The Queen is our most loved monarch and connects us to the best of ourselves
SO we reach the climax of a four-day Bank Holiday weekend that carries with it the weight of history – the first time this ancient nation has celebrated a monarch who has reigned for 70 years.
And what has been clear over this longest of weekends is that Queen Elizabeth II is not just our longest-reigning monarch, or the longest-serving head of state.
She is the most loved.
You sensed it everywhere in what turned out to be a very British beano.
There was pomp and pageantry, pop music and prayers, gun salutes and Brian May guitar solos, the Epsom Derby and Sir Rod Stewart, and thousands of beacons blazing, from Edinburgh to Enniskillen, Cardiff to London.
It was the nationwide shindig that ranged from the 100,000-strong crowd on the Union Flag-bedecked Mall to the street parties in countless towns, cities and suburbs, all of them a riot of red, white and blue.
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A right royal wingding — defiantly, joyfully British — where Spitfires and Hurricanes and a Lancaster bomber flew above the capital, and Typhoons spelled out the magic number 70 in the heavens.
The Red Arrows plumed with their red, white and blue smoke and a nation smiled to see the tiny figure of four-year-old Prince Louis, dapper in a sailor suit, cover his ears on the balcony of Buckingham Palace at the racket they made.
We needed it to thank a monarch who has served this country for longer than most of her subjects have been alive.
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And we needed it after the traumatic years of the pandemic.
And we needed it for the hard times ahead — the worst cost-of-living crisis for a generation and a nuclear-armed madman waging war in Europe.
Real joy
No wonder we partied like it was 1952.
No wonder these four days have felt like the biggest national celebration since VE Day.
No wonder the explosion of euphoria has taken us all by surprise.
It was the greatest show on Earth, and the world watched in awe.
And if there was a bitter-sweet subtext then that was because Queen Elizabeth has reached such an advanced age.
At 96, Her Majesty had understandably learned to pace herself.
After two appearances on the balcony of Buckingham Palace on the first day, she regretfully missed the second day’s service of thanksgiving at St Paul’s Cathedral, a decision that would not have been taken lightly by a woman of her deep and abiding religious belief.
The four-day party had the occasional pang of sadness.
This is the first of the Queen’s multiple Jubilees — the Silver Jubilee of 1977, the Golden Jubilee of 2002 and the Diamond Jubilee of 2012 — that Prince Philip has not been at her side.
Inevitably, this celebration had a valedictory feel.
There has been real joy abroad and in this country over the past few days.
But there is also the keen awareness that we will never see the likes of this monarch again.
Even if Prince Charles ascended to the throne tomorrow, he would be nearly 100 years old before he celebrated even his Silver Jubilee.
Very few of us are likely to see another Jubilee, let alone one made of Platinum!
If Queen Elizabeth lives as long as her mother — the Queen Mother died at the age of 101 — we still have years with her.
But our time together is running out.
And these four days have been the chance to honour a reign that is unprecedented in history.
She made monarchists of us all.
Because Queen Elizabeth II has been far, far more than simply a figurehead.
She has shared our joy and suffered with us during the bad times.
The abiding image of the 2012 London Olympics will for ever be the Queen walking though Buckingham Palace, with a gang of corgis and Daniel Craig’s James Bond, that other great British icon, trailing behind.
And when her beloved husband died, after 73 years of marriage, the Queen followed the draconian lockdown rules and sat isolated and alone at his funeral, a small figure in black, following the rules just like her people.
The politicians and civil servants may have been making lockdown-bending whoopie in Downing Street, but that would have been unthinkable, unimaginable, to our widowed Queen.
Her Majesty is better than that.
And although she has lived a life of palaces and privilege, the feeling is overwhelming — she is one of us.
The Queen has grown closer to her people over the years.
At 96, she would be forgiven for retiring from public life. Yet she has never mattered more than over the past few years.
She did not hide during the pandemic, just as her family did not hide in the worst of The Blitz.
In 2020 she made two televised speeches within weeks of each other — her coronavirus address in April and her VE Day speech in May — and it is not too much to suggest that they were the most inspirational speeches our people have heard since Churchill was speaking in our darkest hours.
When the 75th anniversary of VE Day came at the height of the pandemic, it could have been just one more event that was quietly cancelled.
But the Queen took the opportunity to speak to the heart of our nation.
Living history
“Our streets are not empty,” she told us. “They are full of love.”
She understands this country — our history, our people, our spirit — and although she has lived her long life without sitting down with an Oprah Winfrey or Martin Bashir, when she speaks, every word rings true.
“We’ll meet again,” she told us when coronavirus was keeping us all apart.
It was exactly what we needed to hear, and these were not the words of a mere figurehead.
What here-today-gone-tomorrow politician could ever replace her as head of state?
Who could ever address us with such authority, wisdom, gravitas and compassion?
For millions of us, the Queen has been there all our life, although these four days could not hide the fact that she will not be here for ever.
And whoever replaces her, even if they are a good monarch — King Charles III and later King William V and later still King George VII — nobody will ever match what this Queen has achieved.
She is our living history.
She connects us to our past — to parents and grandparents and great-grandparents long gone.
Prime Ministers who occupied 10 Downing Street for ten years seem like mere footnotes in her reign.
She has been there from the nation we were — battered and exhausted and bankrupt after the Second World War — to the country we are today, facing roaring inflation and nightly threats on Russian TV to nuke us to oblivion.
But we are also a happy, tolerant, multi-racial country, proud of our country’s past and confident of our future.
What hell it would be to have a Trump or Biden as head of state, let alone a Putin or Xi Jinping.
A hereditary monarchy makes no objective sense, and yet somehow it works for the British, and ensures no fly-by-night politician or military hardman ever gets too big for his boots.
The Queen, and all she represents, guarantees our freedom, our democracy, our way of life.
Until Covid was exported by China, those of us born after the Second World War had no experience of our lives being upended by great global events that we could not hope to control.
But the Queen — just 13 at the start of the Second World War — grew up with global conflict, the threat of tyranny and the sound of bombs falling from the skies.
There are few of her generation left now.
But that experience — my mum was also born in 1926, my mum was also a girl at the start of the war and a young woman at the end — has given her a perspective that no other monarch (or Prime Minister) can ever hope to match.
This is her quiet power, this is what was celebrated at Horse Guards Parade and St Paul’s Cathedral and today’s thousands of street parties.
She connects us to the best of ourselves. She gave us hope for the future when we were uncertain and scared and pessimistic.
She has grown into her role as grandmother to the nation, a nation that has sometimes felt it is coming apart because of English-loathing nationalists, because of the toxic divisions of Brexit.
But she has been the face and the foundation of our national identity.
In these polarised, divided times, it has sometimes felt that she is the only thing holding it all together.
And for all the talk beforehand, these four days were all about the Queen — and only the Queen.
Union Jack biryani
Even future kings understood it was not about them.
And the troublesome bit players who have caused such upset proved totally superfluous to the proceedings.
Prince Andrew was absent after testing positive for Covid, proving there is a God, while Harry and Meghan looked like American tourists on a big budget, smiling stiffly for their Netflix paymasters.
The Queen is the most famous woman in the world and they all live in her shadow.
Four days to salute a Queen who is more than a figurehead, more than a symbol of national identity.
Four days to salute a monarch who wore the khaki uniform of the Auxiliary Territorial Service in the war, and a face mask at her husband’s funeral during the pandemic.
Four days to honour a lifetime of service.
Four days to unite the nation in celebration.
And despite the awareness of the passing years, in the end there was only joy, from The Mall to St Paul’s to the far-off towns.
There was celebration and gratitude, prayers and hymns, pop stars with knighthoods and guardsmen in red coats, Spitfires and sausage rolls and sandwiches beyond number.
Four days of skies filled with flags, balloons and bunting.
I even saw a Union Jack biryani. And what could be more British than that?
These were four days to say thank you — and to find the odd quiet moment to reflect on the astounding 70-year reign of Queen Elizabeth II.
The monarch who was there for ever.
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The sovereign who reflected our national soul.
This wise, thoughtful, quietly courageous Queen who made her country a better place.
