THE CROWN

Investiture of the Prince of Wales
Click on any image for a slightly larger version

I rarely watch television or films these days, but it was recently suggested to me that I watch The Crown on Netflix. And I'm glad I did, well, that I am, I've just got to 1969.

It has been very interesting seeing events from a Palace perspective. Things were clearly more complex than I would have realised at the time following them from the outside.

In general, the series is very good and they seem to have made a big effort to make it authentic. I was impressed, for example, by the genuine Welshness of the portrayal of the Aberfan disaster of 1966.

From The Crown

Which brings me to the main topic of this post - the Investiture of the Prince of Wales in Caernarfon Castle on 1 July 1969. I have a particular interest in this event, having watched it live on telly from my home in Ballybrack and taken some photos off the tv screen at the time. You can see a wee montage of some of these at the top of this post.

It was following a visit to the Welsh National Eisteddfod a month after the Investiture that I started to take an interest in the Welsh language, and retrospectively in the Prince's speech in Welsh, on which I have already blogged.

The Palace Script

It was a brief OK speech, and, given where he was coming from, he made a fair fist of it.

However, watching The Crown's version of it pulled me up short. The actual speech, a Palace script, carefully made the usual genuflections to Welsh culture etc. Restraint was the order of the day. You can hear it in my earlier blog post and read it here.

In the picture above from The Crown you can see the Prince reading the script as passed by the Palace. Note the crested paper.

The Prince's Addition

But, in the middle of the Welsh version, the Prince inserts some text of his own as translated by his tutor, Tedi Millward. This he does not repeat in the English language version which follows.

The idea in the film is that, following his coming to Wales to prepare himself for the Investiture, he began to see things from a Welsh perspective and included, off his own bat, material worthy of a member of Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg, the radical Welsh Language Society, in his speech.

Here's an English translation of what he's depicted as adding:

It was a great honour to be welcomed to Wales, and to have my eyes opened to the Welsh perspective. Wales has a history to be proud of and it is completely understandable that the Welsh wish to hold on to their heritage, their native culture, their identity, their disposition and their personality as a nation. It is important we respect that. Wales has her own identity. Her own character. Her own will. Her own voice.

Now, this never happened and I really don't know what the film is up to here. It is a blatant piece of historical revisionism the like of which I haven't seen to date.

As portrayed elsewhere in the film, the sad truth appears to be that the Prime Minister thought up this investiture gimmick to defuse emerging nationalist sentiments in Wales.

And the cynicism of the whole thing is shown up by the Prince's lack of use of Welsh since then.

You can get some idea of the frequency of his use of Welsh, then and since (to 2014), here. A quick update has confirmed that the figures below remain valid up to 30/3/2020).

Of the 10 speeches I found which had some Welsh in them, all but 2 consisted of a speech in English with a short intro and short sign off in Welsh. The exceptions are the Investiture speech from July 1969 (half in Welsh/half in English, published February 1970) and one on the opening of the Welsh Assembly (published in May 1999 and all in Welsh).

Sad.