Queen Elizabeth II
Britain has entered a period of national mourning after the death of Queen Elizabeth II. These are sombre and unsettling times. As The Times writes in its leader column this morning, four out of five people alive today were not even born when she became Queen. Murderers were still hanged in 1952. There were no motorways, limited television and the internet was still 50 years away.
I would like to take a brief moment today to praise the brilliant writing and broadcasting following the death of Queen Elizabeth II. Years of planning have gone into what is in today’s newspapers and what is being broadcast on television and radio. Below is a small collection of that work:
You can find a summary of the newspaper front pages in the UK on the BBC here and The Times has done a round-up of the front pages around the world here. The front page of The Times reflects its tradition and reputation as Britain’s paper of record…
Staying with the Times, its leader column goes on to describe Queen Elizabeth II as “the embodiment of our nation, the figurehead of our democracy and the stable symbol of continuity in an increasingly turbulent and rapidly changing world”. You can read the full piece here. Its obituary is here. Valentine Low has also written about how the Queen helped guide Britain through the Covid-19 crisis with her moving “we will meet again” TV address on Sunday April 5 2020, only the fifth time she had addressed the nation other than at Christmas. That piece is here.
Simon Schama, one of Britain’s leading historians, has written an appreciation of Queen Elizabeth II in the Financial Times. He writes:
Through thick and thin, bitter division and unpredictable turmoil, and for all the rarefied social class from which she came and the palace formalities, rituals and arid conventions that encircled her, Elizabeth II managed, when it counted most, to be the idealised personification of the nation, immune to hysteria but open to social empathy. It only takes a glance around at the parade of authoritarians who, from one end of the world to the other, make militarised xenophobia the measure of national self-esteem to be grateful that the Queen supplied a more benign focus of national allegiance.
The full piece is here.
Adrian Wooldridge has written for Bloomberg on her “revolutionary monarchy”. He writes:
The Queen’s most obvious achievement was to provide an element of continuity in a world that is in a fever of change. Liberal capitalism has taken the principle of creative destruction to the Nth degree — not only through the creation and destruction of companies but also through the constant reordering of daily life (whenever you think that you have learned how to use electronic banking, the rules change and you have to master a new system). Yet the populist alternatives to liberal capitalism are all exceedingly ugly, from the jingoism of the far right to the criminal kleptocracy of Vladimir Putin.
You can read that piece here.
In the Daily Mail, historian Dominic Sandbrook has written a great piece about what she thought of the 15 different prime ministers who served during her reign. He writes:
Although most insiders agree that the Queen privately inclined to One Nation Conservatism, she was far from partisan. Two of her favourite Prime Ministers were the Labour duo of Harold Wilson and James Callaghan, with whom she got on warmly.
That piece is here.
The Daily Telegraph has done a piece about Queen Elizabeth II’s love of horseracing.
Racing was the one constant through the ups and downs of her reign but, equally, she was racing’s one constant through its trials and tribulations and never was a sight more likely to raise a smile than that of the Queen enjoying a day at the races or a royal winner.
The piece also includes a list of her five greatest horses, including Estimate, which won the Gold Cup at Ascot…
In terms of what happens next. Politico has republished its piece from last year on Operation London Bridge, the codename for the government plan about what will happen in the 10 days after Queen Elizabeth II’s death. That is here. The Guardian has done a Q&A on the issues facing schools, trains, and sporting events. That is here. The BBC has done a piece looking at what now happens to money, stamps and passports here. The Premier League has confirmed that all top-level football matches are off this weekend…
West Ham’s match against FCSB in the Europa Conference League did go-ahead last night. There was a minute’s silence for Queen Elizabeth II but this happened…
I also wanted to flag some of the international reaction, because the warmth and emotion from overseas leaders is remarkable. There is a beautiful piece of writing from Emmanuel Macron, for instance:
Finally, a great story about the Queen and a collection of moments looking at her sense of humour, including the London 2012 entrance and her cup of tea and marmalade sandwich with Paddington…
Great article and a fitting tribute