Some thoughts on monarchy on this historic day

As something of an authority on the British royal family, you can imagined how busy I have been over the past few days, weeks and months, as an advisor to innumerable number of TV programmes with the interchangeable titles featuring the words 'William and Kate' and 'Royal Romance', and I apologise that this blog has been somewhat neglected. Today I am going to be as busy as ever with appearances on Sky and BBC News and so on, but in order to mark this 'happy and historic day' properly, I thought I would leave you with some fitting quotes to remind us of the wonders of the British royal family - helpfully compiled from here.

'Certainly that people needs be mad or strangely infatuated that build the chief hope of their common happiness or safety on a single person; who, if he happen to be good, can do no more than another man; if he happen to be bad, hath in his hands to do more evil without check than millions of other men.'
John Milton, 1660

'Of the various forms of government that have prevailed in the world, a hereditary monarchy seems to present the fairest scope for ridicule'. Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,(1776-1788)

'This boy [the future Edward VIII] will be surrounded by sycophants and flatterers by the score and will be taught to believe himself as of a superior creation. A line will be drawn between him and the people whom he is to be called upon some day to reign over.'
Keir Hardie, 28 June 1894

This romancing about the royal family is, I fear, only a minor symptom of the softening of the brain of socialists enervated by affluence, social prestige and political power'
Beatrice Webb on the 1929 Labour government

'He, too, is going the dictator way, and is pro-German, against Russia, and against too much slipshod democracy. I shouldn't be surprised if he aimed at making himself a mild dictator.'
Chips Channon on Edward VIII, 1936

'It would be a tragic thing for the world if Hitler was overthrown'. Edward VIII as Duke of Windsor to Liberty magazine, 1941

'She would have made a good Queen.'
Adolf Hitler on the Duchess of Windsor, September 1939

[The royal family] often drink a toast at the end of the dinner to Mrs Thatcher. She [the Queen Mother] adores Mrs Thatcher.
Woodrow Wyatt Diaries, 1986