In 1992, Sue Townsend wrote a masterpiece about royals trying to live without royal wealth.
—showed the ex-royal family confronting the reality of everyday life when you don’t have a palace, a staff, and a bazillion dollars insulating you from it. The Queen—now known, by law, as “Mrs. Windsor”—learns to dress herself even as an unshaven, enraged Duke of Edinburgh refuses to get out of bed. Charles gets arrested and thrown in the dock by corrupt police. They must wait in lines for everything from doctors to groceries to government benefits.
Meanwhile, the residents of Hell Close adapt to their new neighbors even as they wonder how to talk to someone “whose head you are used to licking and sticking on an envelope.” They make polite small talk and forgive the former royals’ excesses. A religious Jamaican immigrant keeps the Queen Mother company and looks the other way when she bets on horses.
The novel is mercilessly funny about the foolish royal family while also treating the fallen Queen with great affection and respect. Of all the royals, Mrs. Windsor is best able to roll up her sleeves, learn about her new world, and adapt to it. As a figurehead-less Britain falls to ruin, the former Queen, worried she’ll be called back to the palace, rebuffs royalist revolutionaries in politely-worded letters.
And Harry, who would indeed, eventually, yearn for his own version of everyday life? He and his brother fall into a pack of boys in Hell Close and are occasionally seen yelling from burnt-out cars. I wondered how much better Harry’s attempts at being a regular guy, circa 2020, might go if he had spent some actual time in Hell Close in 1992. And I worry Harry might one day rue the words of his fictional Hell Close neighbor Mrs.
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