In a new satire on Britain’s royal family, they are banished to a rundown housing estate to eke out tawdry lives in a republican land that has spurned them.
Best-selling author Sue Townsend, poking gentle fun at a dysfunctionally chaotic House of Windsor, has Queen Elizabeth and her rowdy brood living in exile in a specially fenced off exclusion zone for social misfits.
Gaining comfort from her beloved corgi dogs, the monarch tends to her husband Prince Philip in a care home.
Heir-to-the-throne Prince Charles moans and talks to his organic vegetables but he does enjoy a vigorous love life with his wife Camilla, whose other great passions are smoking cigarettes and talking to her dogs.
There is no disguising Townsend’s republican sympathies, but her leanings do not rule out a relatively happy ending for Queen Camilla, the title of her new book published this week to acclaim from critics.
”I am bemused as to why the monarchy is still there. I don’t think it serves any purpose,” she told Reuters in an interview to mark publication of the sequel to her bestseller The Queen and I that first sent the royals into exile.
Normal family
”It would be a kindness to retire them gracefully with lots of land, nice houses, a few dogs and some horses. It is cruel to make people perform like puppets in uniform,” she said.
”We are not superstitious peasants any more. We do know they do not have blue blood, they do not have divine powers. They are just a normal dysfunctional family,” she added.
But she does write with affection about Charles and Camilla.
”It is a genuine love affair. They suit each other. The problem with Charles and [his first wife] Diana was that they were both neurotic and both had miserable childhoods,” she said.
Townsend first found literary fame in the Eighties with her tale of a self-obsessed teenager in The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole aged 13 and three quarters.
That and its six sequels have sold more than 11-million copies and been translated into 43 languages.
At the age of 60, Townsend now dictates her books to her husband as she grapples with a diabetic condition that has robbed her of her balance and much of her eyesight.
She cannot leave home without a wheelchair and is awaiting kidney dialysis treatment.
”I allow myself to indulge in self-pity when I am on my own but I do not want to write about it. I am anxious not to be seen as Mother Courage,” she said. – Reuters