This is an investigative poem about the criminal record of the British Monarchy. Heathcote Williams has devised a form of polemical poetry that is unique, no-holds-barred personal and political. It is a great collection of facts that most people are unaware of. Can we go on bowing and curtsying to people who are just like ourselves? We begin to wish that the Zoo should be abolished. That the royal family should be given the run of some wider pasturage – a royal Whipsnade. Will the British Empire survive? Will Buckingham Palace look as solid in 2034 as it does now? Words are dangerous things remember. A Republic might be brought into being by a poem.
Royal Babylon
