An enduring emblem of British greatness
her generosity of spirit. That quality is allied to a host of other virtues that have made her such an ideal sovereign, including her diligence, religious faith, humour and stoicism.
This is a woman who, during long stretches of her reign, was meeting more than 50,000 people and carrying out more than 300 engagements in a year without a hint of either grievance or self-importance.
As one of her former press secretaries, Charles Anson, put it: “By a miracle of temperament, she is very well suited to the job. She has very good shock-absorbers when things go wrong and she doesn’t make a hoo-ha when it’s a success.”
It is that unflappable nature that enabled her to cope so successfully with the personal crises of her reign.
These include the Annus Horribilis of 1992 when her family was rocked by divorces and the fire at Windsor Castle, the death of Princess Diana in 1997 and, more recently, the accusations from the Duke and Duchess of Sussex about bigotry in her family.
“Recollections may vary,” she said in a magnificently pithy response to their emotive attack.
For most of her reign she was also assisted by the tremendous support given by her husband Prince Philip, who shared her phlegmatic mentality and impatience with self-indulgence.
A further reason for her success is that she has skilfully been able to embody the paradox of maintaining tradition while embracing change. That duality was seen at its most powerful in the replacement of the British Empire by the self-governing Commonwealth, a process in which she was one of the key architects.
The flight from Empire in the post-war era could have been a tale of national humiliation.
But instead it became a story of democratic advance, co-operation and self-governance.
THE SAME is true of Britain’s shift from homogeneity into a multi-racial society over the last 70 years. It is a far-reaching change, but the unifying bond of the Crown ensured that diversity has arrived with remarkably little conflict.
Nor has the Queen held out against technological progress.
The Royal Family’s decision, for instance, to allow the broadcast of the Coronation in 1953 put rocket fuel under the expansion of TV.
In 1976 she was one of the first Britons to send an email when she participated in a demonstration by the Army of an early computerised messaging system.and it was on her insistence in 1992 that the sovereign began to pay income tax for the first time, while in the 1960s she cleared out a lot of the flummery and anachronisms from Palace life.
We have been lucky to have her on the throne for 70 years.
As the Jubilee shows, she is an enduring emblem of British greatness. It is fashionable, particularly among Left-wingers, to knock our country, portraying Britain as a grey, backward, isolated island.
But the world has watched in astonishment and envy as our nation is gripped by a wave of inclusive, warm-hearted patriotic joy.
There could be no better advertisement for Britain than the last four days, in all their majestic pomp and eclectic liveliness. A land that can host a concert with Ed Sheeran and Sir Elton John, a military parade of unparalleled precision in Trooping the Colour and a seafront street party in Morecambe with more than 5,000 guests is certainly not a place in terminal decline.
The Jubilee has given a monumental boost to the nation, serving as a reminder of our unique British identity and solidarity.
Given more than one billion people around the globe are thought to have viewed some part of the proceedings on TV, the Platinum milestone represents soft power on the world stage at its most potent.
In theory, the monarchy should not work in our democratic age since the hereditary principle runs counter to notions of equality.
But in Elizabeth’s II adept, pragmatic hands, the institution succeeds triumphantly.
It is a safety valve against extremism, a glue that binds against division and a conduit that promotes the most noble kind of patriotism.