It is a nice irony that while New Zealand, Canada, and Australia get into the list (along with Ireland as a problematic neo-dominion), the United Kingdom doesn’t make the grade. Well, as Altman points out, how could it with the still partly hereditary House of Lords, and with the monarch, thanks to Henry VIII, integrating church and state as ‘Defender of the Faith and Supreme Governor of the Church of England’. Altman doesn’t mention the curious case of Scotland, and what happens to the queen when she crosses the border, shedding her governorship of the Church of England and finding herself attached to Scottish Presbyterianism in the form of the Church of Scotland. She is not the head of that Church – that position is reserved for Jesus Christ – but she appoints a Lord High Commissioner to represent her at the Church’s General Assembly. At her first Privy Council in 1952, the queen had to swear allegiance to ‘the settlement of the true Protestant religion as established by the laws made in Scotland’ in accordance with the 1707 Act of Union. Three weeks after her coronation in 1953, she attended a Service of Dedication in St Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh at which she was blessed by the Dean of the Cathedral and the Moderator of the Church of Scotland. As a monarch, the British queen is not alone in being identified with a particular religion or religious institution. Scandinavian monarchs are usually required to be a member of their country’s Lutheran church. The Japanese emperor dates back to 660 BCE, and his position has sacred responsibilities: Altman quotes Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori in 2000 describing Japan as a ‘divine country centred on the emperor’. In Thailand, King Bhumibol’s long reign (1946–2016) saw the monarch’s authority, policed by strict lèse-majesté laws, consolidated with the added gloss of Buddhist principles and democratic pretensions.

In Australia, there has been a slow process of discarding many of the trappings of empire. Gough Whitlam instituted the Order of Australia in 1975, designed to supersede imperial honours. Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s attempt in 2014 to reintroduce imperial knights and dames was laughed out of court and quickly rejected. Whitlam also alerted us to the need to change the national anthem. Unthinkingly, we had accepted ‘God Save the King/Queen’ as part of our lives: Altman notes that it is unusual as a national anthem in so far as it is a hymn. The doleful strains of ‘God Save the Queen’ at the end of a rowdy Saturday arvo picture show were sufficient to freeze the kids running up and down the aisles into respectful silence, and it was not until 1984 that ‘Advance Australia Fair’ was confirmed as the new anthem, though not without some dissent. Although the Constitution foreshadowed the creation of the High Court, appeals to the Privy Council continued, regarded by many barristers as a nice perk with a trip to London. Only in 1986 did we sever this last imperial legal connection.

Paul Keating did much to reactivate the republican cause in the 1990s, but when it came to a vote in 1999, dissension among republicans concerning the process for choosing the head of state sank the proposal. While there are still some fervent monarchists, such as Tony Abbott, many are pragmatic: Justice Michael Kirby, for example, thought that Australia had ‘the perfect blend of a monarchy and a republic’. Leonie Kramer – an imperial dame to boot – went further, claiming that the queen was not actually our head of state, ‘but simply a symbol of the nature of our constitutional arrangements’. But, as Sir John Kerr demonstrated, the ‘constitutional arrangements’ could be interpreted as including the reserve powers of the Crown.

Almost without exception, the royals, no matter how large or small their realm, are astonishingly wealthy. And in so far as the monarch presides over and represents the nation, she and her family are necessarily public figures. Altman argues that ‘royal families know that their continuing privileges depend on media access’. From Princess Margaret’s precocious romance with Peter Townsend to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s interview with Oprah, the British royal family’s media exposure has been constant and intense. Television has always thrived on costume dramas drawing on the history of British royalty, but The Crown, which made its début in 2016, is more than the normal exploitation of the royal story. Altman is critical of the extent to which the series fictionalises the family’s history. But that surely is the point: this is the fictional alternative to the life the members of the royal household are actually living. And it might have a longer life than the real thing.

Inevitably, the Brits dominate this story, but other royals have also had much to endure with the media. King Bhumibol suffered the indignity of having his monarchy’s tradition desecrated by the popular musical The King and I, though he was able to prevent its performance in Thailand. There are separate chapters on the Scandinavian, Benelux, Spanish, and Asian monarchies. Central to the success of constitutional monarchies is their capacity to provide benign continuity above the fractious world of politics. And, as Walter Bagehot defined it, the monarch’s right to be consulted, to encourage, and to warn still allows for making an occasional polite intervention.

Dennis Altman grudgingly accepts the usefulness of constitutional monarchies in sometimes fending off authoritarian alternatives. He also points to Switzerland, which manages to do without a head of state (perhaps Roger Federer, having turned forty, will make himself available). That’s the trouble today: talking about the royals, it’s hard to keep a straight face. How can one cope with the duchess of York (our friend Fergie) publishing a costumed romance, Her Heart for a Compass, with Mills & Boon? Nevertheless, republicans and monarchists alike, readers should take Altman’s God Save the Queen seriously as an informative and enjoyable guide to the subject.