Loyal and Royal offering

Press, 11 June 1977, Page 15

Loyal and Royal offering

Elizabeth. Our Queen. By Reginald Davis. Collins. 159 pp. $9.75. (Reviewed by David Gunby) It may be easy to write books about the Rova) Family — certainly the speed and consistency with which certain members of the Royals industry turn out their tomes suggest this — but it is not so easy to review them, unless, that is, the reviewer is prepared either to be pious or flippant. Either way, he is likely, in part at least, to be writing out of his own prejudices: judging the book, that is, by its subject, rather than on its own merits.

But what happens if a remarkably earnest reviewer, possessed of no strong feelings about the monarchy at all, tries to review a book about the Queen seriously? With very rare exceptions (“Majesty” perhaps, but perhaps not) the result will be a dull review of an unexceptionable book which tells again, with care but without verve, what we have all heard before about the Queen and her extended family: her job and theirs. So it is, in fact, with the text of Reginald Davis’s book, "Elizabeth, Our Queen.” A photographer who has been ir the business of taking photographs of royal occasions for 25 years now, Mr Davis is an unashamed apologist for the monarchy, and for Queen Elizabeth 11. His book shows her to he much of what he claims — hardworking and professional, yet warm and sincere. It is not her fault if we have heard this before — have beard repeatedly, for instance, Harold Wilson’s eulogy to a working monarch — yet in a sense it is the Queen who suffers from the repetition of the accepted truths. Only the incurably myopic monarchist could avoid a fatiguing sense of deja vu as he or she reads a text such as Mr Davis’s. It isn’t that he writes badly or adopts a sycophantic attitude. In fact he writes quite well, and is pleasantly matter-of-fact. It is just that there is little or nothing to be added to the already huge store of published fact and anecdote.

But if Mr Davis is a photographer, what of the many photographs with

which the book is adorned? They ate. of course, thoroughly professional and catch well the grandeur of pageantry on one hand and the lighter, off-dtttv moments on the other. Yet like the text they find it hard to offer us anything new: we have seen the photographs of the Queen pro<c sing in her Garter robes before, and those of her inspecting guards of honour, whether Fijian or German, can scarcely offer anything new. Once again the problem is the over-exposure of the Queen to the public. What is there that is new? And who but the avid aficionado of books about the Queen will buy yet another? Sadly, it cannot even be claimed that Mr Davis has revealed an individual eye for the royal photograph. There is only one photograph in the entire book which would make its way entirely on its merits, and that is the fine double-page spread of the royal family and the Duke and Duchess of Beaufort and friends in a cart grandstand at Badminton. Besides being finely composed, it captures quite wonderfully the varied expressions of the group as they watch, it may be deduced, a particularly spectacular fad Only two members of the group, it might be worth observing, seem les? than caught by the catastrophe: Lotd Snowdon, who is, not surprisingly, taking a photograph himself, and Princess Margaret. who has an enigmatic smile on her face. To this reviewer, at least. that smile represents on of the few genuinely surprising moments in the entire book. With a fine eye, it seems, for local advantage, Collins have prepared different editions of Elizabeth Our Queen for each, at least, of the old Dominons as well as for home consumption in Britain. The New Zealand edition contains a foreword in the Governor-General designate's must characteristic vein, as well as, it may be suspected, a number of photographs replaced in other editions by local equivalents — e.g. of the State opening of Parliament. To Nev. Zealand monarchists these will n< doubt prove strong addition;. I attractions.