经济学人28:女王为什么要与众不同?（打印版）

　　Being on show is a serious business for Queen Elizabeth II who acceded to the throne 60 years ago next month. On royal tours and walkabouts, she is careful to choose bright colours and small-brimmed hats, glides through crowds “like a liner” and seemingly never tires. “Oh look! She's keeled over again,” the queen once noted at a stifling-hot palace reception, spotting her then prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, pale and slumped in a chair.

　　对于伊丽莎白二世来说，出席公众场合是一项非常重要的任务，下个月就是她登基六十周年的纪念了。在参加皇室的出访和视察时,她小心翼翼地选择明亮色调的衣服和窄檐礼帽，优雅地走过人群，像“一艘远洋油轮”静静驶过，看上去永远都不知疲倦。“哦！看，她又跌倒了”在一次皇宫的招待宴会上，室内的温度令人窒息，女王眼尖地发现了当时的首相撒切尔夫人脸色惨白，跌落于椅子中。

　　On several occasions she has been urged to retreat behind more obtrusive layers of security. Each time she has refused with something between a joke and a motto for her six decades on the throne, telling aides: “I have to be seen to be believed.”

　　Yet for the 85-year-old monarch, pictured above with Prince Charles shortly before her coronation, belief requires distance, too. Younger generations of royals have kissed and told. But the queen has never given an interview. Though some of her 12 British prime ministers were convinced they forged a special bond during weekly audiences with their sovereign, her personal politics remain unknown.

　　上面图片中和查尔斯王子的合照拍摄于女王加冕后不久。然而，对于八十五岁的女王来说，信仰也是需要距离的。皇室里年轻的一代受到宠爱，都被如此教育着。但是女王自己从来都不接受任何采访。英国的十二任首相都认为自己是民众和女王之间的特殊纽带，女王对政治的看法仍不为大众所知。

　　Over the years, various aristocrats, cousins and horse-racing grandees have been more or less plausibly identified as her friends. Even among such intimates, boundaries are observed, for fear of crossing an unseen line and triggering a stare of blank, silent rebuke. “She is never—you know—not the Queen,” advises an unnamed friend, quoted in the opening lines of a new biography by the BBC's senior political interviewer, Andrew Marr.

　　许多年来，各种贵族，皇亲国戚，参加赛马的显贵们都或多或少地证实了哪些为女王的朋友。即使在和这些密友相处的过程中，也有界线需要遵守，朋友们害怕越过无形的界线会使女王受惊，从而招致无声的指责。“她从来都不是-你知道的-不是女王”一位不愿透漏姓名的朋友说道，这句话被BBC资深政治记者安德鲁·马尔所引用，写在了关于伊丽莎白二世的一本新传记的首页几行。

　　Yet as a constitutional monarch, ruling with the tacit consent of the majority, she is not the only judge of the trade-off between necessary display and indispensable discretion. The public have a say as well. Some of the queen's closest brushes with disaster have involved a lack of visibility, most painfully in 1997 when she remained in Scotland with the royal family after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. She only returned to London after pleas from her new, young prime minister, Tony Blair (and lynch-mob demands to “Show Us You Care” from the tabloids).

　　作为一名立宪制君主，女王和大众保持着一致。她不仅仅要为自己在公众面前必要的露面负责，也要不失谨慎小心。因为公众也有发言权。在一些事情上，女王对灾祸的处理还缺乏透明度，最为深痛的是在1997年，当戴安娜--威尔士王妃去世时，女王仍留在苏格兰和皇室成员们在一起。在当时新上任的年轻的首相托尼·布莱尔的恳请下，女王才回到了伦敦。（一些愤怒的群众在小报上叫嚣“拿出你关心的证据”）

　　The double nature of the queen—an unusually private woman with extraordinary public duties—poses a test for all who try to write about her. Including Mr Marr's book, five new biographies have been prepared for 2012, the queen's diamond jubilee year. The authors boast of watching the queen at work, interviewing officials from the royal household and of trawling through archives. They quote family members, friends and people with a claim to know the queen.

　　女王的双重特性——一个非常低调的女子肩负着重大的公共责任——对于所有想描写她的人都是一个难题。2012年，在女王登基60周年之际，纪念包括马尔这本书在内的五本新传记都将出版。作者们吹嘘曾看过女王办公的样子，采访了皇室家族的成员们，翻阅无数文献资料。他们引用了皇室家族成员，朋友和一些自称认识女王的人的话。

　　In the process, all five biographers wrestle with the question neatly framed by their subject herself: if to see the queen is to believe in her, what vantage point allows the most authentic experience of faith? Which queen is the most “real”, the private woman or the public figure? Each offers a different answer.

　　在此过程中，五本传记都在试图回答一个问题，这个问题都和女王有关：如果要信任我们所看到的女王，那么我们应站在什么角度来获得这些最为真实的信任？哪一个女王是最“真实”的？那个低调的女子还是那个公共人物？每个人心中都有不同的答案。

　　Two of the authors, Sarah Bradford and Robert Lacey, are veteran royal historians, whose 2012 biographies draw on previously published work. With the frankness of an old pro, at one point Ms Bradford names different schools of royal-watching. There is the “work of the Queen” genre, as pioneered by the 1969 television film “Royal Family”, which showed the monarch working through boxes of state papers, preparing state visits or relaxing with her family. Alas, she explains, once the public had seen inside royal drawing rooms, they soon wanted to peer into the bedroom. Thus arose the “royal soap opera” genre. Ms Bradford takes readers on a brisk, assured canter through the familiar landmarks of both genres, adding a dose of history as she goes. Mr Lacey, who has been writing about the queen for nearly 40 years, advertises his slim volume as a “pleasant afternoon's reading”, which it is not. At once knowledgeable and jaundiced, Mr Lacey seems slightly sick of his royal subjects, as do the unnamed courtiers and insiders whom he quotes.

　　这其中的两个作者，沙拉·布拉德福德和罗伯特·拉西都是经验丰富的皇家历史学家，他们在2012年出版的作品援引了之前已经出版著作的内容。布拉德福德女士坦白她是支持皇室的，她曾经将几种关注皇室的不同行为进行了分类。有一种是“女王的工作”派别，是由1969年电视节目“皇室家族”开启，展现女王伏案工作的场景，桌上堆满了国务文件，准备国事访问以及和家人休闲娱乐。啊，她解释道，一旦公众看到了皇家的画室，他们会好奇卧室是什么样子。因此出现了“皇室肥皂剧”流派。布拉德福德女士引入一部分历史事实，以轻松的笔调带领读者信步于这两派熟知的情节之间。拉西曾用了将近40年的时间来写女王，他将自己单薄的一本书定义为“午后休闲阅读”，但事实上并非如此。拉西博学多才，对女王怀有偏见，他似乎有些反感这些皇室成员，在他书中一些没有提及姓名的官员和圈内人也此表示了同感。

　　Robert Hardman, a royal correspondent for the Daily Mail, offers a convincing tour of the British monarchy as an institution, apeing the vantage point of the fly-on-the-wall documentary. His access produces an interview with Prince William and several lesser scoops—a rarity in the world of royal biography, in which the same anecdotes turn up in each book. But access has its limitations. The young prince is more loyal than revelatory about his grandmother, explaining that her “gravitas” awes even her family, that she offers good advice and was “so excited” by her 2011 state visit to Ireland. Some lesser sources appear to be quoted largely to thank them for their time.

　　罗伯特·哈德曼是《每日邮报》的一名王室事务记者，他模仿电视真人秀的纪实特点，展现了英国女王的生活中很重要的部分。他有机会接触到皇室成员，在此过程中，他访问了威廉王子，采访几个次要人物，获取了一些独家新闻—这在描写皇室的传记中是非常稀有的材料，以前的传记中总是出现千篇一律的趣闻轶事。但是与皇室成员的接触也是有其限制之处。年轻的王子对他的祖母十分忠诚，并不会透露女王的事情，他解释道，祖母的“庄重”使她整个家族深感敬畏，女王也常常提出意见，2011年出访爱尔兰使她感到“很兴奋”。一些次要人物在接受采访中大都表示生正逢时的幸运。

　　Sally Bedell Smith, an American society biographer, offers her readers the illusion of knowing the queen as a friend. Ms Bedell Smith brightly describes her own brief chats with the monarch at a Washington garden party and a London reception, before sprinkling her account with minute indiscretions from other people who have met her. The elder President Bush reveals that Elizabeth II is “rather formal” but not “standoffish”. A witness describes how a puppy defecated in front of the queen during a visit to a Kentucky horse-breeder, breaking the ice. Nancy Reagan recalls a breakfast with the queen, Prince Philip and Prince Charles at Windsor Castle; she was surprised that everyone poured their own cereal from the box. It is reported that the queen likes a travel rug round her knees and used to wear a hard hat when watching stallions cover her mares (now she stands on a viewing platform, after health and safety advice). This footling stuff is only of any interest because it is about the queen. But—fatally—those same domestic details have nothing to do with why Elizabeth II, as queen, is interesting.

　　美国的社会传记作家莎莉·贝德尔·史密斯向读者描述了女王作为朋友的一面。贝德尔·史密斯女士生动地记叙了她在华盛顿一个花园派对和在伦敦的一次招待会上同女王简短的谈话，也写到了一些遇见女王的人的轻率之举动。老布什总统透露，伊丽莎白二世“非常遵守礼节”但又不“冷淡”。一个目击者描述，在女王去肯塔基州一户养马人家时，一只小狗当着女王的大便，这打破了沉默的气氛。南希·里根回忆：有一次和女王，菲利普亲王以及查尔斯王子在温莎城堡里共进早餐，当她看到在座的每个人都自己从一个大盒子里倒出吃的食物，她很惊讶。据报道，女王喜欢在膝盖上裹一条毯子，在看她的种马和母马交配时喜欢戴一顶安全帽（出于卫生和安全考虑，现在她站在一个观景平台上观看）。这些无足轻重的事情一点都不有趣，仅仅因为它们和女王有关。但不幸的是，这些家庭生活的细节和作为女王的伊丽莎白二世是否有趣一点关系都没有。

　　Mr Marr, a former political editor of the BBC and author of some shrewd books on modern Britain, sets himself a more ambitious task: to explain what the queen's role and position tell us about her subjects. It is an admiring portrait, of an unfashionably dutiful monarch who in her weekly audiences offers prime ministers what he calls “a kind of higher therapy”—a chance to share anxieties or explanations which will never leak, with someone who has read almost every state secret of the past 60 years (and so has heard worse before). He describes the queen and her strong sense of vocation, as a monarch “God-called” to give her life to her people as a sacrifice. Only by understanding that calling, he writes, can the queen be understood.

　　马尔以前是英国广播公司的一位政治编辑，曾写过几本关于现代英国的书，很有见地。现在他给自己定下了一个甚为庞大的目标：要解释清楚女王的角色和位置，告诉我们她的民众的看法。这是一本令人钦佩的传记，它记述了一位守旧、尽职的女王每周会见首相时提供的 “高级疗法”—用马尔的话来说—这是首相和女王分担焦虑、共谋计策的时刻，这些谈话的内容永远不会泄露出去。在过去的六十年，女王几乎知晓所有的国家机密(之前听过更糟糕的消息)。在书中，马尔描述了女王和她强烈的使命感：女王是“受到了上帝召唤”，要将自己的生命献给民众。“只有理解了这种召唤，才能理解女王”马尔如此写到。

　　In perhaps a claim too far, Mr Marr emphasises the comfort offered by the queen as a symbol of the continuing British state. By representing those who did not vote for the current government or did not vote at all, she strengthens democracy, he suggests. It is a clever thought, but may overstate the degree to which most Britons suffer from constitutional angst.

　　马尔强调了女王作为大英帝国延续的标志给人们带来的慰藉，这一点可能说的有些过头了。为了那些反对现任政府和那些根本没有投票的人，女王要推进民主。这个想法非常明智，但是这过度夸大了大多数英国人对现行体制的担心。

　　But a symbol she certainly is. And in modern Britain—a restless, exhibitionist place—Mr Marr's Queen Elizabeth stands out for her discretion, and for understanding that symbols are “better off keeping mostly quiet”. There is a lesson there for her heir, the Prince of Wales, Mr Marr suggests sharply.

　　但是女王肯定是一个标志。在现代英国—处于一个焦躁不安，要出风头的位置—马尔笔下的伊丽莎白二世以她的谨慎而名，也深知作为标志性的人物“最好保持沉默”。马尔毫不留情的指出，对于她的继承人--威尔士亲王来说，还有许多经验需要学习。

　　Mr Marr palpably likes the queen, whether for touring the country to greet and thank people mostly ignored by “London power brokers”, or for relaxing when her work is done with “a glass of something cheerful”. Yet liking is not really the point. In Mr Marr's words, there is only a little space, though “an interesting space”, between the queen and the woman who lives her life. Her calling gives her meaning. She “is what she does”.

　　能感觉的出来，马尔是欣赏女王的。不论是出访全国会见问候被““伦敦权势掮客”忽略的人们，还是完成“很满意的工作”之后的放松。然而喜好无关紧要。用马尔的话来说，在女王和过普通生活的女子之间只有一点点的距离，尽管这个距离很“有趣”。女王应有的使命感赋予了她意义。女王的言行举止即代表了女王。

　　Mr Marr's sober conclusion feels right. To adapt the queen's one-liner: for all that the spectacle and unattainable glamour of royalty still fascinates (and helps sell books), for Britain's jubilee monarch the show is a means to an end. Being seen is about being believed.

　　马尔发人深省的结论可能是正确的。为了改编了女王一脉相承的生活：所有的规模宏大的庆典和难以企及的皇室魅力仍然散发着强大的吸引力（这也有助于图书的销售），对于已经登基了六十周年的英国女王来说这场秀可能是一个结束。所见即所信。

经济学人28:女王为什么要与众不同?（在线收听）