On Royalty Quotes

“They keep the position of head of state out of the hands of those who want it just to gratify their ambition.”
― Jeremy Paxman, On Royalty

“The central conundrum of the new mass-media age could be summarised as to how to retain a distance while appearing intimate- for distance without intimacy nourishes public hostility, while intimacy without distance destroys respect.”
― Jeremy Paxman, On Royalty

“The most striking characteristic is the combination of slavish devotion and intellectual condescension... they are grander than we are and yet they are also subservient to us.”
― Jeremy Paxman, On Royalty

“The central difficulty for royalty when it comes to political matters is that they are somehow expected to be in the world and yet not of it, to speak for their people and yet to have nothing to say until someone writes it for them. To be, in short, an empty vessel.”
― Jeremy Paxman, On Royalty

“Politically, kings became figures of no importance. Yet those that survived possessed a quality which politicians can peruse for years and still never acquire. They had the vital attribute of legitimacy because they occupied a role they had never striven for- one, furthermore, which would continue when they and their prime ministers were long gone.”
― Jeremy Paxman, On Royalty

“Churchill once explained... ‘a great battle is lost: parliament turns out the Government. A great battle is won- crowds cheer the Queen.”
― Jeremy Paxman, On Royalty

“Riding is about bending it to your will, and public riding is to demonstrate that authority.”
― Jeremy Paxman, On Royalty