Royal connections

Britain may have lost its empire but the royalty that once ruled over it is still very much in place. You have royal this and royal that all over England and there are whole districts called royal boroughs and of course, a whole lot of royal parks and museums. Not to mention royal colleges and institution, one of which I had joined as a student after the last war. The royal borough of Kensington, where I lived, used to crawl with haughty old ladies whose husbands and sons had once run the empire. Most of them were widows of retired or dead viceroys and governors, including some who had fought wars and led huge armies and presided over garrisons from Poona to Khartoom. The ancient ladies with imperious noses had apartments in the royal b

This article was originally published on November 28, 2021.