A year from the Queen’s death, Charles faces the same royal problems – and has few answers | Stephen Bates

The Firm, as it's known, is old and looks it. Young Britons are most sceptical and see little in the new king to change that

It is a truth universally unacknowledged, not least by the media, that the British scarcely think of the monarchy from one year to the next, unless some event - a jubilee, a death, a coronation - sends the institution swimming back into the national consciousness.

Nevertheless, as Lord Halifax told Queen Victoria's private secretary in 1871 as she disappeared into seclusion: People want the gilding for their money." The past 18 months, of course, has had a surfeit of royal occasions, with no more on the horizon for a while, so a period of silence was perhaps to be expected, especially as a 96-year-old monarch was succeeded by her 74-year-old son, whose latest idea of excitement appears to be the introduction of a new tartan for his kilt.

Stephen Bates is a former Guardian royal correspondent and author of The Shortest History of the Crown