‘I feel I knew her’
One of my few regrets of 50 years in journalism is that I never met the Queen — never got an assignment that would have given me even a glimpse of her at a distance.
It is not a great regret, because I feel I knew her anyway.
We all knew her as a public figure, which is the only way she wanted us to know her. Whatever she was in private was immaterial to the person she was determined to be for her public role.
For a lifetime she kept her opinions to herself, or at least within her court, and sometimes to be expressed privately to prime ministers in accordance with her constitutional right. But to the public she let not a careless word slip.
Consider how remarkable that is. For seven decades she held the most public of positions, meeting new people wherever she went, conversing with them, making a speech, performing rituals, and not once saying anything untoward, for 70 years.
Sometimes I thought her reserved to a fault. The opening of the Auckland Commonwealth Games in 1990 comes to mind. The city had been preparing for years, and there was palpable excitement. The midsummer sun was shining, a crowd filled Mt Smart athletic stadium and the Queen was here. But those present, and all of us watching on TV, heard her declare the Games open in a tone as flat as the track.
Diana I did see, briefly, at Parliament with Charles on their New Zealand visit. I noticed her eyes checking the position of cameras. She became the doeeyed victim of a regretted marriage and was being pursued by paparazzi on the night of her fatal car crash. A public outpouring of grief went on for weeks. The Queen obviously found it excessive, showy, not quite true and decidedly not the England she knew. She resisted it for long enough to make the kind of important statement she often does with actions that speak louder than words she cannot use.
The focus on the “royal family” is a work of English genius, without it the monarchy might not have survived the 20th century. It is hard to imagine the United Kingdom, let alone the Commonwealth, continuing to maintain a monarchy that did not offer something more than a hereditary head of state.
The family humanises the monarchy, letting people recognise themselves in its ordinary problems as well as the joys of weddings and births and the dignified sadness of deaths.
British history is largely signposted by its monarchs. The second Elizabethan Age will be recorded as a long period of relative peace following two world wars, a post-imperial age for Britain and increasing independence for its former colonies, many of which became republics.
Generally, though, they stayed in the Commonwealth, an organisation that probably owes its survival to the Queen. From the beginning of her reign she worked hard for it, forming a relationship with those who retained the monarchy that was subtly different from her position in Britain.
The Queen never argued with nations that wanted to replace her with an elected head of state, making it clear the monarchy is there if we want it. There have been times when I didn’t, but not for a long while. The Queen’s successors, Charles and, in time, William, impress me as men of her class, capable of maintaining her standards of stability, judgment and good taste. We often don’t fully appreciate a person who has been a pillar of our existence until they are, suddenly, gone.