Word: britanniae
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Jimmy Carter annoys his top aides when he orders them to move from the posh Claridge's hotel to the more modest Hotel Britannia, slicing 15% off the tab. Says press secretary Jody Powell: "He's tight as a tick. He always has been...
...Never complain, never explain," counseled Disraeli. Not Charles' motto. He is undermining the monarchy at a delicate time. His mother, an exemplary Queen, has hacked the sums paid to her relatives in return for their public engagements. She is giving up the yacht Britannia and paying for various other transport arrangements formerly supported by the public. Britain's economic woes partly account for these cutbacks, but the decline in royal popularity is also a factor: the Queen was reportedly shocked by her subjects' hostility to paying for repairs to Windsor Castle after a fire in November...
Harvard triumphed in the Britannia Cup for coxed fours as American crews celebrated Independence Day with victories at the Henley Royal Regatta...
That is not all the crown costs. The government maintains royal buildings and grounds, the yacht Britannia with its crew of 256, the train and the various planes and helicopters that the family use. It all adds up to more than $100 million a year. Commentators like to bring up Scandinavian monarchies, which cost a fraction of that, but Britons revel in pageantry, elaborate parades and huge royal weddings -- and no one in the world puts on a better show...
Without warships, Britain was perilously vulnerable to blockade or invasion. But Britannia's capacity to rule the waves, as Massie also points out, was somewhat illusory; the Royal Navy during much of Victoria's reign was largely unfit for combat. Weighed down by moribund traditions that Winston Churchill acidly defined as "rum, sodomy, and the lash," British tars were ill fed and worse led. While their social-climbing officers fopped and preened, sailors spent long days at sea scrubbing decks and polishing brightwork, or wielding cutlasses in boarding drills as if they were still in the age of sail. Meanwhile...