速读测试：女王庆典响爆高潮A pageant that offers respite from reality


本文作者为英国《金融时报》专栏作家 吉迪恩·拉赫曼（Gideon Rachman） 测试中可能遇到的词汇和知识：
commoner平民
flotilla小型船队，舰队
caricature 漫画，讽刺画
drenching湿透
monarchy君主政体
panegyric颂词，赞颂
rationing定量分配
colloquially通俗的
appall使惊骇
poshest优雅的，豪华时髦的
bourgeois资本家
fret烦躁，焦急
A pageant that offers respite from reality

I set off for the US last week with a faint sense of regret that I would miss most of the diamond jubilee celebrations in Britain. But I needn’t have worried. American television offered wall-to-wall coverage of the flummery in London: from gushing profiles of members of the Royal Family (“Harry – the soldier prince”, “Kate – the commoner who could be Queen”), to live pictures of the flotilla on the Thames. The fact that it was literally raining on the Queen’s parade was glossed over as various caricature Brits were wheeled on screen to say plucky things like “we love the rain”.

The claim to love a drenching on a summer’s day might be a little forced. But the British public certainly seems to love the royal family at the moment. Opinion polls taken in advance of the diamond jubilee show that support for the monarchy is at record highs.

Over the past 40 years, a steady 18 per cent or so of the public have declared themselves to be in favour of ditching the royal family in favour of a republic. But an Ipsos-Mori poll now suggests that support for a republic has slumped to just 13 per cent.

It might be that last year’s royal wedding, and the new prominence of some good-looking younger royals, has boosted support for the monarchy. Respect for the Queen’s age may also play a part. But the word that kept cropping up in the many panegyrics issued to the Queen over the weekend was “continuity”.

The economy is in bad shape and people know that it may soon get worse. Politicians are panicking privately over events in Europe, and some of that fear has seeped through to the public. At such a time, the monarchy and the ceremonies that go with it are a reassuring symbol of a rooted British stability that has survived many upheavals on the other side of the channel. Almost 1,000 years of unbroken monarchical rule – give or take the odd beheading – is a striking symbol of continuity.

Even the life and reign of Elizabeth II demonstrate that the country has come through much tougher times, in living memory. As the recent Oscar-winning film The King’s Speech reminded people, the Queen was a child during the second world war. She succeeded to the throne in 1952, in the original “austerity Britain”, when wartime food rationing was still in place. Her diamond jubilee is a tacit reminder that Britain has suffered and survived much tougher austerity and adversity than anything that is in prospect today.

The association of the monarch’s fortunes with those of the country involves striking a difficult balance. The royal family cannot be too remote or too populist. They are meant to have the common touch, but they must never be common. At various times during the Queen’s reign, the royals have got the balance slightly wrong, and faced a backlash. When younger members of the royal family staged a TV games show in 1987 (colloquially known as “It’s a Royal Knock-Out”), the public was appalled and embarrassed. But when the Queen failed to participate in the public outpouring of emotion after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, the royals were also roundly condemned – this time for being out of touch.

At some point, no doubt, the monarchy will go through another rocky patch. If and when an elderly and eccentric Prince Charles is finally crowned king, republicanism might stage a mini-revival. Yet royalists should not despair at the prospect. The British monarchy has a long and colourful history, and it is often those monarchs who were peculiar or villainous who are remembered most fondly today. “The Madness of George III” was a problem in its day – but later became a popular film. With monarchy, randomness is part of the deal – and perhaps even part of the charm.

The durability of the monarchy is deeply dispiriting for Britain’s dwindling band of republicans. They argue that it re-enforces all that is most backward in the country: a rigid class structure, outmoded political institutions, a love of ceremony at the expense of substance. But the mistake the republicans make is to confuse the appearance of power with reality.

Class is an old and complex problem for Britain, and Queen Elizabeth is the informal holder of the title “poshest person in Britain”. But anybody wanting to put a dent in Britain’s class structure would do better to reform the schools than to abolish the monarchy. Levels of support for the crown are as strong among the working class as among the rich. A Marxist might attribute this to “false consciousness”. A bourgeois columnist puts it down to common sense. Britain’s poor have worked out that the Queen is not the source of their problems.

Republicans also sometimes fret that Britain’s archaic constitution vests so much power in the monarchy that it undermines democracy. The Queen appoints the prime minister. No law can come into force without royal assent. The British are subjects of the crown, not citizens. But all this confuses form with substance. In theory, I am indeed a subject of the crown. In reality, I am a citizen with legal rights, which ensure that I am in no imminent danger of being hurled into the Tower of London on a royal whim.

For most British people, the monarchy remains an essentially benign institution. Along with the Olympics, the diamond jubilee has allowed the country to have a rain-splashed summer party – before facing the wintry economic realities that lie ahead.