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While Britons have a reputation for politeness and emotional repression, our nation’s history is filled with heated personal conflicts as Martha Alexander explains

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GREAT BRITISH RIVALRIES

Left: The Trial of Queen Catherine

by Henry Nelson O’Neil, c.1846-8

O

ur nation might have a reputation for politeness, being buttoned up and even slightly bumbling – yet some of the most famous Britons of all time have been embroiled in bitter and even deadly rivalries.

The monarchy, for instance, has always been a hotbed of feuds.

The Tudor kings and queens in particular absolutely loved a spat and were ruthless in how they dispatched their opponents: imprisonment and beheadings were the order of the day. Yet no matter at what stage in history we find ourselves, conflict seems to be part of the job description for a working royal – from sibling rivalries and love triangles to seeing off pretenders to the throne. Political life in Britain is also largely about conflict, although some parliamentary skirmishes have been more potent than others.

Disputes are part of life, no matter what your class, wealth or education – from blue bloods to sporting heroes or literary heavyweights. Here, we detail some of the most notable ➤ rivalries Britain has ever seen.

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GREAT BRITISH RIVALRIES

William Gladstone vs Benjamin Disraeli

Henry VIII vs the Catholic Church

Non-confrontational people need not apply to a life in Parliament. However, one of the most rancorous political clashes surely has to be between Benjamin Disraeli and William Gladstone – the former a showy Conservative; the latter a grim-faced Liberal. They were the chalk and cheese of Victorian politics: Gladstone’s family was wealthy and he was educated at Eton and Oxford, while Disraeli’s formative years had been less privileged, making a string of failed investments and first speech to Parliament in 1837 – one of those jeering was Gladstone, which rather set the tone.

The pair grew to loathe one another with a mutual and ill-disguised fervour: while Gladstone’s supporters called him “GOM” – short for “Grand Old Man” – Disraeli countered that the letters stood for “God’s Only Mistake”.

It needled Gladstone that Queen Victoria adored Disraeli.

He was made Prime Minister in 1868 when she was still mourning Prince Albert and was said to have lifted her spirits considerably with his wit and charm. Meanwhile Her Majesty had little time for Disraeli’s replacement, Gladstone, noting that he “addressed me as though I was a public meeting”.

If that was tough for Gladstone to swallow, worse was to come: when Disraeli died in 1881 Gladstone was, as Prime Minister, required to make a speech about him in the House of Commons. The pair had hated each other for some 40 years so finding a good word of two or say about him was no mean feat for Gladstone. Although it’s to his credit that he did – later admitting that eulogy was the hardest task of his career.

King Henry VIII is the most obvious serial wrangler, getting into spats with every single one of his six wives. If a novelist suggested Henry’s life as the plot for a work of fiction, the editor would reject it for being too far-fetched. The great Tudor king was like flypaper for drama but his greatest dispute by far lay with the Catholic Church.

When his first wife, Catherine of Aragon “failed” to produce a male heir, Henry didn’t have to look far for her replacement. He’d fallen hook, line and sinker for Queen Catherine’s maid of honour, Anne Boleyn – but unfortunately the Catholic Church didn’t condone divorce and would not allow him to marry again.

Henry broke with Rome and promptly appointed himself head of the Church of England in 1534 so he could invalidate his first marriage and marry Anne. This caused fury in the Church and created deep divides across his country, from the Reformation to the Dissolution of the Monasteries – fault lines that would cause chaos in the future and wouldn’t be healed for generations.

Top left: Henry VIII fought with the Catholic Church Left: Liberal politican and Prime Minister William Gladstone Above: His rival, the Conservative politician and PM Benjamin Disraeli

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Mary, Queen of Scots vs Elizabeth I History – and Hollywood – likes to cast them as opposites: Protestant versus Catholic, crone versus beauty, virgin versus harlot. The truth was far more nuanced. The conflict between Queen Elizabeth I of England and her cousin Mary Stuart was essentially born out of what the former perceived as a threat to her reign by the latter.

By 1559 Mary wore the dual crowns of Scotland and France, while Elizabeth had been on the English throne for a year. Mary’s position in both roles was assured and accepted – Scotland had been hers since she was six days old while France she had inherited through her marriage to Francis II. By contrast, Elizabeth had always been insecure about her position.

Yes, she was Henry VIII’s daughter but she had been third in line to the throne behind her half-siblings Edward and Mary, both of whom died without heirs. The Catholic Church also believed Elizabeth to be illegitimate – the product of an unlawful marriage between Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn – and felt Mary, Queen of Scots was more entitled to the English crown.

This niggled at Elizabeth and made her wary of her cousin. Despite this there was affection between the two queens – they wrote to each other often throughout their lives (although it is notable that the pair never met in person) and Mary even named Elizabeth “protector” of her infant son, James.

It is thought Mary wanted to forge a bond with Elizabeth, to be “kinswomen”. However, the Scottish queen refused to ratify the 1560 Treaty of Edinburgh, which would have stopped her from claiming the English throne and suggested she did in fact have her eyes on that particular prize. In fact, Elizabeth would have most definitely considered naming Mary as her heir but never formalised this as it would acknowledge her cousin’s valid stake

With the dual crowns of Scotland and France, Mary was assured... By contrast, Elizabeth had always been insecure about her position on the throne and leave the English crown open to a coup.

So how did it end? In 1567, Mary’s third marriage to the ruthless and power hungry James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell, made her unpopular. She was forced to abdicate that summer and the following year she fled to England – anticipating support from Elizabeth who immediately imprisoned her.

After a lengthy incarceration, the

Scottish queen was executed on 8 February 1587, her severed head held aloft as both a cautionary motif and evidence of what Elizabeth was capable of. Some might argue that, despite appearances, Mary had the last laugh – albeit from beyond the grave. She had commented that “in my end is my beginning” and she was right: while Elizabeth died childless, Mary’s son James ➤ ascended England’s throne.

Above: The Rival Queens – Mary Queen of Scots Defying Queen Elizabeth by Currier & Ives, c.1857-72

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GREAT BRITISH RIVALRIES

Virginia Woolf vs Vanessa Bell “We are failures really,” Virginia Woolf once wrote about herself and her sister, the artist and designer Vanessa Bell. “We can’t shine in society. We sit in corners and look like mutes who are longing for a funeral.”

While the Stephen sisters (as they were born) might once have been an awkward duo, they became the beating heart of the Bloomsbury Group, a set of bohemian artists, writers and thinkers. Their closeness was constant throughout their lives – in fact, Vanessa was something of a mother figure to her younger sister – but this didn’t mean that there weren’t interludes of rivalry along the way.

Virginia – by far the more famous name today – was less conventionally beautiful and was dogged with insecurity. There is much evidence to suggest she envied Vanessa’s skill as an artist. She once wrote an essay, which contained the lament “Words are an impure medium. Better far to have been born into the silent kingdom of paint.”

And she made direct comparisons which always cast her as the less intelligent: “God made our brains upon the same lines, only leaving out two or three pieces in mine.”

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The Mrs Dalloway author also envied Vanessa’s marriage to critic Clive Bell, seeing how happy it made her sister. By contrast, Virginia was wretched about her own single status – she felt being 29, unmarried and childless made her “a failure”.

Virginia is said to have flirted with Clive, particularly after the birth of Julian, the Bells’ first child, in 1908, when Vanessa was preoccupied by the exhausting demands of new motherhood. Clive is said to have

been in love with his wife’s sister and was keen to begin a full affair – but Virginia drew the line.

Both sisters fell in love with painter Roger Fry during the summer of 1911, but Vanessa was the one who began an affair with him – and deliberately kept it from Virginia.

Despite the artistic and romantic competitiveness, Virginia’s suicide – she walked into the River Ouse with pockets filled with stones on 28 March 1941 – devastated Vanessa.

Top left: Artist and designer Vanessa Bell, c.1910 Above: Her sister, writer Virginia Woolf in 1902 Top right: Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer, 1981 Below right: Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles, 1979

GREAT BRITISH RIVALRIES

Camilla Shand vs Lady Diana Spencer Despite playing out under sensationalist headlines in tabloid newspapers, this story is entirely laced with deep sadness. Lady Diana Spencer was just a teenager living in an Earl’s Court flat with her girlfriends when she met Prince Charles who was a friend of her older sister. Diana was deemed the right sort of bride for Charles thanks to her aristocratic family and innocent demeanour – quite opposite to, say, Camilla Shand whose lack of title and string of ex boyfriends were not compatible with the role.

Trouble was, Charles had loved Camilla from the moment he met her: they had so much more in common, including polo and country pursuits. When Camilla married Andrew Parker Bowles in 1973, the prince was said to be crushed. Charles and Diana were married eight years later – although it had been clear from the start that he wasn’t prepared to give Camilla up, even gifting her a bracelet engraved with the initials F and G, which stood for their pet names for one another: Fred and Gladys.

Diana, who had found the bracelet and knew exactly what had been going on, eventually confronted Camilla stating, “I want my husband”. When the affair came to light it sent shockwaves through the Royal family and the general public, setting in motion a tragic chain of events.

“There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded,” Diana famously said of the sorry situation.

Of course, following the Princess of Wales’s death, Camilla married the heir apparent in 2005, becoming ➤ HRH The Duchess of Cornwall in the process.

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GREAT BRITISH RIVALRIES

The Beatles vs The Rolling Stones For children of a certain generation, whether you were a Beatle or a Stone was a defining decision to make.

Pledging allegiance to one of the two biggest British bands of the 1960s was an important rite of passage.

It helped that they were pitched as such polarising choices.

In the public imagination, The Beatles were adorable moptop popstars you could take home to mother, while The Rolling Stones were loutish bad boys, declaring sympathy for the devil and stumbling through tabloid controversy.

The truth was quite different: the working-class Fab Four started out in dire Hamburg clubs, whereas Mick Jagger and co. had a comfortable suburban upbringing.

The rivalry began in 1963 as John Lennon complained of an unnamed London R&B group who were “copying” The Beatles. The then-less-famous Stones capitalised on this, promoting themselves in America as “dirtier, streakier and more disheveled than the Beatles, and in some places… more popular”.

Though they clearly socialised privately, the public jibes continued and the bands even embedded digs at each other in their album artwork. The rivalry didn’t end when The Beatles split in 1970 either, with Lennon telling Rolling Stone magazine that Jagger was “a joke” and the Stones were “not in the same class”. Arguably though, he only had himself to blame. After struggling to dent the UK charts, in 1963 The Rolling Stones’ first hit was I Wanna Be Your Man, an original song written for them by none other than… Lennon and McCartney.

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Sebastian Coe vs Steve Ovett between these two young men – with only a year’s age difference between them – ramp up to hysterical levels.

Coe was expected to win the 800 metres and Ovett was a dead cert for the 1500 metres.

Except it didn’t work out like that. Ovett won the 800 metres.

This humiliation, it transpired, was like rocket fuel for Coe, who later admitted he was “prepared to die with blood on my boots” as he snatched the 1500 metres.

Almost 30 years later, Coe told Ovett that on Christmas Day 1979, he’d come back from training, finished his turkey and was about to start watching television when he felt a wave of anxiety. Coe was convinced Ovett would have done two runs, despite it being Christmas Day, and so he put on his kit and crunched another five miles. When Ovett heard this he responded as only a true rival could: “Did you only go out twice that day?” n

Below: Sebastian Coe wins the men’s 1500 metre final at the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games ahead of Steve Ovett (in 279) Opposite page: Original vinyl by The Beatles and The Rolling Stones

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The rivalry between middle distance runners Sebastian Coe and Steve Ovett is one of the most remarkable in British sporting history. They’d been rivals for years – both had won BBC Sports Personality of the Year and were household names.

While they only raced against one another 17 times, they both broke each other’s records and pipped one another to the post unexpectedly.

The run up to the 1980 Moscow Olympics saw the competition

The run up to the 1980 Moscow Olympics saw the competition between Steve Ovett and Seb Coe ramp up to hysterical levels discoverbritainmag.com 19

This image: The Edinburgh skyline at night.

Edinburgh Castle in the distance marks the beginning of The Royal Mile

The Jewels

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Join Janice Hopper for a guided tour of Edinburgh’s Royal Mile, as she points out the

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of the Mile secret locations and hidden histories that make this one of Britain’s best-loved streets

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