This year is the Queen’s Golden Jubilee,

and to mark the occasion

one of the biggest British recording companies is bringing out a

CD in which the principal song is entitled “God Save the Queen.” It is going to be

heavily promoted, with the express aim of reaching the No. 1 spot

on the charts. But this “God Save the Queen” is not quite what it

seems. It is a mock-anthem by the long defunct punk group the Sex

Pistols, first issued back in 1977, and featuring such snappy

lines as “God Save the Queen/She ain’t no human being.”

We have been here before. The song

was originally timed to

coincide with the Queen’s Silver Jubilee, and reissuing it seems

as much as anything an exercise in middle-aged nostalgia for the

pop-anarchism of the Seventies. It didn’t do much damage at the

time, and it’s unlikely to do much now. Nor, for that matter, are

the “carnivalesque” antics planned by such fringe protest groups

as Movement Against Monarchy (known for short—it’s not a bad

joke—as Ma’am).

But there is also a new vehemence against royalty in more

established quarters, of a kind which was rarely seen twenty-five

years ago. The Guardian newspaper has conducted a campaign

since the beginning of the year, scornfully predicting that the

Golden Jubilee will be a fiasco—virtually willing it to