¶ Sponsorship Messages and Intros
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¶ Anthem's Power and Ideological Roots
So that is the stirring song that England's finest will be belting out next week when we meet Croatia for the first match in our ultimately victorious twenty twenty six. World Cup campaign. So the campaign that will go down in history, seeing Thomas Tuchel rewarded with a knighthood. Harry Kane, Hatrick and the final, all very exciting.
So hello everybody. Uh welcome to the second in our World Cup themed uh series about the history behind the national anthems of the most interesting contenders. I was about to say the top contenders, but I don't think South Africa are a top contender, but they're the most interesting. Now, obviously, Tom, we were always going to do God Save the King because we are, of course, a patriotic podcast, but also because this is a brilliant example of our very familiar anthem.
can open up this window into a very interesting area of history, specifically in this case, at a period of history we haven't done as much of on this show as we should have done, which is the eighteenth century. So we'll be talking a lot about the politics of the eighteenth century, but before then, just on the anthem itself. I think very unfairly people often diss this anthem and they say it's a bit I think because it's often played badly by the They say it's a dirt.
A dirge. It's it's it's I think it's a legal requirement to say that it is a dirge.
I don't think it is a Dirch, but there you go. Well I
I'm quite fond of it as well, I have to say, but I would I mean, maybe you would disagree. I don't think it has the kind of operatic power
Strutting. Bombastic.
So we've done two national anthems before this. Uh one was the previous one, the Star Spangled Banner. Burning the White House, attacking Baltimore, all of that. But before that, as part of our French Revolution series, we did the Marseillaise episode five oh seven for people who haven't heard it.
I know that you disagree on this. I think it is a thrilling national anthem. I'm a little bit envious of it. And just to remind people: the background of the Marseillaise, uh, written in 1792 as the infant French Republic was seriously facing the prospect of being strangled in its cradle by the invading armies of Austria and Prussia. And this invasion was the opening shot in a war that Britain was going to enter very soon afterwards, following the execution of Louis XV.
And for both the American and the French revolutionaries, Britain really constitutes the great rival, the great opponent to their respective revolutions. And the consequence of this is decades of conflict. So with the Americans, they're at war for eight years through the war of independence. Their republic would not have been established without that war.
And the French what begins as a revolutionary war will end up the Napoleonic Wars and go on all the way from seventeen ninety three through to um eighteen fifteen, kind of on and off. And of course this isn't just a military or naval conflict, it is an ideological one because Both the American and the French Revolutions establish republics, and those republics proselytize a kind of militant repudiation of monarchy. And Britain is the monarchy par excellence.
But the way that ideological conflicts work, uh it's a ratchet effect, isn't it? So the more radical one side becomes, the more the other side doubles down on its previous ideological commitments. And that's true of of British monarchism, isn't it? That people more and more come to see the British monarchy not just as part of the furniture but
Yeah.
But the more that tax evaders in the United States and Jacobins in France rail against the principle of monarchy, the more that the Edmund Burks of this world Come to construct a kind of ideological defense of it and to actually see monarchy not just as something they've inherited, but as an intrinsically good and worthwhile thing in itself.
Or the Jack Aubreys, played by um Russell Crowe. Uh do you wanna see a guillotine in Piccadilly?
Yes.
Absolutely. The more that the French, for instance, go on about their republic the more the British cling to the ideal of monarchy, the figure of George III as, you know, Farmer George, a kind of homely, lovable figure, as opposed to the the menacing figure of Rob Spierre. or Napoleon. And of course with the French Revolution you also get the whole closing down churches and turning Notre Dame into a temple of reason kind of thing.
And Britain is a very God fearing country in this period, so people like Nelson, absolutely appalled by what they see as this kind of atheistic state that has emerged across the Channel. And it confirms them in their opinion that they are fighting people who have absolutely terrible opinions. They're anti monarchy, they're anti Christianity, and because of that
The inevitable corollary is that God must be on Britain's side, and if that is the case, then why shouldn't he save the king? Yeah. It seems perfectly reasonable to ask God to save the king. And I think that particularly during the Napoleonic Wars, where it's a life or death struggle, for Britain. This request to God to save the British King, it's not an idle formula. I mean it is a really kind of desperately heartfelt prayer, I think. Would you agree with that?
Well I mean if you're sailing to action at Trafalgar or something. Uh, you believe that you are on the side of what is right, that God is with you. Yeah. That Britain is defending God's cause against these atheistical Frenchmen to their corrupt, usurping tyrant, the Corsican monster. So yeah, absolutely. I think people take it really seriously. And the Jack Aubrey character is a well or Nelson, I mean, they're brilliant examples of that.
¶ Enshrining God Save the King
Yeah, and so the God aspect of the God Save the King is important and this is something that I hadn't really appreciated until I started looking into the backstory of God Save the King. It is in this period, the Napoleonic Wars, that God Save the King is enshrined as the national anthem. And I'm putting the emphasis there on the word anthem. And I think we're so used to that as a phrase.
Today, that it's very easy to forget what anthem originally meant, which is essentially a kind of a musical setting for a religious text. And again, the context for why it matters that the God Save the King is an anthem is the fact that Britain sees itself at being at war with a militantly atheist rival. And this atheism for the British is focused by the fact that In the on the 14th of july 1795, the Marseille is officially enshrined France's Chant Nationat, so the national song.
And the British respond to that by terming God Save the King an anthem. So they are effectively sacralising the idea of a national song. They are explicitly Christianising. And this formulation, I'm glad to say, is so influential that by the end of the nineteenth century, so in eighteen seventy nine, even the French succumb, and the Marseillaise is retrospectively titled by the French. a national hymn rather than a national song.
Can I ask a question about you say um you know it's this point that it becomes enshrined as the country's anthem, but it's enshrined by convention rather than by parliamentary statute or something.
Yeah. It's it's increasingly called an anthem. It's something that people sing as a Christian as well as a kind of patriotic duty.
Well doesn't that sort of fit the idea of the that the British have of themselves that their constitution is made up of practices that have evolved over long periods of time organically like a tree, rather than being artificially created and allowed. Like the the bonkers experiments of the United States and France.
Yeah, because both the Star Spangled Banner, even though that b obviously becomes a national anthem much later, but it is written during a period of war with Britain, as is you know, the Marseilles just precedes the war with Britain. They're both songs that are appropriate to self consciously revolutionary states, republics which have eliminated a monarchy and all the kind of traditions that are associated with the monarchy.
And therefore, both the American and the um French revolutionary states have to draw up constitutions from scratch, and they are incredibly famous aspects of the republics that get established in America and France respectively.
Whereas Britain, by contrast, has has kept its monarchy and its constitution is unwritten, and this is a cause of great pride to the British. They don't need kind of new fangled constitutions because their constitution stretches back over the centuries, ultimately all the way back to the Anglo Saxon. And the constitution has evolved over time in kind of fits and starts. And God Save the King as an anthem is perfectly suited to such a state because God Save the King.
Unlike the Marseilles, unlike the star spangled banner.
¶ Searching for the Anthem's Composer
was not written in response to um a specific occasion. So, you know, a an attack or a naval assault or anything like that. Instead, no one is really sure where it came from. I think by the Napoleonic period People don't know who'd written it, they don't know when it had been written it, they don't even really know why it had been written. But like the Constitution, it just exists.
But there are various theories where it's come from, of course, and we'll be delving into some of them. But just to give people a sense, there's still no really definitive answer to some of those questions, is there?
Well, we will come to this, but you're right that um in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars, the establishment of God Save the King as a national anthem in Britain. British historians are are really intrigued to try and work out where it might have come from, and I think particularly who might have composed it. And they want to have a composer who is of sufficient status
that it's you know it's a properly national composer. So one very popular theory in the Victorian period is that God saved the king. was written by Henry Purcell, who the great seventeenth century composer, probably the greatest English composer. I mean that's not saying much, I guess. Dido and Nier's the first great opera written in English. Um I mean you know, he's capable of of writing all kinds of different music.
And he does have this status as the great English composer. You can see why people might have uh have wanted him to have composed God Save the King. Th there's another very popular candidate um who's earlier than Pazell, a century earlier, so in the sixteenth century, and this was um a keyboard virtuoso who had the unimprovable name of John Bull.
Yeah, he couldn't make this up, I think.
But he I mean he did compose a melody that I mean if you I guess if you're kind of half deaf, it vaguely resembles God Save the King. But I think the reason that people are so keen on having John Bull as the composer of God Save the King is his name because John Bull, you know, it's the it's the figure of Britain, isn't it?
There's also the fact that he is an Elizabethan. And so that is to push the origins of the national anthem back to the age of Francis Drake and William Shakespeare, you know, the great golden age of of England. And in nineteen thirty seven a Welshman
Great to have a Welshman on the show.
Great to have a Welshman. Um, a musicologist called Leigh Henry. Um, he proposed that God save would be God Save the Queen then, that it had been composed on the direct command of Elizabeth I in fifteen eighty eight. to celebrate the defeat of the Armada. Oh I love that.
Well, sadly, there is absolutely zero evidence for this, and it has to be said that uh Leigh Henry is a a faintly sinister figure and an implausible figure. So he was a druid. I mean that's not to cast aspersions on druids, but Druids are basically invented in the nineteenth century, so that would imply an enthusiasm for bogus history.
Right, he's no stranger to contrivances.
No. He was also a bigamist, so I think maybe not necessarily to be trusted. On top of that, he was also a notorious pro Nazi and got locked up in nineteen forty as a security threat. I think Leigh Henry isn't entirely trustworthy as a musicologist. Yeah.
Yeah. Do you have another musicologist in the wings?
Fortunate.
Perhaps uh with very different ideological leanings, who may be able to resolve this murky question for us.
¶ Percy Scholes and Jacobite Rebellion
I do, Dominic. And this is a guy called Percy A. Scholes. Now on one level He is very much not a Sandbrookian figure. So he was vice president of the Vegetarian Society. And there was nothing he enjoyed of an evening than a delicious slap up dinner containing a couple of carrots. So that was what would he would be served with. So he's incredibly thin and spindly.
He would be unwelcome were to get together with our producers at Wilton's in May.
Yes, he would. He absolutely would. On the other hand, he is a man who has no time for kind of canting academics. He's always being s fabulously rude about academics he doesn't respect in reviews. And I think there's a slight quality of Sandbrook about that. Yeah. And he definitely loved Britain as well.
Well, he ticks some boxes but not others.
Yeah.
We wouldn't have lunch together, that's for sure.
So in nineteen forty two, obviously Britain fighting the war against Nazis and all of that, he published a book um on God Save the King. And you can see, you know, the the the kind of the mood of national beleaguerment, why he would be interested in that. Yeah. This book is clearly inspired by this kind of general mood of patriotism, but I think also with Impatience with kind of clowns, sinister clowns like Lee Henry. So he wrote in the introduction to this book.
Few subjects have been discussed with such general irresponsibility, statements that have no rational foundation whatever, being seriously repeated on every occasion when the subject is brought forward and gaining credence by mere force of repetition.
Okay, so what does he think?
His conclusions are essentially, I think, today accepted as far as I can tell by musicologists as being pretty conclusive. So first of all He nails down the precise point at which the song goes viral.
And this is in the autumn of seventeen forty five, and seventeen forty five is one of the most dramatic years in the whole of eighteenth century British history. Because on the twenty third of july seventeen forty five Prince Charles Edward Stewart, who is better known as Bonnie Prince Charlie, had landed on an island off the west coast of the Scottish Highlands.
So Bonnie Prince Charlie was the grandson of James the Seventh of Scotland, who was also James the Second of England, and back in sixteen eighty eight in what's the British came to call the glorious revolution, he had been forced into exile essentially for being too Catholic, too absolutist, too keen to model himself on the example of the Sun King, the kind of the great French absolute. King. Yeah. And Bonnie Prince Charlie's aim in landing in the highlands. was to claim that
the British throne back for the Stuarts, the the line of James II, um for his father, the old pretender. And to achieve this, Bonnie Prince Charlie needs to claim the throne back for the Stuart. from the dynasty that has replaced the Stuarts, and this is the House of Hanover, and specifically it is a one of the many Georges that reign in the eighteenth century, and this is George the Second.
George II is the King of Great Britain, he is also the elector of Hanover, so he's a German, but more saliently from the point of view of the British elites, he is a Protestant, whereas the Stuarts are Catholic. And so at stake in the autumn of seventeen forty five, when Bonnie Prince Charlie is is has landed in Scotland and is preparing an army to attack the Hanovarian monarchy, you've got two rival versions of monarchy. And the first is the Stuart vision of monarchy.
The Stuarts claim they are the rightful ruling dynasty because their legitimacy derives from God and from heredity. So they are descended from Mary Queen of Scots and before that the line of the Stuarts. reaching back all the way into the Middle Ages. And essentially you may not like their their religion, you may not like their absolutist trends, but God has decreed that they should be king and you can't just kind of sack them because you don't like that.
And this is the view of lots of people still in Britain, and we a have actually done a series about one of those people already this year, and that is Samuel Johnson.
The Tory tradition.
Tory traditions, James Boswell as well, his biographer, both of them were were Jacobites. So Jacobites named after Jacobus, the Latin for for James. But then the other view of monarchy is the Hanovarian one, the supporters of the Hanoverian monarchy, George II. They say, well, the Hanoverians are the rightful ruling dynasty of Britain because their legitimacy derives less from heredity than from an act of parliament.
And that is to transform the crown not into an inheritance that derives from divine right, you know, the favour of God or whatever, but it's a it's specifically a gift. Of Parliament. And Britain is a Protestant country and therefore it needs a Protestant king. And those are the two visions of monarchy that are kind of being brought together in seventeen forty five. So the nature and character of monarchy in Britain is a massively live issue.
¶ London's Panic and Anthem's Debut
And it's threatening a civil war.
But one vision is seen as more modern and is more widely accepted in the prosperous kind of south of Great Britain, isn't it? And that is the Hanoviria model, what you might call the Whig model, the idea that the crown gets its legitimacy
From Parliament.
But that's not the case on the periphery, in the wilder parts, which is precisely why Bonnie Prince Charlie has headed for um the Highlands of Scotland.
Yes, where actually he he does tremendously well because the clans there kind of flock to his his cause and his banner. And by the autumn of seventeen forty five Bonnie Prince Charlie seems to have the whole of Scotland at his feet, so he's captured Edinburgh. He's defeated a Hanoverian army at a place called Preston Pans, about ten miles outside Edinburgh, and he is preparing to invade England.
And the news of this has reached London, which is a city overwhelmingly loyal to the Hanoverian settlement, and there is massive panic. There are kind of runs on banks There are loads of caricatures showing terrifying Scotsmen in kilts, kind of advancing on London, you know, absolute mood of trauma. But this trauma
generates kind of immense effusions of pro Hanoverian sentiment. They're kind of rallying to the Hanoverian flag. And it is this kind of mood of pro Hanoverian mingled panic and enthusiasm that Percy Skulls in his book on God Save the King demonstrated was when God Save the King first kind of erupts onto the national stage. And when I say national stage, I kinda mean it literally, because it makes its debut as a kind of great national song. At a theatre, Dominic, where we have done a show.
Yeah, the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, no less. So one of my very favourite theatres. And we can date this precisely, can't we? To We can. Is it September? September seventeenth?
Twenty eighth of september, seventeen forty five, and an announcement appeared in the general advertiser, and I will read it. We here, Mr. Lacey, Master of His Majesty's company of comedians at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane, has applied for leave to raise two hundred men in defence of his majesty's person and government, in which the whole company of players are willing to engage.
So that is they are rallying to the defence of George the Second. Right. And that same evening, at the Theatre Royal, they're staging a performance of Ben Johnson's comedy The Alchemist, and everyone sits in the audience and watches it and it ends. Lots of applause, the curtain comes down, and then before people can leave their seats in Theatre Royal, the curtain goes back up. It kind of rises unexpectedly. And we are told by another newspaper, the Daily Advertiser, what happens next.
The audience were agreeably surprised by the gentleman belonging to that house. performing the anthem of God Save Our Noble King, the universal applause it met with, being encord with repeated huzzars we love a huzzar, sufficiently denoted in how just an abhorrence they hold the arbitrary schemes of our invidious enemies
and detest the despotic attempts of papal power. So what you've got in this scene is actors who have volunteered to defend King George And Protestant freedom against the designs of the Stuarts in the form of Bonnie Prince Charlie, the Pope menacing Highlanders and kilts, all these kind of terrifying enemies.
They're standing there on the stage in London's preeminent theatre and they are singing this incredibly patriotic song. And obviously if you were a fan of the Hanoverian settlement, as everyone is in this theatre, I mean this is absolute cat. You couldn't be happier about it.
You know what, we've got a lot of listeners who are who are actors themselves. So the actor Samuel West is a listener to this and I would I would pay good money to see him standing on stage, belting out God save me. To join in. To f to fight for the king against Britain's enemies. I would pay enormous sums of money to see him doing that.
And they keep doing this night after night and it generates massive enthusiasm among the theatre going public of London. And it starts to spread. So by the tenth of October, the great rival of the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane, which is um the theatre in Covent Garden, they start singing God Save the King You know, if you can't beat them, join them.
It's gone viral.
And it starts to spread out into the provinces. So by the fourth of November, this new craze for singing God Save the King has reached Bath, we we have reports. And by the end of the following year, so by which point Bonnie Prince Charlie has launched his abortive invasion of England, he's turned back at Derby, he's been defeated at the Battle of Culloden. He has fled Scotland forever, disguised as a a maid. This song is being heard everywhere, and I think it's no exaggeration to call it.
You know, the first pop song.
the first pop song
It is sung everywhere, in a way that I think songs had not previously been.
Okay.
It is easily the most effective piece of propaganda in the whole story of the Jacobite invasion. You know, it's a massive kind of popular triumph of pro-Hanovarian sentiment. And so obviously George the Second thinks this is great. I'm I'm suddenly the star of a pop song. I mean, what's not to like?
¶ The Anthem's Turncoat History
Who wouldn't like that? But is there perhaps a twist?
Of course there is. Always. This whole kind of emergence of God Save the King is a pro-Hanovarian answer. it is shadowed by a certain irony. Because the twenty eighth of September seventeen forty five, when it it is sung on the stage of the Theatre Royal, that may have been when God Save the King first hits the West End. But as as Skulls acknowledges in his book, the song itself is much older. We know when it goes viral, but we still don't know when it was written or who wrote it.
So Scholes is very contemptuous of the idea that um a single composer, whether it's John Bull, whether it's uh Henry Bussell, whether it's anyone who can you can put a name to, that anyone named had written the melody, and he his argument is that it emerges communally.
and that its true origins will never be known. And I gather that musicologists today still agree. And just to reiterate, I mean, that is what makes it perfect if you're a fan of the British constitution, because It's organic, it's kind of risen up from the the hearts of the people.
Ja.
So that's the tune. What about the words? This is where the irony really kicks in. Because Skull in his book quotes a letter that was written on the tenth of october seventeen forty five to David Garrick, the greatest actor of the day. And in this letter, surprise is expressed. by the writer of the letter the sudden craze for God save the king. The guy who's writing to Garrick says
These are the very words and music of an old anthem that was sung in St. James's Chapel for King James II. King James II is the Catholic Absolutist grandfather of Borny Prince Charlie. So he is the kind of Uber Jacobite. Skulls quotes other contemporary letters, other contemporary sources, and these are all making the same claim that God save the King had not originally been a Hanovarian song, it had been a Jacobite song.
And he has this brilliant phrase, the British national anthem is a turncoat. It's gone from being a Jacobite anthem to being a Hanoverian anthem. So absolute seeds.
Anthems are always malleable. So all through these six episodes we'll be doing stories about anthems that are rewritten or reinterpreted. We've already had examples when we did the Star Spangled Banner.
But
I mean, one of the things about God Save the King is I mean, we've already rewritten it ourselves in our own lifetimes'cause we switched from God Save the Queen to God Save the King, didn't we? Yeah. Without even really thinking about it's not like somebody told us to do it. It just was the natural thing to do. So because there's no is that am I right in saying there's no approved state sanctioned text
There is no authorized version. So you will find a version on, say, the royal family's website. Yeah. But it's not kind of legally prescribed. in the way that the Marseillaise is. We heard the legislation required to inscribe Star Spangled Banner the the American national anthem. And because of that it's always been incredibly easy for people to rewrite. So
Those lines that I quoted from the the newspaper report when it was first sung on the stage of of Drury Lane in seventeen forty five, I mean they are ambiguous. So just to repeat them God save our Lord the King, long live our noble king. I mean it's not clear which c That's referring to. I mean it could be a little bit more than a little bit.
The Stuart King as well as the Hanovarian King. Actually, if you're not naming the king, if you're not specifying who the king is, it's it's pretty easy to appropriate it on both sides. That said, what becomes the second verse? Is is clearly, I think, written by Hanoverian supporters. So to remind people the second verse. May he defend our laws and ever give us cause to sing with heart and voice God save the king. That is clearly a celebration of the Hanovarian settlement.
Well, the thing about defending laws is code, isn't it?
Praising a king who is willing to uphold parliamentary sovereignty, the laws that are issued by parliament, so it is absolutely not a celebration of, say, the divine right of king.
That's a nice uh repos to people who say they don't like God Save the King because it implies fealty to an absolute monarch or something like that. It absolutely doesn't. It's a tribute to the constitutional settlement of sixteen eighty eight, eighty nine. So the king in parliament. Yeah. It's a it's pure wiggery. That's what it is.
¶ Radical Interpretations and Global Spread
Well, not just Whiggery, there is scope there even for those who are more radical than the Whigs over the course of the Napoleonic Wars to feel that yeah, we can get behind this song as a kind of properly unifying anthem. So obviously Royalists can sing it. But so too, on occasion, can radicals who are pushing at the absolute limits of what is viewed by the British establishment as politically acceptable
Because they can appeal to the King as defender of their rights actually against Parliament, against the Whiggish government or the Tory government or whatever. And there is an amazing example of this that that happens four years after the Battle of Waterloo. So in eighteen nineteen, and God save the king is played by a brass band at a great mass meeting that is held in Manchester to demand universal suffrage.
And this mass meeting is charged by the local cavalry and people die. And this massacre comes to be called the Peterloo Massacre,'cause it's held at St Peter's Field. in Manchester. It's one of the great foundational moments in the the emergence of a kind of radical tradition in Britain. But there you have God Save the King being sung. So it has mass popularity. And when foreign visitors come to Britain,
And they hear this song being sung basically everywhere, in theaters, in pubs, in the street, whatever, at meetings. None of them have any doubt that they are listening to something novel, that nothing like this really has kind of emerged before. And to quote Skulls again, from Roman times the world had known the visible national symbol of the flag, henceforth it was to know the audible national symbol of the song.
And because I suppose Britain emerges from the Napoleonic Wars with such incredible prestige, there's a feeling that it has triumphed over France with its Marseilles. God save the king and Or at least the tune of God Save the King, not the words, but the tune, comes to be seen as something that aspirational countries other than Britain should buy into. Yeah.
And so they start adopting the melody of God Save the King. And in fact this precedes the Napoleonic Wars. It's something that's been going on throughout the second half of of the eighteenth century. So Holland has done it, Denmark, a host of German states do it. Are including Prussia? Russia briefly gets in on the act.
Then after the Napoleonic War, Switzerland and Greece. And in all the the melody of God Save the King, so not the words, but the melody, is ends up being adopted at one point or another by some twenty states. And these states range from Iceland to Hawaii. So it's I I had no idea about this. It's kind of stupefying.
Liechtenstein still have it, don't they? Because I remember England playing Liechtenstein and it being an amusing quirk that the same tune was played twice in the two national anthem.
Yeah, and the England fans boo it when it's the Liechtenstein national anthem and then they cheer it when it's the English one.
Alexie Pratt's being.
Yeah. And actually I think in Switzerland as well, God Save the King provided the tune for the Swiss national anthem up until I think the nineteen sixties. So to quote Skulls, Dominic, we can actually claim that on that Saturday night in September 1745, the British invented national outline. So hooray for us.
Yeah, huzzar for us.
Or is it Hazar? Because of course. Britain is not competing in the World Cup. England and Scotland are, and this has certain consequences. that we will be exploring after the break.
Exciting. Come back after the break.
🎵 Music
¶ Mid-Episode Sponsorships
This episode is brought to you by the Times and the Sunday Times. Thomas, another summer of top international football returns. It's truly incredible, isn't it, to think about how much the world has changed between the various tournaments.
Looking back to when uh England hosted back in nineteen sixty six, everyone in the crowd supporting England were waving union jacks. So what fascinating trends does that illustrate?
And I suppose the last time the United States hosted the tournament was in nineteen ninety four, and the mood in America in the early nineteen nineties, you know, the Cold War was over, Clinton was in the White House
I was there for that. I was in Boston. Really?
I mean that's an aspect of the story that's very rarely reported on your presence. So you know what this reminds me of, Tom? It reminds me that the future is always uncertain. You never know what's coming. But the facts need not be uncertain. And when the world feels like it's moving too fast, the Times and the Sunday Times empower you to make smarter, more confident decisions. Click or
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🎵 Music
¶ Sex Pistols and Anthem Critique
God save the Queen, the fascist regime, it made you a moron, potential H bomb. God save the Queen, she ain't no human being, and there's no future in England's dre
Screaming So apologies everybody. That was uh Johnny Rotten, John Lyden there singing God Save the Queen, the Sex Pistols hit, released during the Silver Jubilee of Elizabeth II. In 1977. Now, whether it reached number one or number two is still very controversial among historians, isn't it, Tom?
It is.
The accepted wisdom now is that it w actually was number one and then was the chart was fixed by the BBC to relegate it to number two. I actually think it's perfectly plausible that it actually finished at number two and that a lot of this is just based on urban legend. However, there's that's not the This was an attack on the monarchy, so it appeared to be, accusing the Queen of presiding over a fascist regime and and not of not being a human being.
And no future.
Yes. But it's attack on Jim Callahan's Britain, which is sad. But actually, this is a tribute to the power of this song. So you described God Save the King in the first half. You said it was no exaggeration to say it was the world's first pop song. But it's a pop song that is still going strong in the nineteen seventies.
Yeah. It's the kind of longest running British earworm, I guess. Right. That we've had in our culture.
Interesting that they don't copy the tune. They copy the words but not the tune, the sex pistol.
I think because it's so famous but in in Britain that you don't need the tune, you just say God save the Queen and it kind of evokes the whole kind of majesty and prestige of the national anthem, by this point kind of over two hundred years old. And in the course of that time it's picked up a lot of baggage. So even
Before
Uh, the Sex Pistols parody it. Yeah. It has for a long time been sneered at by intellectuals, I think, in particular. Bien Ponson who who you're so keen on. And it's seen by them as basically a song for blimps, that it's fusty and it's dusty and it's embarrassing. And The person who comments on this most famously is George Orwell, who in nineteen forty one, so one year before Skulls published his book on God Save the King.
He famously wrote It is a strange fact, but it is unquestionably true that almost any English intellectual would feel more ashamed of standing to attention during God save the King than of stealing from a poor boy.
Box. I mean absolutely that's true today.
Sure. You were talking in the previous episode about the reverence that Americans show the national anthem. Yeah. There's an obvious contrast there. So you talked about Jimi Hendrix playing Star Spangled Banner at um Woodstock in nineteen sixty nine and it generating great controversy.
The following year Jimi Hendrix is in Britain and the Isle of Wight playing at the festival there a few weeks before he dies, and there he plays God Save the Queen in exactly the same way, and it has no reaction whatsoever. Nobody
Jeszcze nie znam.
Nobody can cares at all. And I think to this day, I mean, what how could you some maybe people have a remainer-ish tendency? Might that be the
People who enjoy our sister podcast, the rest is policy.
Yes, I I think people who take the national anthem seriously are seen as kind of quite low status. I mean, yeah, you know, if you worry about the colour of your passport or you're enthusiast for the national anthem, you're seeing as it's a bit kind of below the sort. Um so there's a classic example of this happened ju a few months after the Brexit vote in twenty sixteen, when the Tory MP for Romford, which is in Essex, so you know not the kind of place where BBC presenters
necessarily go very often. Uh this was a guy called Andrew Rossendale and he called for the BBC to end its nightly broadcast by playing God Save the Queen, which is what the BBC had always used to do. Yes. And it had been kind of abandoned. And Kirsty Walk, uh presenter of Newsnight on BBC Two, who I think had not voted for Brexit, safe to say. And she said, We're incredibly happy to oblige. Good night.
Hilarious. See, controversially, this will I don't I don't think this will astound listeners because this is just plain to my image, but it's actually what I genuinely think. I think lots of countries actually do end their T V coverage with the na with the national anthem. And I don't actually think it's a weird thing to do. I think it's good for social cohesion. And I don't even think I've been in American high schools where they pledge allegiance to the flag and they do all that kind of stuff.
And that the standard British thing to do is to sneer at it. And George Orwell of course commented on that. But actually, I don't think it is worthy of being sneered at. I think it's actually quite good for people to have collective symbols and a sense of collective loyalty. Anyway, there you go.
¶ Reasons for British Anthem Apathy
Fair point, well made. But the fact remains that people in Britain do tend to sneer at the national anthem. And so why is that? Why are people ready to sneer at it here than I don't know in France or America or whatever? And I get the kind of whole range of possible reasons. I mean one undoubtedly is they find it boring. Musicians have been complaining about God Save the King for a very long time. So um Gilbert Gilbert, as in Gilbert and Sullivan, complained that it was contemptible doggeral.
Although actually many, many I mean greater composers than Gilbert and Sullivan have actually thought it was rather good. So Bach and Beethoven and Benjamin Britton, they all composed variations on.
That's good enough for me.
So yeah, the sense that it's a derge, as we said, I think that's one reason why people look down on it. Another reason might be that they're Republicans, so the king bit of God save the king and even during the revolutionary wars with France, we said that it was a unifying anthem. But there were those in Britain who identified with the revolution who were not persuaded that to sing God Save the King was in some way a progressive thing to do.
And in that period some of the parodies of God Save the King were much more savage than anything that the Sex Pistols came up with, so I'll I'll sing one here. Long live great guilty, who shaves off head so clean, of queen or king whose power is so great that every tool of state dreadh his mighty weight wonderful thing. So I mean Jack Aubrey would not like that, would he?
He would not, and that takes us back to that last episode about the Star Spangled Banner. That anthems are never fixed, that people can always reinterpret them and adapt them and put in new words to suit their own political ends. And they and they will do throughout the rest of this series.
Yeah. And this is obviously happening throughout this period because all these other countries are coming up with their own words as well. Yeah. So God save the king, the problem might be with the king or it might be with God. You know, you might be a secularist, you think, you know, we're in a modern age, mm-hmm it's all musty, dusty, fusty superstition, we don't want to bother with God. Does the whole British Empire thing? Um God Save the King became the anthem of
The British Empire. Um, it was the anthem of the Dominions, so South Africa, of Australia, of New Zealand, of Canada, um, and all those countries have evolved alternative anthems. And so I think that generates a sense perhaps that God save the king is something antiquated to be got rid of. And then there's the a a kind of whole trend in historical takes on Great Britain and
Yeah.
a kind of uh early modern state that has never managed to evolve. So this is a thesis that's particularly associated with Tom Nairn, uh Linda Collie, who wrote a famous book called Britain's kind of essentially arguing for this, the idea that Great Britain was a a kind of leader in the early modern period, but has never really gone the full course and is still is kind of still born as a modern state.
And therefore, God Save the King is kind of representative of this. The fact that we're still singing something from the 18th century is an embarrassment. So that's another reason.
It is such a sort of nineteen nineties land.
It is very nineteen ninety yes, very, very nineteen ninety.
¶ World Cup and Home Nations Anthems
But then there is a simpler reason, we're doing this uh i in honour of the Football World Cup, mm, and that is that you might feel uncomfortable about saying God save the king because you are either a Scottish or English player or fan. and you are at the twenty twenty six World Cup. Because this I think it does raise issues. for both the Scottish and the English teams to sing God Save the King.
Uh national anthems are obviously a really important part of the World Cup, which is why we're doing the series. We wouldn't be doing it otherwise. I don't think we've said this, but I mean people who are listening have never watched uh a a match in the Football World Cup. Before every match the two teams who are playing, you know, they line up.
And they sing along to their respective anthems. Or if you are from Spain or uh Bosnia and Herzegovina you hum along because those are anthems that don't actually have any words.
And for most countries this is, you know, is not controversial. Every country pretty much has a national anthem. But there is an issue for Scotland and for England, because both of them are constituent parts of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and that means that they have the same national anthem, namely God Save the King, which is the British national anthem.
And the same is true of Wales and Northern Ireland, and if they had qualified then they would be facing the same problem. And the United Kingdom is unique in having its constituent nations compete separately in this way. So when Spain play, you know, the y Catalonia is not playing, when Germany play, you don't have Bavaria.
Canada is hosting it, you don't have Quebec appearing as a kind of separate team in the World Cup. And so people may be wondering, well, how come the home nations as they're called, England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, how come they enjoy this privilege, it's because football's earliest governing bodies are the home nations, the English and Scottish and Welsh and governing bodies long preceded the emergence of FIFA which administers the World Cup.
FIFA is a a parvenue by comparison. So Scotland and England played the earliest international football match as recognised by FIFA in eighteen seventy two. And that was thirty two years before the founding of FIFA and fifty eight before the first World Cup.
And that's why Scotland.
And England. Way to be a good one.
Northern Ireland have their own and England actually, I don't know, I w I shouldn't leave England out, why they have their own distinct identity. as teams that do not exist as like UN member states or whatever.
Yes. And so I think if you're Scottish or English this can be a cause of great patriotic pride. You know, we got there first, it's our game. Yeah. Our governing bodies are much older than FIFA or the World Cup. Brilliant. But I think it does pose an issue on the national anthem front. Of course. And so the two nations who are competing in this year's World Cup, uh Scotland and England from Britain, they have come up with differing answers to this kind of poser to this question.
You said a second ago, oh, you know, when they come out at the World Cup, by right they would be lining up and singing the national anthem of their country, which is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, which would be God Save the King. But of course, everybody who's listened to this podcast who is Scottish or who knows anything about football, knows that the Scots do not sing that hand.
them. And the thing just to say is that there is nothing kind of inherently offensive about God Save the King to Scots or even to very enthusiastic Scottish nationalists because Charles III.
Rules.
as King of the United Kingdom by virtue of his descent from the Stuarts, from Mary Queen of Scots and that Stuart line. Yeah. Despite both the Hanoverians and the Stuart lines, they are on the throne by virtue of their descent from Mary Queen of Scots.
Scottish nationalist leaders have been perfectly happy to stick up for God Save the King. So Alex Salmond, who was the SNP's leader, the Scottish Nationalist Party's leader, who first kind of put Scottish independence on the table as a a serious prospect. Um in twenty fifteen when Jeremy Corbyn, the radically left wing leader of the Labour Party at the time, and he went to a Battle of Britain memorial service.
Yeah. And he refused to sing, God save the Queen. And Salmon said that this was infantile. Salmon was quite keen on the Queen. He'd love to talk to her about horse racing, the kind of mutual interest. And then in the same month Nicholas Sturgeon, who succeeded Alex Amond as leader of the SNP, the Scottish Nationalist Party, she joined the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh, opening um a new railway line in the Scottish borders.
And
The band struck up God save the Queen and Nicola Sturgeon sung it perfectly happily.
Same with Gusto.
Yeah. And the official policy of the SNP remains that should Scotland become an independent country, then they will retain the monarchy. The monarchy would continue as something joining England and Scotland as it had done before the creation of the of the United Kingdom of Great Britain in the early eighteenth century. But that said, there is a very strong Republican strain in the Scottish independence movement.
And in fact, in Scotland generally enthusiasm for the monarchy is noticeably lower than it is, say, in England. Yeah. Enthusiasm for God's save the King in particular is shadowed in Scotland by a vague sense that, say, Bonnie Prince Charlie was fighting for Scottish independence. In seventeen forty five. I mean this is kind of the notion that is fostered by T V shows like Outlander and things like that. Right. Now, it has to be said that this is completely ahistoric.
i in Scotland, seventeen forty five, the emo the arrival of Bonnie Prince Charlie. Um this is a Scottish civil war, uh particularly between the Highlands and the Lowlands, really. But there is, I think, a sense, wouldn't you say, that
Oh yeah, yeah.
Bonnie Prince Charlie is promoted as a Scottish hero of independence, something like Robert Bruce or William Wallace or someone like that, which he absolutely wasn't.
¶ Flower of Scotland: History and Debate
I'm surprised Mel Gibson hasn't made a film about it, with the English as the villains. I mean that is the perception of the Battle of Cullodon, of the whole enterprise, that it's Scotland versus England, and yet again the bullying, tyrannical English.
Wiped the floor. And as we say, this is completely ahistorical. The Battle Claudon was um It's it's a battle fought between two competing visions of Scotland. However, it is true that in that summer of seventeen forty five, one of the numerous verses that is being written during this kind of first flush of God save the king mania.
It does name check rebellious Scots and express the hope that they will soon be crushed. And Billy Connolly picked up on this, so the great Scottish comedian, he complained about it in a kind of very funny monologue. But just to reiterate, you know, there are loads of lyrics being composed in this period.
Um so there are lyrics being composed that damn George II, for instance. People on both sides of the divide are coming up with lyrics all the time. So it's not surprising that there are scotophobic lyrics coming from England, for instance. The same is true on the other side that Jacobite writers are writing um hostile lyrics about the Hanoverians. But I think you could see that all this kind of swirl explains perhaps why God save the King has less purchase in Scotland than it does in
England because the historical reality doesn't really matter when you're dealing with a national anthem, as we saw in our previous episode. Um, what matters is the tug of the heart strings, the emotions that they generate.
You were saying the reason that uh it's not so popular in Scotland is because of the associations with the the forty five, collodon, whatever. I think actually m the the real reason it's not so popular in Scotland is it's associated Right. Because English teams sing it, English supporters sing it, and therefore by definition, Scottish fans do not want.
Although Scottish fans did sing it for decades and decades. But I agree, I mean, it would be very odd, I think, for say Scotland and England if they were playing in the World Cup, and who knows, they may meet in the final. Um
Ha ha ha.
Scotland would have to qualify from the first group stage which they've never ever done.
Well we will see. We will time will tell. But I mean it would it would seem mad for both sides to stand there and sing absolutely the same song, the same I mean it would be very, very funny.
Sing it twice together.
And England playing against Scotland is a very v you know, it's the oldest international football rivalry. Yeah. England were playing Scotland of football right the way up to the mid eighties.
Yeah, every year. Home nations championship, yeah.
Then that stops, but um in another sport, rugby, England continue to play Scotland every every year because there's this contest, the six nations where they were various countries play each other and that includes England and Scotland. And so going into the nineties, I guess Scottish rugby players had a particular incentive to try and come up with a new answer.
And the one that they finally settle on is a song called Flower of Scotland, which had been composed in nineteen sixty-six by a folk singer called Roy Williamson, who was one half of a folk duo called The Corries.
And
Very like the Star Spangled Banner, it was inspired by a rousing national victory over a hated foe. But this particular victory, in the case of the Corries, was one that had been won six and a half centuries before. So it's not like the Star Spangled Banner inspired by something that the guy who composed it had seen. I mean this is going way, way back. And the victory that it celebrates is the Battle of Bannockburn.
which had been won by the Scottish King, Robert Bruce, over the English King Edward the Second, in thirteen fourteen. And for those who haven't heard it, the song begins with a kind of rousing blast that's been lifted from Verde's chorus of the Hebrew slaves. And then you were back to the early 14th century, when the Scots won the greatest victory in their military history over a much larger invasion force.
And it's a celebration of Bruce and his army who had stood against and I quote proud Edward's army and sent him homeward to think again.
Do you know what though? I think this is a massive dirge. Flower of Scotland is a real dirge. I mean people say God save the king is a dirge. Flower of Scotland's very slow and it's kind of stately and slightly melancholy, I think, in its melody.
Do you know who would agree with you is the Secretary of the Scottish FA. um in I think around two thousand and five uh proposed getting rid of it because by this point it's been adopted by the Scottish rugby team and then it ends up being adopted by the um Scottish football team.
Uh I mean it has to be said, it does work well against England. If you're Scottish and you're playing against England, it's brilliant. Slightly less effective, I think, if you're playing rugby against the French or the Irish or the Welsh or or indeed the Italian. Um all that stuff about sending proud Edward back home. Yeah. I think with the bagpipes it is kind of pretty stirring.
what Callum, our producer is saying, Callum and Callum's mum cries at it all the time, apparently. So some people like it.
And so the Scottish FA, they end up adopting it as Scotland's national anthem just in time for the nineteen ninety eight World Cup. in which Scotland had qualified. Um and as you pointed out, Dominic, do not progress beyond the first round. And twenty twenty six will be the first time since nineteen ninety eight that Scotland have competed in a World Cup. And so any fans of songs about early fourteenth century battles out there, you know. Tune in and listen to The Flower of Scotland.
So who are they
They're playing.
Ha Brazil, Morocco, and the people of Haiti can look forward to hearing the Scottish.
So hearing about the battle.
Proud Edward. They love they talk of nothing else in Port au Prince.
¶ England's Anthem and Alternatives
Now the England national team, when they line up, will not be singing a song about uh, say, England's great victory at Hallidon Hill in the reign of Edward III over the Scots.
Should think about Flodent.
Well I I think I mean it would be nice to have another early fourteenth century battle. I mean it would be like our sing I guess singing a song about the Battle of Cressy, but
I mean I'd be so up for that, I can't tell you.
Well, so so the England team will be singing God Save the King. Yeah. It's the national anthem of Britain and it's been cast as the national anthem of England. And I think the reason that they are happy to do that in a way that the Scots aren't is I mean, the clue is there actually in the Sex Pistols song because in the opening line.
it begins with the British national anthem but then it's England dreaming. And there is a tendency on the part of the English historically to allied Britain with England and um the Scots and the Welsh and the Northern Irish, they they love that.
We sometimes do it on in this podcast. And in fact, the great historian A. J. P. Taylor, his book about British history between the wars Britain between the wars was called England nineteen eighteen to nineteen forty five or whatever it was called. He just absolutely lent into it and Churchill did that quite often in the uh Second World War in his rhetoric.
Well Nelson did it as well. England expects every man will do his duty. I mean that was still the case when England hosted the World Cup in nineteen sixty six, because people in the crowd were waving not the flag of St George, the English flag, but the Union Jack. Yeah. And now it's much likelier to be the cross of St George. And that happened in I think in the nineteen ninety six Euros when England got to play Scotland. So it was kind of Gaza and his great goal and all of that.
The dentist chair celebration.
And I think it's not a little bit more.
Maybe a coincidence that Flower of Scotland was formally adopted as the Scottish anthem by the Scottish FA the following year. Maybe not a complete coincidence. It had been kind of informally used I think since nineteen ninety three, but it gets kind of officially enshrined then. It has to be said there is absolutely no sign that the English FA are remotely contemplating changing God save the King. Um they seem perfectly happy with it.
But there are people who who kind of mutter and say, Well, we should have a properly English theme. So I guess that the overwhelming favourite would be Jerusalem.
But you know what? In the seventies, so in the seventies, when Don Revey was the England manager, modernizing England manager. There was a brief period, I think we're talking about roughly between nineteen seventy four and nineteen.
seventy six.
us when they adopted land of hope and glory.
Which is still a a very British
And it was controversial. It was controversial. A lot of people didn't like it. And they said bring back the old anthem.
Well, and another one is I vow to thee my country, which again is about Britain. I think the appeal of Jerusalem is it is very specifically about England. So for people who don't know it, it was a poem written by William Blake, the great romantic poet. Um so if you love a romantic poem, I mean that takes your box. Yeah. It uh refers to England as a green and pleasant land. So that's like lots of national anthems where you know which celebrate the natural beauty of the country.
Nice topographical description. People love that in another.
I think the music is great. Uh so written by Sir Sir Hubert Perry and um orchestrated by Elgar. And actually George V, Dominic, so one of your great heroes, um, he said he'd much preferred it to God Save the King. So I think there's maybe a monarchist case for it.
Maybe.
Blake, of course, was a revolutionary. Um, you know, he he got had up for for uh seditious criticism of the monarchy, so it would appeal to anti monarchists as well. Um, and it has this famous line, Bring me my Chariot of Fire. So it has a kind of sporting link because Charity of Fire gave the name to the um the great, you know, that that film about the Olympics, whatever it was.
Did you just say whatever it was? Whatever it was.
Yeah. Something about the Olympics. Um and also it's a it's kind of about Jesus coming to England and coming to Glastonbury specifically. So it would appeal to fans of music festivals. So I think it it does tick a lot of boxes. And also I have to say it is already the official hymn of a great English national sport, namely cricket.
I think it's got a bit of a class orientation, Jerusalem though, doesn't it? Because it's a very, very public school chapel hymn. I mean, for example, before we started broadcasting, Tabby was saying that I think she used to sing it when she was a Stowe. So, you know, I wonder whether that might t ta taint it for some listeners.
Yeah, possibly. Um but I'm sure you could kind of soup it up.
Bye-bye.
Become the people's anthem.
Right. Change the lyrics, exactly.
Played at Glastonbury, I mean who knows?
I'm still in the God Save the King camp.
Uh.
Okay. As always, some
Yeah, as always.
You played your traditional card.
Yeah, I have to do that. So that is the National Anthem of England and Scotland.
Yeah.
¶ Conclusion and Future Episodes
Wow. And next on that we've got Germany, haven't we? England's old rivals at football.
We'll be talking about all kinds of people actually. We'll be talking about the Kaiser, he'll be back. We'll be talking about Horst Vessel. The um Nazi martyr.
Maybe a little mention Hitler.
Little mention of Hitler, yeah, the East Germans, Konrad Adenauer. So it's actually an unbelievably interesting story, the story of the German national anthem, or should I say anthem?
Yeah, wonderful. Looking forward to that, Dominic.
And then the Dutch.
So yeah, then we've got the Dutch, then we've got Brazil, and then we have South Africa.
Africa. Okay. So if people want to listen to those episodes now, can they is there any way they can do so? Is there any mechanism?
Well there is Dominic. Um and this will come as news to people. If you want to hear all of those episodes in one go and you're not already a member of the Rest is History Club, then you can go to the rest is history dot com, sign up there and you get the whole lot. Plus a whole load of supplementary benefits.
And the only way to get those benefits is to sign up on that website. Am I right?
Yes, that is correct.
Okay.
We're gonna go out on Jerusalem, the um perhaps future English national anthem. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.
🎵 Music
¶ She-Wolves Podcast Advertisement
Hello everyone, it's Tom Holland here. I am with the great Helen Castor. We're talking about the She-Wolves, the great queens of medieval England. We've already done two. Today it's the third. Isabella of France, who marries Edward the Second, a very problematic husband, it has to be said. Um, and she really does go the full she wolf on him. And here is a clip from that episode. And what about Edward the Sec, the anointed King of England? That's a bigger problem, isn't it?
A much bigger problem. He is the anointed king, he's now a prisoner. If they know one thing about Edward is that you can't trust his word, they can't put him back on the throne, not even if he's promising to be good. But what are you going to do? How
How do you remove it?
Move a king. They do it the best way they know how, which is they depose him, they list all his many crimes and faults in parliament and they say he has attacked his own people, and therefore he must no longer be king. They also get him to abdicate you need belt and braces if you possibly can, and they declare that his young son Edward III is now king, and he is crowned in february thirteen twenty seven.
But the problem now is you have an ex king in prison, in custody, and by September of thirteen twenty seven already three plots to free him have been discovered and have been foiled. This isn't a tenable situation. Something has to be done.
Edward by this point is in Bart Castle, by Bristol. And he conveniently dies. Um and what are the theories on How he dies, Helen?
Well, there are many theories, including a theory that he didn't die at all and was in fact spirited away to become a hermit in Germany. I don't buy that. As far as I can see from all the available evidence, on the night of the twenty first of September thirteen twenty-seven, Edward dies conveniently, without explanation, in his prison.
Come on, Helen, we know how he died. Stop stop skirting around the issue. Get to the poker.
The red hot poker. Well what we know is this story gets told and of course it gets told because it encapsulates the whole story in one moment, does it?
What happens to the red hot poker?
You're going to make me say this. A red hot poker thrust. into his anus to burn his intestines from the inside out. And the story goes that, of course, this is an excellent way to kill a king, because it leaves the outside of his body untouched, so his body can be displayed, but also, of course, symbolically, this is hearkening back. to his ill-fated and deeply unwise relationship with Piers Gaviston.
I mean is it possible that this is historically accurate.
I I can't prove that it isn't, and they do appear.
Quite.
Quite early.
I think generally on the rest of history, if there's a good story.
Let's go with it.
And it's not completely implausible, we'll go with it. So let's say that he does he has a red hot poker, shoved up his And that's the end of Edward II. Thanks very much for listening, and if you'd like to hear the first two episodes, then go to the rest is history dot com, sign up there. But I can't believe you haven't already done that.
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