THE Queen Mother's 100th birthday celebrations have prompted a demand
for memorabilia not seen since the marriage of the Prince and Princess of
Wales.
The rush for commemorative products, from tea towels and loving cups to
fine china figurines and plaques featuring Glamis Castle, the Queen Mother's
childhood home, has been anticipated by manufacturers. They have spent
thousands of pounds designing and producing "exclusive" ware for the Royal
centenary and have been rewarded by millions of pounds in sales.
Some sold out months before the prolonged celebrations for the Queen
Mother's birthday began on June 27 with a birthday celebration dinner at
London's Guildhall, held by the Corporation of the City of London. By the
time of the main event, a grand parade through London on July 11, followed
by a service at St Paul's Cathedral, those who had not were wishing they had
ordered more stock. On the day of her birthday, August 4, the Royal Mail is
to issue 750,000 presentation packs for the Queen Mother Collection, more
than double the usual quantity for a Royal issue.
Alan Morganwrath, of Govier's of Sidmouth, which has been selling four
custom-made centenary products, said: "This has been a boost to
Stoke-on-Trent and to anyone else in the china industry. We think we've
increased our business by 30 or 40 per cent. It has been the biggest event
since Charles and Diana's wedding; possibly bigger. It has swamped the
number of goods produced for the golden wedding of the Queen and Prince
Philip. You notice it most in the mass market; the £10 and £15 mugs.
Companies like Paragon and Royal Albert have produced their first
commemorative mugs since Andrew and Sarah's wedding."
Nikki Verrico, associate editor of Collect It magazine, which commissioned a
feature on the plethora of top-of-the market memorabilia available, said: "The
Queen Mother is the most popular Royal we have today, partly because of
the length of time she has lived. Certainly manufacturers have been inundated
with requests for commemorative products."
Among the plethora of memorabilia are three CDs of musical tributes - a
testament to the Queen Mother's wide-ranging taste. Beloved, produced by
Michael D. Hoppe, is a collection of the elderly Royal's favourite melodies. It
features classical pieces from Mozart, Tchaikovsky and Elgar, and tunes from
George Gershwin (Love Walked In) and Noel Coward (Mad Dogs and
Englishman). The other CDs, In Celebration and 100 Glorious Years, include
the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and numbers from artists including Vera
Lynn and Fred Astaire.
Commemorative ware has always been a popular means of acknowledging
Royal landmarks. The Queen Mother, who has witnessed the important
events of the 20th century, has been the subject of several pieces. In 1926
Paragon designed a cup, saucer and plate for the birth of Princess Elizabeth,
and in 1937 Royal Doulton created the Glamis Thistle tableware pattern, a
tribute to her Bowes-Lyon ancestry.
Among the highlights in the centenary collection is a limited edition 9in-tall
figurine by Royal Doulton. A figurine from Wheelers of Loughborough shows
her posing in the gardens of her childhood home. Caithness Glass, of Perth,
Scotland, has produced commemorative paperweights; Staffordshire
Enamels, of Stoke-on-Trent, is selling two clocks and a Glamis Rose enamel
box; and Aynsley China has produced plates, bells, footed bonbon dishes, a
loving cup and coasters. One of the most expensive items available is the
Exclusive Bronte Centenary Glamis Plaque (£1,895) featuring Glamis Castle,
from Peter Jones China of Wakefield, West Yorkshire.
~*~
New portrait depicts informal Royal
Family(Electronic Telegraph)
By Catherine Milner, Arts Correspondent
A NEW portrait celebrating Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother's 100th
birthday has been described as a tour de force of Soviet-style painting and
criticised for making the Royal Family look like members of the underclass.
The 12ft high picture, which features Prince William "dressed like a socialist
hero" and the Queen relegated to the background, was commissioned by the
National Portrait Gallery and will be unveiled by the Queen Mother on
Friday. It was painted by John Wonnacott, who took 18 months securing
sittings with members of the Royal Family before bringing them together into
one mise-en-scene in the White Drawing Room of Buckingham Palace.
The picture shows the Queen, the Queen Mother, Prince Philip, the Prince of
Wales and Princes William and Harry. It is based on a four-generation study
by Sir John Lavery of George V and his family painted in 1913 in the same
room. Richard Dorment, art critic for The Telegraph, described the painting
as a "tour de force of Soviet-style realism circa 1940". He said: "It is a
throwback to a style of painting that doesn't exist in Britain. It is like work by
those artists who painted factories for Stalin and then put people in them. But
I have to say it is rather terrific."
Andrew McIntosh Patrick, managing director of the Fine Art Society, which
regularly mounts exhibitions of Lavery's work, said: "The mood in the new
picture is entirely different from that in Lavery's work. But it does show that
the room has hardly changed since 1913. The piano is in the same place in
both pictures. It is unbelievable."
Although the painting attempted to give the impression of casualness, it made
the Royal Family look every inch as as remote as their forebears. None is
looking out to the viewer. "They're wearing more informal clothes - but it's
just as remote - they ain't ordinary folk are they? I think these pictures are
nearly impossible to do and this is a brave attempt. If it pleases them, that is
the main criteria."
Lucy Lethbridge, British correspondent for Art News Magazine, said the
problem was that it was impossible to paint the Royal Family in their context
and make them look modern. "William looks as if he is dressed as a
gamekeeper who has just come in with the dogs."
Johnny Messum, director of Messum's Fine Art in St James's, said: "I think
the painting is very good, except the corgis look like Itchy and Scratchy from
the Simpsons. It's the most intimate painting I have ever seen of the Royal
Family - and creating that psychological element in a portrait is usually where
artists fall down. This one didn't."
Andrew Lambirth, an art critic for the Spectator, said the positioning of the
figures reflected what the nation wanted. "They want William to be King, with
Charles sidelined, and Prince Philip out the back."
~*~
Queen's order of chivalry could
give honours to the young (UK Sunday Times)
Christopher Morgan
THE Queen is considering the creation of a new order of chivalry
to honour the contribution of young people to national life.
The awards will be discussed by senior members of the royal
family in October at a meeting to plan celebrations for the
Queen's golden jubilee in 2002.
The Elizabethan Order will be the first new civilian honour since
George V instituted the Order of the British Empire and
companionship of honour in 1917, and is intended to link the
long reign of the Queen to a younger generation.
A member of the royal family said last week that a new
Elizabethan Order would be more "meaningful" to young people
than the other honours which remain in the sole gift of the
Queen. These include the Knighthood of the Garter, the Order of
Merit and the Royal Victorian Order.
The disclosure comes on the eve of the Queen Mother's 100th
birthday this Friday. Buckingham Palace yesterday released a
family portrait showing the Queen Mother surrounded by the
Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh, the Prince of Wales and princes
William and Harry, to mark the occasion.
The new honour could reward young people for business
success, as well as charitable acts and other more traditional
acts of public service. "It will identify the leaders of tomorrow,"
said a source.
Lord Blake, the constitutional historian, welcomed the proposal.
"There is a lot to be said for the Queen to give her own order,
not tied to any political recommendation. It would be the most
appropriate way to mark a great national celebration."
Medals have been struck to mark other significant moments in
the Queen's reign - including the coronation in 1953 and her
silver jubilee in 1977. However, her advisers have worries about
the cost of issuing thousands of medals to mark the golden
jubilee.
By contrast, the creation of an entirely new order of chivalry
would be relatively cheap and would signal the importance that
the royal family attaches to the Queen's anniversary, the first
golden jubilee since Queen Victoria's in 1897.
~*~
Blunkett backs prince's call for
school farms(Sunday UK Times)
Michael Prescott, Political Editor
MORE state schools are to be given
farmyards and allotments in an attempt to
encourage respect for animals and the
environment, under plans inspired by the
Prince of Wales.
David Blunkett, the education and
employment secretary, is to announce
this autumn that his department will pay
for farms and allotments at schools that
present the government with "convincing"
plans for managing and exploiting the facilities.
His initiative comes after several meetings with Prince Charles,
who raised the subject with him during a successful campaign
to persuade a county council to continue funding a school farm.
"I am prepared to provide seed-corn money for schools that
come up with a proper plan," Blunkett said yesterday. "The
more that people are reconnected with nature and realise there's
more to life than urban sprawl, the better."
Ministers say fewer than 100 state schools have farms and
school allotments are rare. They hope that encouraging their
development will raise the number of pupils studying agriculture
at GCSE and increase applications to agricultural colleges.
They highlight a number of schemes they hope to see
replicated:
oCardinal Wiseman school in Coventry has a "well established"
small farm, a wildlife garden and greenhouses.
Redbourne Upper school in Bedfordshire has a farm where
pupils learn animal husbandry and grow vegetables to be sold at
market.
Royston High school in Barnsley has a courtyard where plants
from different parts of the world are reared in artificial climates.
Pupils at Edwalton primary school in Nottingham and Abbey
Wood nursery school in south London have helped to lay out
and design gardens.
"These schools are pioneers of the sort of thing we want to see
become common," said a senior official at the Department for
Education and Employment yesterday. "Learning about the
environment and sustainable development is about to become
part of the national curriculum for five to 14-year-olds from
September, and more farms and gardens will aid that."
Teachers are threatening strike action at an Essex school if a
judge orders the reinstatement of a boy expelled for alleged
violence.
Teaching unions claim they are being forced to keep violent and
disruptive pupils in school because of government targets to
reduce the number of exclusions.
In October the boy, who is believed to be 13, was expelled after
alleged assaults on staff and pupils. Governors supported the
head teacher's decision in November but it was overturned by an
independent appeals panel in January.
However, teachers refused to teach the boy, who has since then
been educated three days a week at a pupil referral unit.
His mother has now taken the case to judicial review. A High
Court judge will decide tomorrow whether he has to be
reinstated at the school.
The National Union of Teachers is already balloting its members
on action and the National Association of School Masters/Union
of Women Teachers is planning a strike ballot.
A school insider said: "Nobody wants a strike; it doesn't help
this child or other pupils. But I believe that the head made the
right decision."
~*~
Andrew liberates nation's sea
treasures(Sunday UK Times)
Nicholas Hellen, Media Editor
BRITAIN'S maritime treasure - including a fleet of 125 ships and
boats - is to be "repatriated" from London to the nation's historic
ports.
Prince Andrew has helped persuade the National Maritime
Museum in Greenwich to release a large stock of exhibits to a
new generation of naval centres in Falmouth, Portsmouth and
on the Clyde.
The capital's other museums, including the Imperial War
Museum and the Victoria and Albert, are now vowing to release
many artefacts to their "rightful" homes in the regions.
Trustees of the Greenwich museum will meet in September to
endorse a new policy, initiated by Andrew, to sweep away the
current practice of stockpiling collections in London. He began a
review of the museum's collections in 1998.
Dr Roger Knight, the deputy director of the museum, said this
weekend: "In excess of half of maritime display objects and
archives are in London. Is that really the right way to go on?"
The museum's fleet of small ships and boats, including a dinghy
which won Olympic gold for Britain in 1968, a pulling barge from
the royal yacht Victoria & Albert, and one of the earliest Flying
Dutchman racing yachts, are currently beached in two large
warehouses in southeast London.
They are not open to the public and, with the rise in land prices
in Greenwich, the cost of storing them is difficult to justify. A
£20m refit of the museum's main site, built by Inigo Jones and
Sir Christopher Wren, has further reduced its capacity, and
hundreds of models of Royal Navy ships have been removed to
make way for environmental exhibits.
Knight says the boats will sail again from June 2002, when they
are rehoused in a tidal gallery to be built in Falmouth, Cornwall,
in a maritime centre costing £25m. It will partly be funded by the
Heritage Lottery Fund.
The tone of the museum has changed with the times. Some of
the inglorious periods in Britain's maritime past, including the
slave trade, the opium wars and environmental disasters, are
now included in exhibition displays at the Greenwich site.
Negotiations are also under way to create a national archive for
shipbuilding on the Clyde, the home of the Govan and Yarrow
shipyards. Glasgow University and the Scottish Records Office
are supporting the scheme, which will also require lottery
funding.
In a third venture, stockpiles of documents on the modern Royal
Navy and modern naval technology will be transferred to
Portsmouth.
According to Lord Evans, the chairman of Resource, the
government body which oversees 2,500 museums, Andrew's
scheme for "repatriating" maritime exhibits will provide a model
for transforming the capital's other great collections.
"Mementoes of the battle of Britain could be housed in a new
museum in Kent," he said. Relics of the Raj, currently hidden in
the vaults of the V&A, may be placed on show in Bradford and
other towns with a large number of people with Indian origins.
Other proposals are already well advanced. The Imperial War
Museum plans to transfer artefacts from both world wars to
Trafford, Manchester, in 2002. Jane Carmichael, the museum's
director of collections, said the new museum would cost £28m.
The V&A is to move its collections to a new gallery in Sheffield
from next spring.
Evans, who inspired the recent decision by the National Gallery
to mount exhibits in the Bluewater shopping centre in Kent, and
in other shopping malls, said: "The national collections are
beginning to realise that they have a responsibility to the
regions as well as the capital.
"A recent study of museums showed that no more than 20%,
and in some cases as little as 10% of their collections, are
open to the public. Many of the successful exhibits at Tate
Modern came from the storerooms of the original Tate Gallery."
The policy may backfire, however. A senior curator at one of
London's principal museums warned that donors might contest
the removal of their bequests to the provinces. "It is like
returning the Elgin marbles on a whim," he said.
The policy of bringing museums to the people may even lead to
a fall in visitor numbers. This weekend, Sheffield's pop music
museum was forced to concede defeat, with the announcement
that it will close on Monday, only 16 months after it opened.
The transfer of the Royal Armouries from the Tower of London to
Leeds, in a venture endorsed by the last Conservative
government, has also struggled to generate sufficient visitors.