Lost Crowns

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28920, 13 June 1959, Page 3

Lost Crowns

The Uneasy Heads. By Geoffrey Bocca. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 218 pp. Index. The author of this volume is well known' as the writer of a life of the Duchess of Windsor, which was published in Great Britain under the tendentious title, “She Might Have Been Queen.” The present volume is a study of titled persons, most of whom are of longer lineage than the Duchess, although their prospects are not particularly hopeful. Some have ruled; others are perpetually “ambitious of the splendour of the purple”; they all have in common the melancholy that attaches to lost causes and to careers that have in some cases been wildly spectacular, but are

now at an end. King Leopold of Belgium is an interesting example. Mr Bocca summarises and explains the circumstances which, after 1940, brought about a continuous deterioration of the King’s position. In describing a series of rather tangled situations, he gives the impression of being scrupulously fair, even to such controversial figures as Queen Elisabeth of Belgium and the Princess de Rethy. * To most people the pretenders to the thrones of France and Spain, like the heir of the Hohenzollerns, are not even known by name. Here Mr Bocca’s work is valuable as well as interesting. He is a journalist with a considerable knowledge of human nature, and his portraits of the Count of Paris and of Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia are done with gusto. His summing-up of Otto of Hapsburg, “Dr. Hapsburg,” is an amusing study of political manoeuvre shading out into intrigue.

When it comes to a question of the British Royal Family, the author speaks with a reserve that may surprise readers in New Zealand. Mr Bocca is an American, who takes very seriously the criticisms made by Lord Altrincham and Malcolm Muggeridge. In his opinion “the British monarchy looks somewhat forlorn symbolising a second-rate power which almost bankrupted itself fighting an unsuccessful two-day war against Egyptians who had

war uigypuans wno naa i already been beaten by the Israelis i anyway.” It may be interesting to 1 quote an example of what Mr I Bocca considers to be the signs 1 of the times. “A small incident 1 which occurred in the British press c in the summer of 1958 may mean ! nothing or it may mean a great ] deal. On Saturday, July 26, the 1 Queen created Prince Charles ( Prince of Wales. The announce- < ment was made at the end of the ; Empire Games meeting at Cardiff

• and was greeted with jubilation ! by 36,000 Welshmen in the audi- ] ence. Next day the story was ban- < nered across the front pages of J every Sunday newspaper but one. i

vveiy ounaay newspaper out one. j The exception was the London : ‘Sunday Pictorial’ which many— i perhaps most—observers consider the Sunday paper with the surest sense of British public opinion. The ‘Pictorial’ decided that the British people could not care less that Charles was Prince of Wales, buried the story on an inside page and gave the lead to a story about atomic bombs. Perhaps they are right, and if they are it is a sad day for the British monarchy.” Apparently it has not occurred to Mr Bocca that for once the delicate apparatus by means of which the “Sunday Pictorial” gauges < public opinion may not have been working properly. It is a relief to consider the claim made to the principality of i Monaco by Anne-Marie de’Chabrillan. Countess de Caumont la Force. The French government rejected her submissions with undiplomatic abruptness, asserting that they could only occur to a person ignorant of all Monegasque problems. Mr Bocca’s comment is excellent. “There is little else the Countess can do," he says, “unless she conspires with Monegasque dissidents to overthrow the regime, supported by a naval bombardment frbm the yaiht of Sir Bernard and Lady Docker, who were expelled from Monaco in 1958, after Lady Docker had torn up a paper Monegasque flag in the Monte Carlo Casino.” Of course there are many other blighted royal careers described in the pages of “The Uneasy Heads. Sotne of these will remind readers of Daudet’s novel, “Kings in Exile.” Umberto of Italy, who lives in a delectable setting near Estoril in Portugal, appears to be the happiest of men. On the other hand the trend of affairs in' the Balkans is always confusing and frequently tragic. Even here, however, there are occasional surprises. For example, the former King Zog of Albania, who lives in the South of France “with his wife, his sisters, and his dreams.” has recently proclaimed, “I believe that communism is on the retreat, and Albania can lead the way.’’ Further east, in Belgrade, Prince George Karageorgeovich, who by rights should be king of Jugoslavia, rides every day “along the Dedinsky Boulevard on his bicycle, his groceries hanging from the handlebars, a wrinkled, untidy old man in his seventies, his eyes fixed ahead, his white hair waving under his hat.” This is the conclusion of a career devoted to violence and debauchery, so notorious that it . earned him the title, “mad Prince George.” At present he is wholly ! dependent on Marshal Tito, who has granted him a pension of £3O . a month. Farouk, “King of Egypt,” is mentioned only once in “The Uneasy Heads.” This is a pity, for he has always seemed to belong within the charmed European circle, and has spent so much of his leisure ■ time in Italy and on the Riviera Perhaps Mr Bocca thinks he would require a whole volume to himself.