THRONE IN AT THE DEEP END
Queen recalls her pioneering life-saving award 80 years on
THE Queen got the giggles yesterday when she was reminded that she received a junior life- saving award an astonishing 80 years ago.
Reflecting wryly on the passage of time, the 95- year- old monarch laughed and said: ‘It’s terrible!’
In 1941 the then 14-year-old Princess Elizabeth was the first person in the Commonwealth to receive a junior respiration award from the Royal Life Saving Society (RLSS).
Speaking on a video call the Queen, who is now patron of the society, admitted: ‘I didn’t realise I was the first one. I just did it, and had to work very hard for it. It’s a very long time ago, I’m afraid, I think it’s changed a lot.
‘But it was a great achievement and I was very proud to wear the badge on the front of my swimming suit. It was very grand, I thought.’ Pictures from the time show her with the award pinned to her costume, alongside the RLSS badge.
The Queen recalled how she and her late sister Princess Margaret went to swimming lessons at the Bath Club, a gentleman’s club in Mayfair.
Looking in good spirits so soon after Prince Philip’s death, she spoke to Sarah Downs, 20, a student who saved a little boy’s life when she was on duty as a lifeguard at a swimming pool in Exeter in 2018, who asked the Queen for her memories of achieving her award.
She replied: ‘Well, it’s a very long time ago. I do remember it was of course all done in the Bath Club in the swimming pool.
‘And I suppose I didn’t really actually realise quite what I was doing, you know, because I think I must have been 12 or something, 12 or 14 or something like that.’ Clive Holland, deputy Commonwealth president of the society, said of her own award: ‘Your Majesty, when you say it was a long time ago, it was in fact 80 years ago’ – prompting the Queen’s ‘It’s terrible!’ comment.
During the virtual engagement, which was recorded last week and released yesterday, the Queen was told she had broken the mould by becoming the first young person in the Commonwealth to achieve the society’s junior respiration award, thereby providing an example to other young people.
The RLSS was founded in London in 1891 and now works across 30 Commonwealth nations.
Drowning remains one of the biggest causes of preventable death in the world today, with an estimated 235,000 deaths every year, of which 90 per cent occur in low and middle income countries.