ABSTRACT
From at least the late nineteenth to at least the late twentieth century monarchy was seen as central to British national identity. Between 1876, when Disraeli gave Queen Victoria the title of Empress of India, and 1953, the monarchy was fundamentally entwined with the idea and reality of the British Empire. They were seen together as forming two basic foundations upon which Britishness could be built. As Robert Roberts recalled of his schooldays in Salford before the First World War, loyalty to the nation and state was loyalty also to both monarch and Empire:
We drew Union Jacks, hung classrooms with flags of the dominions and gazed with pride as they pointed out those massed areas of red on the world map. ‘This, and this, and this’, they said, ‘belong to us!’ When next King George [V] with his queen came on a state visit we were ready, together with 30,000 other children, to ask in song, and then . . . tell him precisely the ‘meaning of Empire Day’.1
