Time and again, the cries came: God save the King
HIS Majesty is now home. Almost 25 years ago to this very day, our previous monarch had stopped her car short of Buckingham Palace, climbed out to inspect a mountain of flowers – and transformed the mood of a grieving nation in an instant.
And so it was that her successor did exactly the same yesterday afternoon, although, as he admitted to one well-wisher: ‘I’ve been dreading this.’
A little after two o’clock, police cleared a Moses-like path through the ever- swelling sea of multinational mourners of every age and ilk filling the area in front of Buckingham Palace.
No state trumpeters could be heard. The news helicopters chuntering overhead were performing that role instead. Moments later, a laudably modest police motorcade came to a halt and King Charles III stepped out to meet his subjects for the very first time, a red- eyed Queen Camilla at his side.
At which point, cheers – proper, robust cheers – rang out around the Palace precincts and up on a rammed Queen Victoria Memorial. The King had flicked a switch. Gone was the air of aimless, lugubrious bewilderment which had permeated London SW1 earlier in the day. Here, at last, was a sense of reassurance.
For the first time in 24 hours, we saw people actually smiling at the Palace gates.
The applause was rather less noisy than the cheers for the simple reason that modern Britain cannot attend the opening of a cupboard without filming it on a mobile phone. And it is physically impossible to clap while holding a phone.
From my crush point somewhere in the midst of a mob 50-deep, all with handsets and tablets held aloft and pointing in the same direction, it was like being in the midst of a battalion of meerkats.
Who could blame them? They were witnessing real history, the homecoming of a new sovereign. And his first priority was not to meet the staff and officials awaiting him inside the Palace quadrangle. It was to see the people. No wonder they wanted to capture it for posterity.
Time and again came cries of ‘God save the King!’, the phrase to which we must all now adjust for the next hundred years or so at least.
Others were too moved to say very much at all. Vicky Binley, 51, from Rutland, kissed the King’s hand and muttered a ‘thank you’ through a crumbling smile. It had been an ‘ overwhelming moment’, she said later.
Thanking her, the King replied: ‘I’ve been dreading this day, I’ve been dreading this.’
He was alluding to the loss of his mother, of course, not the prospect of kingship. Rewind to 2002 and he used the very same words (‘ I dreaded, dreaded this
moment’) after the death of the Queen Mother.
Another woman grabbed the new King’s arm, exclaiming: ‘Good luck, my darling, you are a good man.’
This all- embracing blanket of affection and sympathy greatly moved the new Queen Consort, who let the tears flow freely. There
were plenty of cries of ‘ God bless you, Camilla’ and ‘We love you, Camilla’.
New York film director Raynald Leconte, 47, wished her good luck. ‘ Thank you very much,’ she replied. ‘I’ll need it.’
One or two remembered their etiquette and addressed the couple as ‘Your Majesty’.
As the King made his way down the floral pile-up running the breadth of the Palace, we saw the first appearance of that traditional vestige of majesty. Down came the half-masted Union flag.
For the first time, the new Sovereign’s standard was raised – or ‘ broken’ in Palace speak – up on the flagstaff. That, of course, never flies at half-mast because we are never without a monarch.
As the King walked through the Palace gates and thence to his new office – ahead of his first prime-ministerial audience – there were several rounds of ‘three cheers’.
If proof were needed of the almost primeval allure and power of monarchy, here it was: Just as in September 1997 when the late Queen returned from Balmoral to address the nation following the death of Diana, Princess of Wales.
Up until then, the monarchy had been under heavy fire for a perceived failure to emote. Tensions ran so high that some counselled against a walkabout. The Queen, with her unerring ability to gauge the true public mood, left her car at the Palace gates and went to see her people. Suddenly, everything changed. Tempers evaporated.
Yesterday’s circumstances were wholly different but the effect was the same.
This was also a statement of what we can expect from this reign. Fresh off the plane from Aberdeen, having left Balmoral at lunchtime, the King did not return immediately to his home at Clarence House.
He very deliberately wanted his first port of call to be
Buckingham Palace. Subtext: ‘I am hitting the ground running.’
In 1952, the new Queen and Prince Philip had been very keen to remain at Clarence House following the death of King George VI.
They had only just renovated the place and assumed that they might continue to live there with their two young children.
It was Winston Churchill who effectively ordered them to move house, arguing that monarchs have to ‘live above the shop’. The duke’s equerry recalled that there ‘wasn’t a dry eye in the car as they left’.
Now, seven decades later, the former Prince Charles finds himself moving out of Clarence House yet again.
The new King and Queen will not be moving all their worldly goods just yet. The Palace is in the midst of a huge refurbishment programme and is also currently configured for the annual summer influx of hundreds of thousands of tourists. It will not be fully inhabitable for some time. However, yesterday’s arrival showed that the King has already given much thought to the sort of
monarchy he plans to lead. And he will lead it – into what some may label a new ‘Carolean’ era – from its traditional HQ.
If one thing will have alarmed the authorities yesterday, it will have been the sheer volume of people heading for the Palace. I well recall the aftermath of the deaths of Diana in 1997 and of the Queen Mother in 2002. It was days before the public began arriving in anything like these numbers.
Late on Thursday night and from first light yesterday, very substantial crowds were making their way to the Palace from all directions. They
There were plenty of cries of ‘God bless you, Camilla’
were perfectly behaved. Yet, by mid-morning the police had introduced a one- way system for bouquet-bearers.
The approaches from Green Park were starting to reach Platinum Jubilee levels. It was only the fact that people came, saw and then left again which prevented an almighty logjam.
By the time people had queued to get close enough to lay their offerings, they wanted a good look at the growing mounds of floral tributes.
The overarching theme was one of thanks. Several, I noticed, included images of Paddington Bear. The Queen’s cameo role, three long months ago, in that enchanting tea party with the marmalade sandwiches, continues to resonate in the most touching way. Ditto Paddington’s immortal line to the monarch: ‘Thank you, Ma’am – for everything.’ That was on many cards.
I met Natalia Ucinska, 34, a Londonbased hotel worker from Posnan, Poland, clutching a bunch of white and red roses.
‘They are the Polish national colours,’ she explained. ‘We loved the Queen in Poland.’
Sara Shabani, 19, a London-based student from Iran, had arrived with a dozen red roses. ‘I had to come. I saw the Queen for maybe ten seconds on her balcony during her Jubilee and now I want to be here today. I am so sad,’ she said. ‘She was the soul of Britain. You must be so sad.’
She was the soul of other places, too. Tanya Morcom, 54, had arrived on holiday from alice Springs, australia, earlier in the week. ‘I couldn’t believe it when we heard she was ill. We were at the theatre last night and they told us she’d died and then they played God Save The King – well, we just all cried.’ She had nothing but praise for the new monarch. ‘I am of both aboriginal and Scottish heritage and I love the monarchy. We all need that little bit of that magic in our lives.’
Often, at such moments, it is the tiny things which stop you in your tracks, like the sight of Mikaela Van Der Hagen bringing her corgi, archie, seven, to pay tribute to the greatest corgi fan of them all, or of an old soldier in tears.
Of all the countless messages, none, to my mind, captured the mood any better than one child’s unsigned drawing of a red love heart beneath the message, in big letters: ‘We want you back our Queen.’
‘As they walked through the Palace gates, rounds of cheers rang out’