professor Brian Cox, Richard Dawkins, Alistair Campbell, JK Rowling, Russell T Davies and Paul McCartney among others. 


But this is The History Girls and we can make our own rules. I thought I'd consider who were the great names of the first Elizabethan era and see if we could come up with equivalents.

Elizabeth 1 - well, of course she has her equivalent on the throne now but times are very different. The first Queen Elizabeth could speak Latin, Greek, French, Spanish and Welsh. I have heard our present queen speak French and she did it, though grammatically accurately, just exactly in the same accent as she speaks English. Fortunately there are no recordings of Queen Bess's linguistic skills. She was a great orator; her distant successor's annual Christmas Speech is perhaps not a fair comparison.

But the first Elizabeth's greatest accomplishment was staying alive!  She survived many rebellions and plots and did well even to survives scandals and questioning in the Tower before she even reached the throne. Our present queen's ascension was tame by comparison though no-one would suggest it was easy for her to take up the crown in her twenties, after George V1's sudden death.

The first Elizabeth could - and did - send traitors to the block.  ER2 lost the power to execute for treason as late as 1998 though she never exercised it. (Capital punishment for murder stopped in 1969, though the last hangings were in 1964).

A quick trawl through the intellectual life of both reigns suggests that they were equally rich in scheming politicians and advisers.  On poets I reckon the score is roughly equal, if you leave out Shakespeare. Sir Philip Sydney and Thomas Wyatt versus T.S.Eliot, W.H. Auden, Ted Hughes.

Musically the great trio of Byrd, Tallis and Gibbons to be offset by Britten, Tippett, John Tavener, John Rutter. Artists: well only really the miniaturist Nicholas Hilliard to put alongside Lucian Freud and David Hockney, John Piper, Barbara Hepworth, Jacob Epstein, Henry Moore, Elizabeth Frink. I think the New Elizabethans do rather well out of that comparison.

Playwrights? Well, we have to bow our heads before the towering dominant genius of the first Elizabeth's time and as well as him there was Christopher Marlowe. It seems absurd to talk about  John Osborne in comparison! Though we do have Alan Bennett, Tom Stoppard, Micahel Frayn. What about the actors in the plays? We can't know how great Richard Burbage, Edward Alleyn or Will Kemp actually were but ER2 has had a wonderful bunch to choose from, from Gielgud, Richardson, Olivier, Ashcroft, Tyzack through to the Redgraves, McKellen and the amazing Mark Rylance. I think perhaps the moderns have it.

Science and philosophy: Would you like to square up Francis Bacon against Stephen Hawking, John Dee against Richard Dawkins? (Actually I think Tim Berners-Lee is the best equivalent to John Dee.) But I'm afraid both lists so far are heavily weighted towards males.

So here is my challenge: suggest some equivalents to the following Old Elizabethans.

Mary, Queen of Scots
Bess of Hardwick
Arbella Stuart
Elizabeth Bathory


John Dee
Sir Francis Bacon
Sir Walter Ralegh
Inigo Jones

Or any others that take your fancy.

As for my Radio 4 recommendations, I won't give you 60 but I think David rather than Richard Attenborough because he's the modern equivalent of a global explorer, T.S. Eliot, Benjamin Britten - oh, quick, some women: Shirley Williams, Diana Wynne Jones, Hilary Mantel, Judi Dench, Elizabeth David, Angela Carter, Jill Tweedy, Lynne Truss.

Also Rosalind Franklin, Alistair Cooke (born in Salford; his Letter from America was a big influence in British radio), Thomas Heatherwick, Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, The Incredible String Band and the Beatles, Kenneth Branagh, Steptoe and Edwards, Tom Watson.... You will see this is rather random.