| | | Moving TV portrait of the life of Prince John, unwanted, continually ill but free-spirited son of George V and Queen Mary, by Stephen Poliakoff for BBC 1. In two parts that showed Sundays 19th and 26th January 2003 over here. Poliakoff makes a point in the interview about the series of saying that he had only come across one tiny sentence about John in all his years, but it had stayed in the back of his mind. Now there is country-wide exposure of the story. The timing as always is interesting to interpret.
I only watched the second part. The love between 'Georgie' and 'Johnnie' was beautifully depicted, as was the fervent love of his beloved nanny Lala. What with the deeply emotional depiction of my central thesis in Why Mercy For The Royal Family and the poignant thought that this just might have been the older brother of Joseph, The Lost Prince of our own in Kentish Town, who has only just died, it hit me harder than most viewers I guess. Certainly the extraordinary coldness, shown in a masterly way by Poliakoff, of the royal 'mother' towards 'her son' is far better explained by Joseph's story than the official one.
But it is also important to note, purely evidentially, that this part of Sickert's Version Of The Story only came to him very late via a phone call from two anonymous researchers for the BBC series on Jack The Ripper in 1973, mentioned in The Ripper And The Royals. It ties in with some very strange circumstantial evidence but it cannot be the foundation piece evidence-wise. If other parts of the story stand, and there is much more verifiable evidence elsewhere, then many pieces like this can reasonably be seen to fit. That's how I see it, in the cold light of the next day.
But none of that takes anything away from Georgie's love for Johnnie. He loved the boy he knew, without caring about how he came to be there. This I say even more is the foundation of mercy for our amazingly successful and resilient Royal Family, the same mercy that meant they finally no longer minded Sickert calling himself HRH. But the latter of course is also not so verifiable, unless skeletons come rattling out of the royal cupboards in the next few years. (See Joseph Sickert's page for his wife's confident and unapologetic testimony on the tacit royal endorsement, though. Trusting Edna Sickert is what it has now come to I guess. Quite simply I do.) The mercy is not much perhaps, but compared to the Dark Forces often making out they run the whole show it is something to be deeply thankful for. I Can Only Speak For Myself but ... God Save Our Gracious Queen. -- Richard Drake
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