¡°What sort of country do we want?¡± the former Conservative M.P. George Walden asked in the 1990s, considering the issue of royalty: ¡°Reproduction antique?¡±

Since the arrival of George Alexander Louis and his debut in front of the world¡¯s press when his parents, William and Kate, left the Lindo Wing of St. Mary¡¯s Hospital, the 21st-century answer is, quite possibly, retro-modern and very middle class: the House of Windsor stripped of chintz.

The royal family has had more scandalous sub-plots than any television soap. There¡¯s been madness, abdication, fornication ¡ª and many of them have included a George ¡ª but, two decades after the queen¡¯s annus horribilis, how skillfully the team has revived, restored and reincarnated itself, blessed by the apparent ordinariness, warmth and ease of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.