The people of Magdalen College are facing odium in the Daily Mail (to which I shall not link) for the Middle Common Room taking down a photograph of the Queen.
Now as a former member of Brasenose, we did not have a Middle Common Room. Well, we did. But we called it the Hulme Common Room. Though I was unsure about the Hulme after Whom it is named (see what I did there), I have now ascertained both who he was, and why so many people from Manchester Grammar School went to Brasenose.
But I digress. The main question to be asked of Magdalen MCR, as far as I can tell, is what on earth possessed them to put a picture of the Queen up in the first place. This is not normal student behaviour. But having put it up, as was their right, their successors were equally in their rights to take it back down again. Which has upset the Education Secretary, Gavin Williamson, and added more fuel to the current culture war. I mean, it was the same in our day. I remember that Keith Joseph was livid when he found out that I had a poster of Garfield in my room, and not Margaret Thatcher as some of my Tory friends did.
However. If there is kudos to having portrayals of the Royal Family on your walls, I can go for that. We'fe nearly spent the money we made after selling Dominic Cummings all those eye charts early in the pandemic, after all, and another contract would be handy.
Therefore, the Beaker shared areas will be graced by portraits of the Royal Family as follows. The Queen Elizabeth II Dining Room will have a triptych of Her Majesty, Prince Philip and Prince Charles. The Windsor Doily Shed will be graced with Wills and Kate, together with their children. The Mountbatten Orchard will have a series of wooden posts, arranged in the manner of Woodhenge, each whittled into a representation of a Royal Family member.
The Princess Diana archery range will have a beautiful rendition of Diana, arrayed as the goddess of the hunt.
When my Toyota Pius finally runs out of steam, I will be replacing it with a Renault Meghan.
And to keep the Beaker hound, Rosebud, company we will be hanging a picture of Prince Andrew in its natural place. The doghouse.
A great idea. Wherever I served in the Armed Forces there was the Picture of Her Majesty preserved in Aspic as a perpetual 25 year old Queen on every important wall. Now retired I have fond memories of those days in a house devoid of any reference to HM, not out of loyalty, but there is no room for such a picture as house has so many Cat pictures we'd annoy her Corgi's.
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