THE QUEEN BEE
Marking Queen Elizabeth II’s 90th birthday, Andrew Unsworth and Pearl Boshomane examine the appeal of Britain’s royal family to South Africans
Margaret rode horses on the beach in East London and at train stops, she celebrated her 21st birthday in Cape Town with a ball in the city hall.
The climax of the trip was her oft-quoted birthday broadcast of commitment to serve, made from Cape Town: “I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong.”
Her experiences in Southern Africa influenced her long attitude of non-racialism in a very diverse commonwealth of nations. As her 1997 biographer Ben Pimlott wrote: “Elizabeth’s first tour, which was also one of her longest, profoundly affected her outlook, helping to establish a Commonwealth interest and loyalty that became a constant theme of her reign.”
She could not come back here for many decades but was quick to make a state visit in 1995, after South Africa became a democracy. She and Nelson Mandela became close friends, and he was one of the only people to ignore protocol and just call her Elizabeth. In a Buckingham palace exhibition of gifts she had been given over the years, I was proud to see a humble headscarf from him among the solid gold models of desert oases from the middle east: the man had style.
Her opinions are always unknown but one can only guess that she has a soft spot for South Africa. And that’s what makes her so fascinating a person: she is probably the most famous but least-known woman on earth.
The 19th-century journalist Walter Bagehot famously advised the British monarchy that “Its mystery is its life. We must not let in daylight upon magic.”
Much of that magic is gone, but in an age of show and tell all, the queen has managed to stay mysterious, with only snippets of information about her opinions, likes and dislikes. They are often banal and trivial, but then Elizabeth is no cultural or intellectual giant. She is very ordinary, but different. Just maybe there is not that much to know. Her loves are horses, hunting, dogs and the countryside. She likes simple food, drinks gin and Dubonnet, reads PD James, does jigsaw puzzles, and hates facial hair on men. There’s lots of that sort of thing. The British have the