Harry, England and St George

As with so much else in the British Isles, it was the Crusades that brought back the cult of St George the dragon slayer. The story combines the true tale of a Christian martyr with embellishments about killing evil and converting the locals to Christianity, in either Turkey or North Africa, far from England’s green and pleasant land. Artists throughout Europe took eagerly to this subject matter, including Paolo Uccello (above). When the English Reformation arrived, St George and his dragon got off lightly. This seems to have been the result of some royal affection for a symbol that had become part of the Order of the Garter in 1348.

After an interval of Puritan disapproval, St George once again appeared in street performances. The future Queen Victoria saw a Christmas show twice at London’s Drury Lane Theatre. The 14-year-old Princess painted the scene in her journal, impressed more by St George’s mount than anything else: ‘The horse reared almost erect and never started or shied at the fiery dragon which came flapping and biting about him.’

During George IV’S reign, the namesake saint, plus dragon, ended up in every British home that had a gold sovereign coin. The 1817 design is still going strong and, although its face value remains £1, the bullion value is about 400 times that. In the old low-tech world of From Russia with Love, Q gives James Bond 50 gold sovereigns in case he needed to get out of a scrape. The coins were well known around the world—as were dragons. In Dr No, the eponymous villain uses a fake fire-breathing dragon to deter snoopers from his fortress. Being of Chinese descent, Dr No would have known better, but it gave the producers a chance for lively dialogue such as: ‘…if you see a dragon, you get in first and breath on him. With all that rum in you, he’ll die happy.’