Programming note: Greetings from Ukraine, where I promised last week I would be here to do my time-zone recitation of "Keeeeeeeeeeeeev" direct from the actual Keeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeev. Alas, I grew weary of the scammers pressing in on all sides in Independence Square, so I decided to continue eastward. I hope to be here tomorrow, Wednesday (electricity and Internet permitting), for another edition of our Clubland Q&A live from Kharkhiv - unless I overshoot and wind up in Russian-occupied territory, in which case the EU will impose sanctions against me and the US will temporarily waive the sanctions in order to keep oil below a hundred clams a barrel. Either way, I'll be here to take questions from Mark Steyn Club members live around the planet at 3pm North American Eastern - which is now restored to its regular hour across the Atlantic: 8pm in London, 9pm in western Europe, and 10pm in Ukraine. The drone blackouts are lengthier in this part of the country, so, if I'm not here at the appointed hour, we shall reconvene the following morning.
Meanwhile, I'm enjoying the train announcements. Yesterday afternoon the conductor went from "Relax, get ready to vacation!" to "In case of explosions, throw yourself on the ground" with just two intervening sentences. As the clock approached the hour, we were invited to stand for a minute of silence to honour Ukraine's fallen. All but three men did so, as the tannoy played Big Ben-esque bongs, not a sound I have ever heard in a railway carriage before. It is hard to stand stiffly and dignified as your carriage buckets over Ukraine's wretched train tracks, but the ladies especially gave it a shot, and the result was strange but moving.
One hundred years ago today - April 21st 1926 - HRH The Duchess of York gave birth to a daughter at the London home of her father, the fourteenth Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne. The house at 17 Bruton Street in Mayfair no longer stands because Canadian Pacific demolished it to put up a luxury hotel, which itself no longer stands. But until recently the little girl born on the site still stood, and kept the House of Windsor standing too.
I thought she would still be with us on this day - her mum made her century - but the lockdown years took their toll. It is only three-and-a-half years since she left us, yet the monarchy shrinks day on day. Shortly after her Coronation in 1953, Her late Majesty departed London for a seventh-month inaugural tour of a small sliver of her overseas possessions. Her son cannot do that because he is far sicker than has ever been publicly acknowledged, and his treatment requires a weekly procedure performed each week in London, around which have to be fitted his Royal duties. So, for example, when he delivered the Throne Speech at the opening of the Canadian Parliament, he flew in the day before, got in a bit of perfunctory multiculti bollocks en route to Rideau Hall for an early night (it was felt safer to keep him on London time for his short stay in Ottawa), presided in majesty the following morning, and was driven straight back to the airport.
That's not his fault, of course, and, given the wankery to which he was partial in his fitter days, it may even be for the better. But it does tend to advance the sense of a Royal house shrivelling before our eyes. Nevertheless, here is how the King marked his mother's centenary:
BREAKING RIGHT NOW An ill looking King Charles addresses the nation from Balmoral for the late Queen's 100th birthday.
— Dan Wootton (@danwootton) April 20, 2026
"Much about the times we now live in, I suspect, may have troubled her deeply, but I take heart from her belief that goodness will always prevail."
Do you agree? pic.twitter.com/RkC9RGxSvn
"The times we now live in"? So you mean it's gotten worse since 2022?
It fell to the Queen to preside over the transition from Empire to Commonwealth. The King appears to see his job as presiding over the transition from United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to United Emirate of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. On the great questions of identity and immigration, he is firmly on the other side from his subjects. In the fashionable formulation of Somewhere People vs Anywhere People, it may be that the Head of the Commonwealth is the ultimate Anywhere guy.
As to his oldest realm's date with demographic destiny, I have often said that when you lose your future you also lose your past. If memory serves, I first made the observation over twenty years ago when Vancouver's anglo playhouse decided to close up shop, because as the city very lucratively became Hongcouver, it seems Oscar Wilde and Noël Coward had little appeal to the rising demographics. But it could have been any one of a million other things. For example, here is one that hit a little close to home for me, as the owner of multiple old stone walls straggling across my land in northern New Hampshire. So here is one of the New Britons the King is so enthusiastic about. Just an ordinary chap taking a stroll in the country when he comes across an even older version of those stone walls I have. Unfortunately, it is impeding his path, so he demolishes it in order to proceed without hindrance:
The New Briton has no feeling for the old wall - because it's not his past and it was not built by his forebears. As the English (and then their Celtic neighbours) approach their looming demographic dispossession, more and more of their glorious civilisational inheritance will be dismantled and cast aside as easily as those ancient stones. Oh, to be sure, they'll keep a few old palaces for whichever Supreme Ayatollah or whatever succeeds the last Windsor. But ninety-nine per cent of everything else will be torn apart and burnt.
Because it means nothing to the men Nigel Farage insists are as British as he is. Unlike Nigel, Connor Tomlinson has a sharp take on the scene, and understands what it portends. It is almost too poignant a distillation of what awaits the western half of the Continent in the next fifteen years. And the young Prince of Wales who once presented himself as custodian of a great national inheritance is now on the side of the vandals.
~Thank you to all those new members of The Mark Steyn Club in this our ninth year, and thank you to those old members who've signed up a chum for a Gift Certificate or a Gift Membership. Steyn Clubbers span the globe, from London, Ontario to London, England to London, Kiribati. We hope to welcome many more new members in the years ahead.
