Lisa Milton(@mslisamilton) instagram tagged download

Spoke to @lindaduberleymylife last night at an evening that also raised funds for the excellent @the_victoria_foundation_uk. Attendees included people working for TVF and other organisations and individuals providing support to children with complex needs and their families and for medical students from low-income backgrounds.
Over recent months I’ve seized opportunities to talk about my book Divide and Rule: Royal Women and Their Battles to many different audiences across a large number of countries, in person or via the media. Audiences have included monarchists, republicans and people who came to the topic not caring much either way. I hope I managed to persuade at least a few of them to revisit what they think they know and why. My primary aim is not to turn monarchists into republicans or vice versa, nor to convert the indifferent. What I hope to do is to reveal bigger truths about monarchy and the damaging portrayals of women through history.
As I noted during a recent speech to @republiccampaign, it’s ironic that republicans often take the institution more seriously than monarchists do. Press coverage tends to treat this global organisation with significant soft power as a long-running soap. Much coverage dehumanises the royals while failing to call them to account. The treatment of royal women - the reductive portrayals, the endless pitting of one woman against another, their appropriation into culture wars, organised disinformation campaigns and as objects of hatred and polarisation - matters because these are some of the most prominent women in a world that routinely overlooks and marginalises women. My book starts with Anne Boleyn because none of this is new. Communication methods change but the demonising of women remains a constant.
That is why I want to reach as wide a range of people as possible. As you’ll see from comments this approach attracts, that can be interpreted to mean that I don’t hold strong or consistent beliefs. I do. One of them is that the best way to expand thinking, including my own, is by engaging widely, showing not shouting.
#divideandrule #uniteandmakechange

Doing my thing at @cuckfieldbookfest today. Many thanks to the lovely organisers and volunteers and to Steven Gale for excellent conversation about Divide and Rule: Royal Women and Their Battles. Also to the audience for great questions. #royalwomen #feministhistory

A day of many colours. First a splash of red, a quick stop at @covidmemorialwall, created by @ledbydonkeys with @covidjusticeuk, to say hello to my love @andygillmusic. Then on to the yellow of a @republiccampaign event where #ledbydonkeys cofounder Olly Knowles spoke before me. A story he told about the logistics of projecting a film about #Epstein’s ties to Trump and the former Prince Andrew onto Windsor Castle reminded me of the time the Women’s Equality Party projected feminist messages in our Suffragette violet, green and white onto Parliament. As you see, the police who turned up to investigate took one look at my co-conspirator #SandiToksvig and posed for photos rather than arresting us. Happy to say that all copies of my pink and black book Divide and Rule on sale at Republic’s meeting were snapped up and there seemed to be a pretty brisk trade in @lownie9’s scarlet-jacketed Entitled too. Now enjoying the rosy anticipation of talking #royalwomen at @cuckfieldbookfest tomorrow.

$The King is prone to outbursts. Remember his temper over pens during his accession? That he and Earl Spencer clashed after Diana’s death is not in doubt. What was said and whether either man meant it in the moment is another matter. And neither had an easy relationship with Diana. Grief is not the only emotion that clouds reason and colours memory. Guilt does that. Diana suffered under patriarchal systems: the patrimonarchy, male primogeniture which handed her brother the family estate, the press with its intrusive male gaze and female columnists who not only internalised misogyny but personified it. Now the same media that documented the War of the Waleses revels in the War of the Charleses. Not that there is a shortage of royal news. The monarchy is embattled, the family fractured, huge questions about Epstein to answer, and few working Windsors left to fill the balcony. Just 33% of 18- to 34-year-olds favour retaining it, compared to 45% preferring its abolition. Support in the overseas realms looks more fragile still. So… rexit? Whatever happens, there are weaknesses and structural inequalities baked into British political systems that **must** be addressed as part of any major constitutional reform. And how much better to have legislated for change in a period of comparative stability rather than in a world scarred by man-made violence and catastrophe? That context is important. If the royals to any extent act as a bulwark against tech-propelled populism, this might not be the best time to experiment with alternatives. On the other hand, if, as Elizabeth II said, the monarchy “exists only with the support and consent of the people,” it seems to be throwing both away. I’ll be speaking on all of this and the use and abuse of Diana and other women from Anne Boleyn to Meghan Sussex, the focus of my new book Divide and Rule: Royal Women and Their Battles, at @republiccampaign’s member’s day on 3 October https://www.republic.org.uk/members_day_2026 #divideandrule #patrimonarchy #diana$

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