Era of transformation of society and politics.

Byline: Paddy Bowie

IN the last article I wrote (briefly) about the recent right royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton that had brought a ray of sunshine to Britain.

Besides the romance and the spectacle the event had a deeper significance symbolising the social change and specifically the noticeable increase in social mobility that we are experiencing in this new millennium. Kate's story is nothing less than a modern-day fairy tale. Of a rise from colliery to castle.

Her grandfather was a Durham coal miner. Ironically he worked in a pit owned by the Bowes Lyon family to which the Queen Mother belonged.

Kate is a latter day Cinderella who rose from pit to palace. Not directly. Her father is by now solidly middle class from a family of solicitors and merchants from Leeds in the north of England.

He and his wife in good tradesman tradition founded a children's …