Philip Collins
(Picture: Daniel Hambury)It’s a familiar conundrum to Londoners of a certain age. You’re approaching a milestone birthday like a 40th. There are the schools to think of and city life can be so pressured, especially while the rail strikes are on. The house prices are crazy; your money gets you so much more a little further out. There’s less traffic and the children would love all that green space. Yet, deep down, you know it doesn’t make sense.
Yet this weekend one more family announced an intention to move west out of London into the Berkshire countryside. William and Catherine of Kensington are taking their children George and Charlotte out of school in Battersea and are moving, along with their younger son, Louis, to a pile on the Queen’s estate near Windsor.
The Cambridges will join the exodus of the half a million people who leave London each year, although whether they will also belong to the 800,000 people who commute into London remains to be seen. William doesn’t look much like the kind of guy who will come into Paddington on the 7:23 from Slough.
The Cambridges are set to discover all the reasons why it makes sense to stay in London if you possibly can.
They are going to find that the scenery within travelling distance of London is among the dullest in the nation. If it were possible to commute into SW1 from the Lake District, the Pennines, the Welsh and Scottish mountain ranges or the Wye Valley, then there might be an aesthetic reason for moving out.
But it’s a harder argument to mount about Berkshire. They’ll find that the countryside is dangerous — 62 per cent of all road fatalities take place there because nobody is pootling around at 20 miles per hour as they are in London. And they are bound to be bored. The trouble with the countryside is, as Woody Allen once said, that there’s nowhere to go for a walk. Nowhere to get coffee. Nothing to do.
If you already live in a palace then the understandable desire for more space really doesn’t apply to you. In truth, this is a mid-life crisis move for the Duke of Cambridge.
The underlying problem is that he is hitting 40 and the question of his role in public life is now being posed. In a previous age, when monarchs and their offspring did not always have long lives, it was a rare event for the heirs apparent to have to wait most of a lifetime. But this has happened to the Prince of Wales and it may happen to the Duke of Cambridge too. British monarchy does not treat its talent well. Instead we more or less expect them to sit in a big house on the Windsor estate, morbidly awaiting their eventual destiny in life.
This strange no-man’s land has made the life of William’s father so difficult. It is surely a laudable desire to break free from royal boredom which prompts the Prince of Wales to speak out inappropriately on politics, as he did last week when he (rightly) said the Government’s policy of flying migrants to Rwanda was “appalling”. William is going to have to find a way to make a difference while not overstepping the constitutional bounds. He recently asked his people at the Cambridges’ Royal Foundation, for example, to work out how to generate more lasting impact. It’s a request which reveals his frustration at visiting a problem but not, in truth, being a part of the solution.
Moving to the countryside is a sign that William is starting to turn into his father. His office has already said that he is “shadowing his father” to learn how the Duchy of Cornwall works. The Duchy is a 130,000-acre estate which generates an annual income of £21 million. William will encounter the same predicament which has troubled his father — is it really on to make money for the family by commercialising the royal brand?
The truth is that it was a mistake for William to have given up his work as an air ambulance pilot. Working for a living is exactly how the post-Elizabethan monarchy should adapt to new times. The Cambridges should demand that their own children work, though they will have to move to London to find opportunities. Being imprisoned between four lavishly appointed walls near Windsor is no sort of life for any young person.
It’s going to be quite dull out of town for the Cambridges. There is an obvious alternative if the urban density of Kensington really has got too much. They could move to Cambridge. It’s got countryside all around it and there are loads of places to got for a walk. But, most of all, the duke of the town needs something to do.
