BEHIND THE THRONE

In 'What's the Monarchy For?', David Dimbleby drills down into the Windsors' power and finances and how far they will go to maintain public support writes Sean O'Grady

- Sean O'Grady

David Dimbleby is wandering around Windsor, filming some bit of royal ceremonial for his excellent BBC One miniseries What's the Monarchy For?, when a man recognises him, turns to his wife, and says: “This guy is a famous liberal lefty.” Anyone who's ever made the slightest acquaintance with him will know that this is abject nonsense, but not something that Dimbleby himself is much bothered by. He takes it in good heart - he's a big chap in all respects - and reassures his interlocutor that he will of course be unbiased in his assessment of the state and the future of the British royal family. Which he is, though one is never quite sure who Dimbleby is addressing off-screen. Is it his producer? One of his kids? A vase? It would have worked better with conventional pieces to camera.

At any rate, Dimbleby's own view, for what it's worth after many decades covering some now dimly forgotten royal and state events, is that he is neither an instinctive, sentimental, ardent royalist (as his father Richard, who commentated on the late Queen's coronation in 1953 famously was); but nor is he any kind of “lefty” iconoclastic republican. We see archive footage of him in 1973, for example, up in the gallery at Westminster Abbey, narrating Princess Anne's ill-fated marriage to Mark Phillips. He takes a pragmatic view - in favour of monarchy insofar as it's useful and carries the support of the people. From the sounds of the former courtiers, politicians, historians and journalists he speaks to in his investigation, and fortunately enough for the House of Windsor itself, this seems to be the approach taken by the royals too.