This book has been a long time in the making. Every day, the project became bigger and bigger, and it is a research project that could go on for ever. This book is one iteration of my attempt to piece all of this together.
This research was funded by the ESRC and the AHRC, and then an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship which relieved me from teaching and administrative duties and allowed me the time to lock myself inside (COVID and lockdown did somewhat prompt that) and write this thing.
Thank you to everyone who has contributed to this book, and/or to my sanity, in a variety of ways: Amy Calvert and Flynn, Anne Cronin, Anne-Marie Fortier, Bev Skeggs, Claire Kelly, Daisy Barker, Debra Ferreday, Elmer Fernandes, Emily Hoyle, Emily Pugh, Emily Winter, everyone at the FSA, the FINER team, Georgia Newmarch, Hannah Yelin, Jo Littler, Jonny Beacham, Karen Gammon, Kim Allen, Lizzie Houghton, Maarten Michielse, Miranda Barty-Taylor, Sara De Benedictis, Tom Whittle, Tracey Jensen, Vicky Singleton and all the brilliant students I've had the privilege to teach. An extra special thanks to Imogen Tyler, Bruce Bennett (plus Bonnie) and Helen Wood, without whom this book would not exist.
This book is dedicated to my parents and siblings, and thank you also to the rest of my family.
Thanks to the team at Manchester University Press. Tom Dark, in particular, has been enthusiastic about the book from the beginning, and I am very grateful.
Towards the end of writing this book, I got two kittens, Agnes and Ginny. My keyboard promptly became a toy, so any typos in this manuscript are firmly their responsibility. Any other mistakes or inaccuracies are my own.
Some of Chapter 2 has been published in amended form as ‘The Corporate Power of the British Monarchy: Capital(ism), Wealth and Power in Contemporary Britain’ in The Sociological Review (2020).
A section of Chapter 3 has been published in amended form as ‘“Queen's Day – TV's Day”: The British Monarchy and the Media Industries’ in Contemporary British History (2019).
Some of Chapter 4 has been published in amended form as ‘“Queen of Scots”: The Monarch's Body and National Identities in the 2014 Scottish Independence Referendum’ in European Journal of Cultural Studies (2020).