Category Archives: Heraldry

Achievements of arms, and related subjects

Ongoing Heraldic Stories

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In this post I have new updates on three different heraldry-related stories that I have covered before.

The Greater London Authority

The campaign by the Greater London Authority to acquire the iconic armorial achievement of its predecessor body the Greater London Council has been successful. The King issued a royal warrant on Thursday 13th November authorising the transfer, though frustratingly it the corresponding notice in the London Gazette was not published until yesterday.

British Passports

(I’ve discussed this topic ad nauseam by now so won’t link specific earlier posts.)

It was announced by the Home Office in October that a new British passport design would be coming out which featured Timothy Noad’s illustration of the royal arms with the Tudor crown in place of the previous design favoured by Elizabeth II. Recently the story has been picked up by newspapers as the new passports actually come out.

The Prince & Princess of Wales

I and other heraldists have been waiting for some time to see evidence of William & Catherine updating their personal heraldry to reflect the former’s status as heir apparent. While searching for news stories about the GLA I found articles in Hello!, People, Marie Claire and The News International (though curiously none of the more mainstream outlets) reported that when the couple attended the Royal Variety Performance last month, their invitation printed by the charity featured their conjugal coat of arms in the updated format. The style is very clearly Sodacan, and it looks as if the particular image was created on 12th April 2023 by user Mangwanani but not actually used in any articles until 22nd November this year, presumably for lack of evidence of real-life usage. Whoever found the image for the invitation must have dug rather deeply into Wikimedia Commons to find it. Reports in the aforesaid magazines that the Prince & Princess have made this change themselves seem a little misguided as it would not have been their own office in charge of producing the image, and recent evidence of their own correspondence still shows their old-style cyphers in use (not the lack of an arch on the coronet). This is thus yet another example of Wikipedians not just getting ahead of real life, but actually pushing it along a little, however inadvertently.

The new programme can be contrasted with this one from 2023, which still uses their conjugal arms as Duke & Duchess of Cambridge (or rather as son & daughter-in-law of the heir apparent), even though the new graphic image had already existed for seven months and William had held the status of heir apparent for more than a year. The old graphic still showed Catherine’s shield with a cordelière around it to balance William’s Garter circlet, even though she had been made a GCVO in 2019. Note too that the great many depictions of the main royal arms still alternate between old and new variants.

Belize, Paddington and Royal Variety

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The Royal Variety Performance for 2025 was held last night, though it won’t be broadcast until next month. This time the Prince & Princess of Wales attended, as they have done in every odd-numbered year since 2015. I mentioned last year that the Royal Variety Charity was extensively using Sodacan’s Wikipedia illustration of Elizabeth II’s British heraldic achievement. Looking at this year’s photographs it appears nothing has changed.

I mentioned last week the oddity of having the Prince of Wales and his aunt the Princess Royal both undertaking prominent overseas diplomatic visits to different places at the same time. This week the Firm leaned further into this by having a married couple, the Duke & Duchess of Edinburgh, simultaneously touring different continents.

The Duke flew to Nigeria to meet with the President and attend a meeting of the Duke of Edinburgh’s International Award programme, founded by and named after his father Prince Philip.

The Duchess went on a tour of South and Central America. She visited the Republics of Peru, Panama and Guatemala, finishing in Belize. The first three were standard-fare bilateral diplomatic visits on behalf of Britain, with the Palace news page explicitly saying they were requested by the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (specifically the Foreign part in this instance). In some of the photographs we can see her meeting the host president with a Union Flag prominently displayed beside that of the host state.

The visit to Belize is the more interesting one as, unlike the others, this is a Commonwealth Realm, and indeed this is highlighted multiple times in the press releases, with the Palace Twitter feed even calling it “the Realm of Belize” despite the country having no official long name. By strict Commonwealth constitutional logic Sophie should have been there in her capacity as sister-in-law to the King of Belize, acting on the advice of the Belizean government. Despite this, many of the official reports mentioned bilateral ties between Belize and the United Kingdom, which suggests a deliberate straddling of both thrones. I can’t see any royal standard flown by the Duchess on the other visits, but in Belize she was clearly photographed flying the generic ermine-bordured version. As I have lamented before, royals other than the sovereign himself do not have dedicated heraldic flags for each specific realm save Canada so must default to their British arms even where this causes constitutional confusion.

It is also worth remembering that recently there have been reports of Guatemalan military personal making illegal incursions onto Belizean territory, which was condemned by the Commonwealth. It is a little strange, therefore, that a senior royal should visit both countries in such rapid succession without the incident being brought up.

On a final note, two of the aforementioned stories featured appearances by Paddington Bear: The Duchess of Edinburgh posed with a plush toy of him at the British Embassy in Lima (Peru of course being the character’s country of origin), then the Prince & Princess of Wales greeted an actor in costume at the Royal Albert Hall. Paddington Bear has long been an international icon of British culture. Since his appearance in a video for the Platinum Jubilee celebrations in 2022, he has been particularly associated with the royal family. Some have criticised an apparent cult forming around him. This year Spitting Image created a parody of him to appear alongside the Duke of Sussex in a spoof podcast, which at time of writing is the subject of a lawsuit by Studio Canal.

EXTERNAL LINKS

DUke of Edinburgh

Duchess of Edinburgh

Paddington Bear

Royals and Remembrance

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Once Halloween and Guy Fawkes Night have passed, poppy season is all that remains to block Christmas from achieving total domination for the rest of the year. There are, of course, two separate dates for this occasion — Armistice Day (always 11th November, the exact anniversary of the end of the First World War) and Remembrance Sunday (second Sunday in November, a broader commemoration of war dead). Both of these events involve two-minute national silences… assuming, of course, that a silence actually falls. Due to the logistics and practicalities of the working week, some organisations have to hold subsidiary events outside the universal dates. Silences here can be hard to regulate if everyone around isn’t coordinated with it. I remember quite a few occasions from childhood when a reverent, contemplative peace was anything but. Even the highest are not immune to this: The Queen attended a service at Westminster Abbey last Thursday, but it was immediately outside rather than inside the main building. As you would expect from an open-air event in central London on a weekday, the “silence” was actually filled with a lot of traffic noise as well as two different emergency sirens. The only blessing was that at least there were no dogs barking. I’m actually a little surprised that this phenomenon hasn’t been the subject of a Family Guy cutaway by now, given that it would be an easy way to get two minutes of padding with minimal animation.

Another big event in November is the United Nations Climate Change Conference, now taking place in Belém, Brazil. The Prince of Wales flew down some days in advance to present his Earthshot Prize, which Sir Keir Starmer also attended, though neither stayed for COP30 itself. This is the latest in a long line of solo overseas engagements undertaken by the heir apparent since his wife’s cancer diagnosis last year*. William was back in time for the Sunday cenotaph service but he missed the Festival of Remembrance at the Royal Albert Hall on Saturday night. Prince George attended for the first time, in his father’s place. The festival includes the religious and patriotic music expected for a solemn occasion, but also a handful of modern entries. One of these was a cover of Avicii’s The Nights. I can’t work out whether it adds to or detracts from the spirit of the event to know that Avicii himself, err, left this world behind some years ago, his life clearly remembered but tragically brief, and predeceased his father. He was from Sweden, a country formally neutral in both world wars. The festival featured multiple performances from Sir Rod Stewart, who sported the unusual sartorial combination of a knight bachelor’s badge hung from an open shirt.

The cenotaph ceremony in Whitehall traditionally involves the laying of wreaths by senior royals, senior servicemen, cabinet ministers, diplomats, various officials representing the British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies, and leaders of the significant political parties in the House of Commons. This has always been a bugbear for Nigel Farage, because his parties have so far never met the threshold of six MPs needed to qualify. UKIP in 2015 got 12.6% of the popular vote but only one seat. Douglas Carswell, as the party’s sole representative in the Commons, was regarded for procedural purposes as an independent rather than a leader. Reform in 2024 got 14.3% of the vote and five seats. The cruel twist here is that since the election the Reform caucus has gained two members (one from defection, one from by-election) but also lost two of the originals, so that when November came they were back as they started. It should be noted that the six-member rule, introduced in 1984, has exceptions for the Northern Ireland parties to avoid the appearance of sectarian bias. It is also possible for two or more parties to coalesce for this purpose, as Plaid Cymru and the Scottish National Party have done since 2001**.

The Princess Royal was also absent from the London commemorations, having gone on a royal tour of Australia. She instead paid her respects at the ANZAC memorial in Sydney. It is a little extraordinary for two royal overseas visits to take place at the same time, especially when both of those away from the United Kingdom are counsellors of state. Recently I have been constructing a Wikipedia page listing all of Anne’s official overseas travel (similar to those which already exist for other senior royals) but it has quickly become a little overwhelming to see just how busy she is, with twenty such journeys listed in the Court Circular just for the last two years.

One ought probably to discuss heraldic matters now. In some of the photographs of Anne’s visit I can see her two crosses and a heart flying in various places. I didn’t see William or Camilla flying theirs in the outings aforementioned. Close-up shots of the wreaths laid and crosses planted also show royal symbols. The Queen’s monogram appeared on hers, complete with the Tudor crown. William’s, even now, still uses the pre-Carolean design (note the oak leaves and lack of arch on the coronet). The King’s wreath did not use his monogram, but instead the full royal achievement with BUCKINGHAM PALACE underneath. Once again it was the old-style illustration with St Edward’s crown.

Sir Lindsay Hoyle is something of a vexillophile and has taken to Tweeting whenever a new flag is flown from New Palace Yard. In 2021 he began making a point of raising the flags of the Overseas Territories. His most recent example was the flag of the British Indian Ocean Territory, allegedly celebrating its national day. I can’t find photographic evidence (including on Parliament.UK) of the flag actually flying in the yard, so I can only go on the image shown in the Tweet itself. The BIOT flag includes the Imperial crown, sometimes with a cap of maintenance and sometimes without, but always in the St Edward form. Hoyle’s picture had a Tudor crown. I cannot find this version on the territory’s website or any other source. Is it a custom make? The BIOT is currently the subject of a slow-moving but high-stakes political controversy as Starmer’s government intends to cede sovereignty of the landmasses to Mauritius. This would mean that the territory as a political entity ceases to exist, hence no point updating the flag. I notice that there was not a representative of the BIOT among all the other BOT representatives laying wreaths at the cenotaph. The flag of the BIOT has been widely used in the campaign against the handover, including by the displaced islanders themselves. The bill to ratify the handover passed the House of Commons and recently had its second reading in the Lords, but then there were reports that the government has paused its progress due to public resistance. In this context it is tempting to read Mr Speaker’s Tweet as a not-so-subtle dig at the Prime Minister.

Finally, a point about Flickr: The cenotaph ceremony and the Earthshot prize both produced plenty of government photographs which can be moved onto Wikimedia Commons. The former had two photographers: Simon Dawson for the Prime Minister’s Office and Gunter Hofer for the DCMS. After migrating both albums across I quickly realised that the time stamps given in the metadata were wrong. Dawson’s were one hour too late (probably not adjusted for daylight savings) while the DCMS ones were in some cases out by a whole year! This feels like an elementary mistake for a professional photographer. Sadly there are not likely to be many photographs of Anne’s excursion to Sydney for the reasons I explained last year.

FOOTNOTES

*The Princess of Wales appears not to have gone abroad on official business since 15 October 2023.
**The SNP alone has won at least six seats in every subsequent general election, so in practice the utility of this alliance is one-sided.

Rolling Coverage

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It quickly became apparent that the Duke of York’s dedication on 17th October to cease the use of his titles and honours was not enough to satisfy the public mood and so, not even a fortnight later, a further announcement was made that His Majesty would be taking measures to enact these changes in a formal way, and also that the changes would go further by removing his princely title as well so that he became Andrew Mountbatten Windsor. No notice to this effect has yet appeared in the London Gazette, but then it is fairly normal for that publication to lag by a few days and indeed for these processes themselves to take a few days to carry out. This is the first time since 1917 that a Prince of the United Kingdom has had that dignity removed in this way.

Less than a day after this announcement it was noted that the Roll of the Peerage had been updated to omit his name*. This is not actually a roll of parchment but rather a PDF. It is uploaded on and accessed through the website of the College of Arms but is actually controlled by the Ministry of Justice. As the page explains, the Roll was created as a government register of everyone who possessed a peerage of any rank of the United Kingdom or its predecessor states, the Roll of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal having been rendered quite inadequate for that purpose following the House of Lords Act 1999. Newly-created peers are added to the Roll automatically but those who have inherited their titles but those who inherit their titles are responsible for writing to the Secretary of State with the necessary documentation to prove their succession. It is also possible for those already listed to request their own removal. The absence of a peer from the Roll does not actually cause his peerages to cease to exist but does effectively mean that the state in its official capacity will cease to recognise him as holding them. This is probably as close as Andrew can get to fully giving up his dukedom and its subsidiaries without an Act of Parliament being passed specially for that purpose.

This has of course led to another flurry of edits on the former prince’s Wikipedia page. Some commentators noted how quickly the page had been moved from “Prince Andrew” to “Andrew Mountbatten Windsor“, but actually this was against procedure so the page name was reverted and not moved again until editor consensus was established. It would have been a lot more convenient for us if both of last month’s announcements had been made as one so that two separate page moves (and thus two separate discussions) would not have been needed. Of course, this still doesn’t entirely resolve matters because there is still some confusion as to whether “Mountbatten Windsor” needs a hyphen, as the royal warrant from 1960 includes one but the recent announcement does not. There is a further important, if largely academic, point to be made that even if Andrew has agreed to simply go by Mr from now on, he could still be called Sir until his knighthoods are fully removed, or indeed Lord as the younger son of a duke.

FOOTNOTES

*Contrast this version (archived on 16th December last year) to this one (archived yesterday): The first two pages list the principal peerages of members of the royal family, then the rest of the document lists all the non-royal peers. Within both groups the titles are listed alphabetically, so “York” was previously the last of the royals. Now he doesn’t appear at all. I note that the current version omits the “Latest revision” date underneath the Crown Copyright line on the first page, which makes me think that yesterday’s update was done in a hurry.

EXTERNAL LINKS

UPDATE (5th November)

The Gazette website has now published (as of noon today) notices confirming the removal of Andrew’s titles:

  • THE KING has been pleased by Letters Patent under the Great Seal of the Realm dated 3 November 2025 to declare that Andrew Mountbatten Windsor shall no longer be entitled to hold and enjoy the style, title or attribute of “Royal Highness” and the titular dignity of “Prince”.
  • THE KING has been pleased by Warrant under His Royal Sign Manual dated 30 October 2025 to direct His Secretary of State to cause the Duke of York to be removed from the Roll of the Peerage with immediate effect.

The first appears only in the London Gazette, while the second also appears in the Edinburgh and Belfast. So far I have not seen any of the usual experts dissecting these, although that will likely come in a few days. These are of course only the Gazette notices and not the full texts of the relevant documents, for which I have already seen some of them say they will file FOI requests. I will note that the removal of princely titles does not take the form of a royal licence, and refers to its target as already being named Andrew Mountbatten Windsor. The second, despite its triple publication, only refers to the Dukedom of York so the removal of the subsidiary earldom and barony must be read as implicit. It says that His Majesty directed the action rather than the Duke himself requesting it as the original warrant laid out, so presumably the new warrant must be amending the original in some way.

Miscellaneous Monarchical Minutiae

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Alright, I couldn’t find a more recent picture.

More from Torrance

In an update to my post from two days ago, I noted that Dr David Torrance had put out a research briefing for the House of Commons Library covering much of the same substance as I had. Today, hot off his own heels, he put out an “Insight” on the concept of Royal Warrants. It examines the distinction between Royal Warrants and Letters Patent, which has long been a source of confusion to me. The Insight covers some details about process and format, though any distinction in fundamental purpose is not resolved.

What struck me in both his recent updates were his repeated links to this site: the Corpus of British Administrative Instruments. This is a website by Jason Loch of Venerable Puzzle fame. I can’t work out how recent this is as Loch doesn’t mention the site on his aforementioned blog or on his Twitter feed. The Wayback Machine shows no records at all until today.

CBAI has a lot of overlap in principle with Heraldica, which I mentioned on Sunday, although a little more modern in terms of the coding and presentation. It collates the texts of reems of patents, warrants, ministerial letters and other documents of state and royal authority. The most fascinating part is that it includes photographs of these items as well. My favourite document so far is the patent from 12th April last year appointing Mark Scott as Somerset Herald. It features a delightful illustration by Timothy Noad of Charles III at his coronation.

Following on from the main thrust of yesterday’s article, a look now at the disused duke’s wife and daughters:

The Other Yorks

None of those called “The Yorks” actually use the word York in their names anymore.

Sarah Ferguson married The Prince Andrew in 1986. Their actual marriage did not last long as they separated in 1992 and divorced in 1996. Despite being separated almost thrice as long as they were married they still live together and often behave as if still a couple. As a wife she was “Her Royal Highness The Duchess of York” and subsequently she was “Sarah, Duchess of York” — the latter following the standard formula for how divorced former peeresses are styled, and also how wives of all royal peers are styled in biographical indexes as well as the titles of their Wikipedia articles (e.g. Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh, whose marriage is still going strong). There have been quite a few contexts, such as their daughters’ engagement announcements, in 2018 and 2019, where Palace communications have still referred to the couple together as “The Duke and Duchess of York”, probably because “His Royal Highness The Duke of York and Sarah, Duchess of York” would have looked a bit strange. Although there wasn’t a direct statement from her, news reports said that when Andrew had ceased use of the Dukedom of York Sarah had also ceased use of the courtesy title Duchess and had reverted to her maiden name. Talks are ongoing on both their Wikipedia pages as to how to present this. It would have been interesting to see what happened if a formal deprivation of the peerages had taken place, I’m not sure there is any precedent for whether the formally depriving a divorced peer of his peerage would automatically remove the courtesy title of his ex-wife as well.

Their daughters Beatrice and Eugenie also bear the title of Princess and the style of Royal Highness as children of a son of a sovereign per the 1917 letters patent. As is custom for second-generation descendants, they originally bore “of York” after their given names. We do not yet have a good custom for what to do when British princesses acquire commoner husbands: formally they are “Her Royal Highness Princess Beatrice, Mrs* Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi” and “Her Royal Highness Princess Eugenie, Mrs Jack Brooksbank”. In practice most references, and the names of their Wikipedia pages, omit anything after their first names. As with their father, this can be a little difficult for disambiguation**, as their have been other princes named Andrew (including his own paternal grandfather) and other princesses called Beatrice and Eugenie. This is also a problem for Princess Alexandra, originally “of Kent”, later “The Honourable Lady Ogilvy”. Even adding “of the United Kingdom” would not solve the problem in most of these cases, so either birth years are given in brackets or the living British one is given primacy over all others on the basis that they are overwhelmingly the most famous among current English-language sources.

Wrap-Up

In other news, His Majesty has recently appeared on another podcast. Not The King’s Music Room this time, but Unearthed with Cate Blanchett, looking at the progress of the Millennium Seed Bank. The Queen, meanwhile, has gotten herself written into the crime novel The Hawk is Dead by Peter James.

FOOTNOTES

*She might have been a Countess, but Edoardo’s comital title from the former Kingdom of Italy has no official recognition now.
**This is less of a problem for Anne, who also has the title Princess Royal.

UPDATE (31st October)

Loch has now put out a new post explaining the launch of the CBAI.

The Inbetweeners: A Potential Revival

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Even here I’ve managed to squeeze heraldry in. The shield of Rudge Park Comprehensive School is about as generic and uninspiring as you’d expect, but at least it conforms to the rules of heraldry unlike so many in real life. The blazon is most likely “Azure on a bend Argent three oak trees of the field”.

The Inbetweeners is a televisual franchise that can be considered, if not actually dead, then at least dormant, in as much as it’s been eleven years since the release of the second film and fifteen years since the end of the TV series. Neither the audience nor, it seems, the cast and crew, can entirely move on and yesterday there was an announcement that the four lead actors had signed up to a revival. Most of the news articles I could find were behind paywalls and those few which were readable still didn’t betray much in the way of detail despite about what form this new instalment would take. Presumably nothing of substance has been decided yet. From fans and commentators there is excitement, but also a lot of dread.

My academic cohort were a few years behind that of the character, and I think we discovered the program en mass around 2011-12* — after the series proper had ended but before we reached sixth-form ourselves. While the jokes (and indeed the catchphrases) circulated widely, I’m not sure it was ever regarded as more than fiction. Nobody saw it as a reflection of their own lives at the time, much less an aspiration for the future. A lot of cultural histories of this period refer to The Inbetweeners as the way sixth-form really worked for most people in Britain, in opposition to the fantasy version presented by Skins**, but curiously I don’t remember anyone at my school talking about Skins at all. As to whether it’s representative now, I’m obviously too old to say (and likely wasn’t qualified even back then), but I remember these articles from the end of the last decade noting how hard the format had proven to recapture.

Even so, we know we are in for some kind of comeback, and the scepticism of the long-time fans is well-founded as bringing back a property like this after such a long time always runs the risk of sullying rather than enhancing its reputation. Even this series’ own tenth anniversary special in 2018 was widely regarded as a damp squib. The problem most critical to a story of this kind is the age of the characters: Dawson Casting is routine for productions like this and right from the start the leads played characters a few years younger than themselves*** without straining credibility. Now, however, if you tried to pick up remotely close to where the second film left off they’d be about twice as old as the people they portrayed, and even with digital de-ageing it would be hard to pull off, with the added complication that the setting itself would have to be more than a decade in the past rather than contemporary^. Clearly, if the cast are to unite onscreen again, it would need to be in a “Where Are They Now?” sort of way, catching up with them at about age 35. This is tricky, as inevitably their situation in life will be very different, and that tends to cause existential problems for what is formally called situational comedy. Of course, other genres can also have this problem in their own ways, so here I will briefly change tack.

Dr Philippa Gregory has written a great many novels about English royal history, including a long string of them about the Plantagenets and Tudors. Starz has adapted some of these into TV series: The White Queen in 2013^^, The White Princess in 2017 and The Spanish Princess in 2019-20. TWQ covered the life of Elizabeth Woodville from 1461 to 1485, TWP followed her daughter Elizabeth of York until 1499. Gregory said that these parts of English history were underserved in mainstream fiction beyond Shakespeare, which may be correct. Season 1 of TSP was about the life of Catherine of Aragon from 1501-1509. This part could still qualify since Catherine’s time with Henry in their youth before their marriage broke down is also frequently neglected. When it was announced that TSP would get a second season, fans on their forums wondered just how long Starz intended to string this out, noting that the story couldn’t go much further before becoming a rehash of Showtime’s series The Tudors or myriad other productions including Gregory’s own The Other Boleyn Girl.

When it comes to this proposed revival, the comparison of which to be most wary is, of course, Peep Show, that other Channel 4 cult classic of the noughties. The exact diagetic timeline of that series is not always consistent, but the final episode has Jeremy turning 40 and the first series seems to have them both just shy of 30. The Inbetweeners, if renewed now, would land around the middle of this range. What’s more, a lot of the story ideas floated for the new script — whether by ordinary fans or by people connected with the franchise, feel very PS-esque: I saw musings about quirky flatshares, wedding disasters, failed partnerships and juxtaposed career outcomes. As I mentioned in last month’s post, PS had to end once the main characters got too old for the situation to continue, and any revival now would need to radically change its approach to adjust to the times. There might well need to be a new setting, and the characters to be written in a new way. This would also be the case for The Inbetweeners, and indeed more so given the even greater time gap both absolute and proportionate. It would not be possible to write the characters as the same personalities we remember from 2010, nearly half their lives ago. For sure, you could make arrested development an explicit feature of the story (as it also was on PS, and which would be entirely expected for at least two of the main four) but even then it would come off with a different tone.

My intention here is not to come of as overly pessimistic: I know from Futurama and Red Dwarf that an old franchise can be successfully brought back many times across several decades. It is eminently possible to get an interesting story out of a late sequel, albeit one which will need to be quite distinct from what was written the first time around and with the high risk that a large proportion of the audience will feel disgust at the outcome rather than delight. There is life here still, just not necessarily as we used to know it.

NOTES

*As the whole series ran to only eighteen episodes it was quite easy to finish the whole run on 4OD in a few days.
**I refer readers to this video essay by Stuart “Stubagful” Hardy, in particular where he says “I never got to live a life like the kids on Skins. Most of my teenage years consisted of being made to sit in a series of rooms with adults glowering at me… alright, a drama based on my teenage years probably wouldn’t have exactly made for a compelling piece of television but, in my defence, that was real! You people want real, don’t you.“ and, while it’s actually reviewing a completely different Channel 4 program, Charlie Brooker’s famous line in this Guardian article: “The biggest teenage taboo is being strait-laced. It’s easy to tell a researcher you went to a house party that turned into an orgy. It’s less easy to say you like eating toast and watching QI.”
***The four lead actors were born 1982-87 whereas the characters would have been born 1991-92 in order to start sixth-form in 2008.
^The second film already has this problem, being set in 2010-11 but made in 2014.
^^Co-production with the BBC.

Princes and Passports

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The King and the Prince of Wales made an unusual joint appearance on Thursday night – at a “Countdown to COP30” event at the Natural History Museum. I was a little perplexed to see them both getting out of the same car, given that security protocols often require the incumbent monarch and the heir apparent to travel separately. Perhaps that was itself an environmental statement, but in that case they surely would have turned up in His Majesty’s new electric BMW instead of the petrol-powered State Bentley. The limousine was, of course, displaying the undifferenced royal shield and banner.

Today the Home Office announced that British passports had been updated to, among other things, display Timothy Noad’s illustration of the British royal arms, replacing the old Reynolds Stone illustration as it has in so many other contexts. Stone’s illustration, at time of writing, still appears on Acts of Parliament.

In other heraldic news, it has been five months since the last newsletter by the College of Arms and six since the last blog post by the Heraldry Society. Still, at least there’s another virtual Oxford lecture coming up in a fortnight’s time!

The Duchess of Kent’s Funeral

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The funeral took place today at Westminster Cathedral. It was not televised, but there was a press-pool camera outside which livestreamed to YouTube. Unfortunately the camera feed only covered the outside of the cathedral, and our view of the inside was limited to a handful of still images (which seem to be of guests filing in rather than the ceremony itself), and what could be seen from the outside once the doors were opened. Since it was broad daylight from the outside, it took a while for the camera’s light sensitivity to adjust so that proceedings inside were actually visible. This was briefly undone every time someone in a white cassock walked across the camera’s field of vision outside, so that the interior became a black void again. I will make here what few observations I can, mainly about flags and cars.

When viewed from the piazza, the flagpole on the left of the main door normally flies the flag of the Holy See (or Vatican City) while that on the right flies the Union Flag (or Jack). This time the Vatican flag flew full-mast throughout while the right pole flew the sovereign’s banner of arms at full-mast in his presence and the Union Flag at half-mast in his absence.

Katharine did not have the use of a banner of her own arms (the Duke of Kent impaling Sir William Worsley) so her coffin was draped in the generic royal banner with the ermine bordure. Attendees on departure could be seen clutching the printed order of service with Katharine’s royal cypher (the letter K topped by a coronet of crosses and strawberry leaves, curiously not the version shown on Wikimedia Commons). The order of service itself has not been released, but the royal family website has this article explaining events that took place. An announcement on the cathedral’s website uses Sodacan’s illustration of the late duchess’s heraldic achievement.

The doors opened as the piper was walking out, after which the national anthem was played. Two verses were sung, preceded by Gordon Jacob’s fanfare. It was played on the cathedral’s organ but I don’t think any brass players were present.

I took notes on which royals arrived in which car:

  • The Late Duchess herself was carried in the claret Jaguar hearse (no numberplate) also seen at Elizabeth II’s funeral.
  • The Duke & Duchess of Gloucester in OY20FUL (a dark red diesel Jaguar)
  • Prince & Princess Michael in a blue BMW (probably YK74MHB, electric)
  • The Duke & Duchess of York in KN74EFK (a green hybrid Range Rover)
  • Sir Tim Laurence & The Princess Anne in DK74CMV (a blue petrol Bentley Bentayga)
  • The Prince & Princess of Wales in KU25UPR (a blue hybrid Range Rover)
  • The Duke of Kent & Lady Helen Taylor in a blue Jaguar (registration not shown in footage)
  • The King and Sir Clive Alderton in the Bentley State Limousine (no numberplate needed).

The Duke of York looked a little confused on the way out, walking towards the cars, then back to the cathedral, then to the car again, as if not sure which one he was meant to be using. A short wheelbase bus was used for several other family members, including Lord & Lady Frederick Windsor.

The Duke of Kent, aged 89, understandably looked rather frail and shrivelled. His siblings Prince Michael and Princess Alexandra were both seen in wheelchairs at some points, then walking with canes at others. The Queen did not attend, having pulled out at the last minute due to a sudden bout of acute sinusitis. It is not confirmed if she will still be attending the imminent American state visit.

August Armorial Announcements

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The Queen’s heraldic banner continues to be a bugbear: Late last month, Sky Sports Racing Tweeted a short video of Her Majesty arriving (by helicopter) at Ascot. The commentator pointed out that upon Her Majesty’s appearance the royal standard was flown, but I noticed that it was again the generic ermine-bordered version and not that impaled with the arms of Bruce Shand, which has been seen in official usage recently. Perhaps the venue simply didn’t have a copy of that one yet?

The slow rollout of the Tudor Crown continues — on 1st August the Australian Department of Defence announced that all three service branches had updated their logos to use the new crown, as well as making other small adjustments to the rest of the graphics.

On the same day, the British Army announced a new cap badge for The King’s Gurkha Artillery Regiment, which likewise has the Tudor Crown on in. Since this regiment did not exist until this year, there was no St Edward’s version to remove in this case.

The King himself appeared at RAF Lossiemouth on 6th August to present a new standard to 42 (Torpedo Bomber) Squadron. I would assume that the Tudor Crown appeared on it, but none of the photographs or footage of the event gave a clear view of the standard itself — which is ironic given that was the whole point of the event!

Progress in the judiciary is less clear. I should remind readers that I am only speaking here about the judiciary of England and Wales, since that in Scotland uses the other version of the royal arms with the Crown of Scotland while that in Northern Ireland is reluctant to use explicit national symbols at all. The United Kingdom Supreme Court, and the Privy Council, have already been discussed.

From the PDFs of recent judgments, it appears that both civil and criminal divisions of the Court of Appeal are still using the old and rather ugly Royal Courts of Justice logo, with the almost-triangular royal shield topped by St Edward’s Crown, as are all three divisions of the High Court. Other courts are less consistent.

I have seen the Crown Court using several different ideas:

It looks as if every different court location has its own document template.

Pondering Thatcher’s Letterheads

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About a decade ago when I first got interested in heraldry, I came across this article in The Independent by Ben Summers and Michael Streeter, dating all the way back to 24th March 1997, early in that year’s general election campaign*. It concerned the use of the British royal arms by the Baroness Thatcher on her official letters.

The wording of the article is a little confusing, and made harder by the absence of any images (unsurprising given the age): It alleges that Lady Thatcher abandoned the use of her own coat of arms for her letters and started using instead the royal arms, in the lesser format favoured by various government departments.

Thatcher’s own heraldic achievement

The journalists interviewed both Black Rod (Sir Edward Jones) who awkwardly declined to comment and Somerset Herald (Thomas Woodcock, later Garter King of Arms) who dismissed a suggestion (made by whom it’s not clear) that Companions of the Garter are specially entitled to use the royal arms in this way.

Government arms as used at the time

The article contrasts Thatcher to Britain’s two other living former premiers at the time – “Sir Edward Heath uses a simple House of Commons portcullis and a plain typeface, while Lord Callaghan simply types his name beside the House of Lords logo.” – and the main thrust is the piece is to play up the public perception of the Iron Lady as not being able to leave government behind and as believing herself as great as the reigning monarch.

Trouble is, I think this is a bit of a reach, given this sentence: “The normal House of Lords logo used by peers places the Arms inside an ellipse, together with the words “House of Lords”, making clear the state body to which the use of the Arms relates.”

With one hand Streeter & Summers allege delusions of grandeur based on Thatcher’s supposed use of the governmental coat of arms instead of the House of Lords logo, but with the other they tacitly admit that the two devices are near-identical anyway! While the page itself does not have any photographs, I have been able to find a handful of examples online as letters by public statesmen often become collectable items sold at auction. The impression I get is that, while letterheads for members of the House of Commons have favoured the crowned portcullis badge** since many decades before Thatcher’s premiership, those for members of the House of Lords at that time used the royal arms in an oval with “House of Lords” typed underneath. Letterheads for government ministers at that time followed the same pattern – the royal arms in an oval with the department name beneath – although there were some rare examples of ministries already using the more modern corporate-style logos that would become characteristic of the New Labour years.

If the authors meant that Thatcher was using the royal arms in her private correspondence – i.e. not related to her parliamentary duties – then they might have had a point, but that is not made clear. I would also note that in all the photographs I’ve found so far, none show peers using their private coats of arms in the headers – a shame, really, as that is one of the main reasons to acquire a coat of arms in the first place.

This could be an example of what the article alleges – albeit it’s from seven years too late.

I’ve tried searching for any documentation of the actual rules around the use of parliamentary letterheads. I found this page for the House of Commons but nothing so far for the Lords.

Here I have collated a series of examples of letters written by Lady Thatcher and other British prime ministers in their legislative (rather than executive) capacities.

Margaret Thatcher

  • 1966-04-01: Letter to Mr & Mrs Bland, with no personal letterhead but logo in top left corner, featuring even lesser royal arms in a portrait oval with “HOUSE OF COMMONS” arched above it.
  • 1971-10-27: Letter to illegible recipient with green portcullis in top centre and “THE RT. HON. MARGARET THATCHER M.P.” above it.
  • 1976-10-28: Letter to Misses Brett and Watson, with blue portcullis in top left corner and “The Rt. Hon. Mrs. Margaret Thatcher, M.P.” along the top.
  • 1991-12-09: Rear page of a letter to Ed Koch (former Mayor of New York City), with portcullis in blue in top left corner and “THE RT. HON. MARGARET THATCHER, O.M., F.R.S, M.P.” along the top, notable because she is no longer called “Mrs” but not styled “Lady” either despite Denis’s baronetcy.
  • 1991-12-12: Letter to E. T. Freeborough with same layout.
  • 1995-03-01: Letter to Rick Pallack with lesser royal arms (sans oval) in top left corner and “MARGARET, THE LADY THATCHER, O.M., P.C., F.R.S.” along the head.
  • 2003-??-??: Message thanking an unidentified well-wisher for his condolences after the death of Sir Denis, featuring the House of Lords logo as described with “Margaret Thatcher” underneath it and “THE RT. HON. THE BARONESS THATCHER, L.G., O.M., F.R.S.” in the footer. “P.C.” is omitted for some reason.

James Callaghan

  • 1990-09-16: Letter to Andy Wood with House of Lords logo in red and “THE RT. HON. LORD CALLAGHAN OF CARDIFF KG” above it in black. “PC” omitted here too.

Harold Wilson

  • 1973-10-30: Letter to Geoffrey Davis, with House of Commons portcullis in top centre and “From: The Rt. Hon. Harold Wilson, OBE, FRS, MP.” above, all in green.
  • 1994-05-??: Letter to Lynda Winston, with House of Lords logo in top centre and “The Rt. Hon. The Lord Wilson of Rievaulx KG, OBE, FRS.”

Alec Douglas-Home

  • 1970-07-29: Letter to Klaus Kuhneumund, with oval House of Commons logo and “From: The Rt. Hon. Sir Alec Douglas-Home, K.T., M.P.” above, all in subtly inconsistent shades of blue.
  • 19??-04-17: Letter to the Marquess of Lansdowne, with House of Lords logo in top centre and “From: LORD HOME OF THE HIRSEL K.T.” above it. “P.C., J.P., D.L.” left out.

Harold Macmillan

  • 1978-02-22: Letter to Harold Smith, with “From the Rt. Hon. Harold Macmillan” along the top, with “OM FRS” omitted.. There is no parliamentary logo at all as he was not a member of either house at this time.

Edward Heath

  • 1984-05-10: Letter to Felipe González, with portcullis in top left corner and “The Rt. Hon. Edward Heath, M.B.E., M.P.” along the top, all in blue.
  • 1991-02-13: Letter from Heath’s private secretary Robert Vaudry to Sean Bryson with portcullis in top centre and “From: The Private Office of The Rt Hon Edward Heath MBE MP” above it, all in black.
  • 2000-09-18: Letter to the Lady Harmar-Nicholls, with portcullis in top left corner and “The Rt. Hon. Sir Edward Heath, K.G., M.B.E., M.P.” along the top, all in blue.

More recent examples of backbench peers using the royal arms

On a semi-related note, I am still searching for evidence of armorial bearings held by Wilbert Awdry (who, incidentally, died just three days before that Thatcher article was published). Recently I have found some digital uploads of his letterheads, which feature a monochrome photograph of a steam locomotive, identified by the caption as Locomotive No.1 of the Sydney Railway Company. If he wouldn’t use a coat of arms there, where would he?

*The fifty-first Parliament of the United Kingdom was prorogued on Friday 21st March but would not be dissolved until Tuesday 8th April, with polling day on Thursday 1st May.

UPDATE (21st July)

Barely a day after I posted this, technology lawyer and academic Kendra Albert and software engineer Morry Kolman launched Heavyweight, an online letterhead composition tool which allows one to mimic the style of a legal firm. These letterheads are purely textual, so sadly no coats of arms to review.