From the Stacks: Dreams about H.M. The Queen

Brian Masters, DREAMS ABOUT H.M. THE QUEEN and other members of the Royal Family

Contributor’s copy: Mayflower Books, UK; paperback, 1973.

Cover price: 35p

Author’s photo

I first heard of Dreams About H.M. the Queen in September 2022, the week Elizabeth II died. Having not lost a monarch in seven decades, the people of the United Kingdom and Commonwealth were understandably abuzz. Obituaries and tributes were everywhere. Takes were plentiful. Several of the more interesting takes made reference to a funny book from the 1970s, full of (mostly) British people from all walks of life recounting dreams they’d had about British royals. Apparently, such dreams are common. The writers of these pieces were generally invoking the dream thing, and Dreams, to make a point, or to ask a question: If Elizabeth is dead, and monarchy is a relic of feudal, superstitious past, what is she (and it) doing embedded so deeply in all these people’s heads?

The author of Dreams, Brian Masters, had spent his early career writing literary biographies that earned him little reward. He would eventually go on to make a nice living writing meticulously researched books about serial killers, but Dreams was the book that put him on the map. It sold well in hardback upon its publication by Blond and Briggs in 1972, well enough to merit an affordable paperback the following year.

Many of the articles that referenced Dreams in 2022 treated it like a sociological study, but it was far less formal than that. Masters solicited many of the dream descriptions by mail, but he was also quite the party guest in early 1970s London and seems to have picked up quite a few of them through his social circles. Here’s one from the South African ballet dancer and choreographer Petrus Boseman:

“I appeared on television and said that I was going to Mars ‘for the Queen of England.’ I said she had asked me to go herself, because she felt the Americans and Russians were hogging all the publicity for themselves, and it was about time we made our mark for the empire.”

And this, from a construction supplier in Cheshire:

“I am teaching the Queen to swim. I ask her why she wants to learn. ‘If Britannia sinks, she says, ‘I must know how to swim to shore, so that I can hold the country together.”

One of the most remarkably weird comes from Judi Dench, then a star of the Royal Shakespeare Company:

“Prince Philip and Princess Anne came to visit unexpectedly. My mother said, ‘Won’t you draw up a chair?’ and was mortified to see that there was nothing for the Prince to sit on but a large basin filled with farmyard straw and a heavy, strong-smelling manure.”

Anyway, you get the idea. And although Masters punctuates these descriptions with references to everyone from Freud and Jung to Montaigne and Bacon, he makes it quite clear that the book is a lark, intended to entertain. If you are a reader of a certain age and ever get a chance to handle a paper copy, you will likely be reminded of those musty smelling used bookstores that used to specialize in “remaindered” mass market paperbacks. But there is something here–something deep and odd and worth remembering. Maybe it’s something about the nature of soft power: European monarchy is, after all, a millennia-old political institution. Maybe that’s why, even in its severely diminished 20th century form, it’s still in our dreams.

This piece is written by Joel Tannenbaum.