Crown and People

"This is a highly original study by Philip Ziegler, who wrote the authorised biographies of both Edward VIII and Mountbatten, both of them excellent books. What is interesting about Crown and People is that Philip rediscovered the Mass Observation archive, which started in 1937 as a British left-wing response to American public opinion polls. It was an attempt by a group of quite radical intellectuals to put their fingers on the pulse of British sentiment and popular feeling. What they discovered, rather to their chagrin, was that the best occasions to find the British people expressing themselves were royal ceremonies like coronations and jubilees. Mass Observation doesn’t exist anymore, but Sussex University took over the archive and I have spent a lot of time down in Brighton, researching what ordinary people were thinking about the monarchy. For example, the role that it played during the Second World War in keeping up national morale. There was Mass Observation for the Silver Jubilee of 1977, so Crown and People concludes with popular reactions to Queen Elizabeth’s first Jubilee. She had another three before she died in 2022. Mass Observation is a remarkable historical archive of not-so-changing British attitudes towards the monarchy."