![]() ![]() Similarly, historian Andrew Lownie fought in courts for four years to secure the release, earlier this year, of the diaries of Lord and Lady Mountbatten, which had been public but were closed after it was determined they contained references to the royal family. She told me: “All official communication between palace and PM should be treated no different to cabinet papers … the ‘personal’ label is sophistry.” Hocking now hopes this finding will have repercussions across the Commonwealth, pulling more important historical records into the light, and shifting the idea that “anything to do with royals should be routinely removed from public archives”. Hocking challenged this assumption and convinced the High Court that, given this was correspondence between a governor-general and his Queen about a constitutional crisis, surely this was a professional discussion between “two people at the apex of our system”. The letters showed Charteris knew of Kerr’s plan and did nothing to discourage him.Īt the core of this matter was whether these documents could be classed as personal. In Australia, after years of legal struggle, historian Jenny Hocking won a court case to gain access to the “palace letters” between governor-general Sir John Kerr and the Queen’s private secretary, Sir Martin Charteris, before Kerr dismissed Gough Whitlam in 1975. Given the claims that Charles intended to make “ heartfelt interventions” in national life as king, surely this is important to know. The Guardian described them as “self-indulgence on an industrial scale”. These letters, known as the “spider memos” because of the then prince’s spiralling handwriting, revealed that our current King had personally lobbied the Blair government over a wide range of matters, from the Iraq war to illegal fishing of the Patagonian toothfish and alternative herbal medicines. So here lies a question crucial to the reputation of the monarchy in a world weary of imperial excess, secrecy and protection of the powerful: will King Charles III respond to the campaign run by The Guardian and by historians, politicians and members of the public, covered in The Times, to make the Royal Archives more accessible?Ĭonsider this: these archives, run by the royal household, are entirely opaque both about the full extent of the precious records they contain, which span 250 years, why some remain hidden (there is no catalogue available), and who is allowed to view them. The actor Michael Palin says the Queen told him a few years ago that she wrote in her diary religiously every night: “She commented that she found it quite difficult because it always made her a bit woolly and said, ‘I usually manage to write for about 15 minutes before my head goes bump’, and then she did an imitation of her head hitting the table, as if she had fallen asleep.” What will happen when the diaries that Queen Elizabeth II has kept since she was a child reach a 30-year limitation on access in the Royal Archives? Who will be able to read them? After all, she once told a group of American students her diary was “far more truthful than anything you’ll ever read in the newspapers”. ![]() ![]() The tendency to label all things royal as “private” and personal, even when they are political, with public consequence, has been under challenge in recent years, but still remains largely intact. ![]()
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