So how DO you follow a woman like the Queen?
Two days in and STEPHEN GLOVER, a frequent critic of Charles, is feeling optimistic. But a few words of respectful advice: Your Majesty, please keep your many opinions to yourself!
We knew the Queen’s death was going to be a heavy blow but I don’t think many people foresaw how deeply it would affect the soul of the nation, and unleash so many waves of grief. That final picture of her at Balmoral, taken only four days ago, says it all. The Queen had just seen off Boris Johnson, and was welcoming her 15th Prime Minister, Liz Truss.
She can’t have been feeling well. Her poor right hand is partly black. And yet she is smiling, as she so often was throughout her long reign. In her state of health, she must have struggled, but she went on. It was her duty.
we ordinary self-indulgent mortals can scarcely comprehend what it entailed for this exceptional woman to sacrifice herself in this way — to smile when she may not have felt like smiling, to be polite when perhaps she did not feel so well- disposed towards every member of humanity.
And throughout it all she kept her own feelings to herself in an extraordinary act of selfdenial. In a confessional age she kept her counsel. She bore in silence a mother’s excruciating anxiety of having a son, Andrew, risk his life in the Falklands war. She could not share her grief with her people at her husband’s death.
Few of us end up having lived our lives as we set out to do. Queen elizabeth triumphantly succeeded in fulfilling her pledge to serve her nation, which she made in Cape Town on her 21st birthday in 1947.
Her sense of duty really was awe-inspiring. She reminded us that brave human beings can achieve great things. I am certain it would not have been possible for her if she had not believed that she was an anointed daughter of God, serving His purposes. I believe she was, and did.
Many who do not or cannot share this view will nonetheless accept that she was a very remarkable person who cared for this old country of ours with love and endurance. we know
‘The King comes to the throne with heavy baggage’
she was unique, and that is why it is so hard for us to accept that she is no longer here.
So king Charles III — how odd those words are to write! — steps into a void. He is by some margin the oldest monarch ever to accede to the throne. As a son, his grief is infinitely more painful than ours, as was evident in his eloquent and moving broadcast address last night. I have little doubt that he is full of trepidation. He certainly should be.
How do you follow a woman like the Queen? It is immensely challenging because of what she has achieved. And it is also difficult — we must be frank, as so much is at stake — because the new king comes to the throne carrying some heavy baggage.
when elizabeth became a young Queen in February 1952, relatively little was known about her, and what was known was good. It was, in any case, a much more deferential age in which public criticism of the monarchy was almost inconceivable.
king Charles is an elderly man, whose eventful private life has been picked over by the media, and whose openly expressed views about all manner of things — from architecture to global warming to farming to conservation — are well known. It is a strange reflection that we know far more about the inner man than we ever did about his mother.
I believe most of us have forgiven him for his undoubted mistreatment of Diana, Princess of wales,
and those few who haven’t probably never will. There is anyway nothing he can do about what is in the past.
But there is much he can do in other ways — and must do in order to secure the future of an institution which his mother has passed on to him in a strong condition, respected as it is by the majority of the British people.
In a television interview in 2018, Charles was adamant that he wouldn’t be a ‘meddling’ king. It is imperative that he lives up to his promise to follow his mother’s example, rather than emit contentious opinions that are bound to divide his subjects.
That he has done so in the past is beyond dispute. I happen to agree with quite a lot of what he has said — on the ugliness of most modern architecture, for instance. On the other hand, his apocalyptic statements about climate change have, to my mind, occasionally verged on the hysterical.
In 2009, for example, he warned that we had ‘100 months to act’ before the damage caused by global warming became irreversible. Thirteen years later, even climate change zealots concede that we still have time to save the planet.
Of course, many will agree with Charles’s opinions about the importance of tackling climate change while they may scorn his utterances about architecture. That is my point. An outspoken monarch is bound to be divisive, and weaken the institution.
There is also a danger in becoming involved in politics, which he has sometimes done. I don’t think many will object to his expressing concerns in a personal letter to Tony Blair about Lynx helicopters performing poorly in high temperatures in Iraq. He had private information which he acted upon in a public-spirited way.
But he was well out of bounds when, as recently as June, he reportedly described the Government’s policy of sending asylum seekers to Rwanda as ‘appalling’. That is a perfectly reasonable point of view, but it shouldn’t have been expressed by the heir to the throne about elected politicians.
The Queen was a highly intelligent and very well-informed woman, yet she was able to keep her thoughts about culture and politics to herself — to the great benefit of the monarchy and her people.
Dearest to her heart were the Commonwealth and the continued existence of the United kingdom — viewpoints that are hardly controversial except, in the latter instance, to Scottish and welsh nationalists.
There is perhaps an edge of arrogance in Charles which encourages him to open his mouth when he shouldn’t, and sometimes to act in a way that is unwise in a future sovereign.
It has been recently reported that in 2013 he accepted £1 million for his charity from the family of Osama bin Laden, the most destructive terrorist who has ever
lived. Prince Charles’s courtiers claim the decision was taken by the trustees.
On another occasion around the same time, Charles is reported to have accepted a holdall containing one million euros from Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, a former prime minister of Qatar, during a one-to-one meeting in Clarence House. This money was also intended for good causes.
In both instances, Charles’s conduct wasn’t what one would expect in an heir to the throne. It would be considered practically scandalous in a British monarch. We must hope that Queen Consort Camilla, who seems a sensible woman, will offer her husband firm advice.
In last night’s address, King Charles sensibly undertook to step back from his charities, and declared that he would ‘count on the loving help of my darling wife, Camilla’.
Our new King would be wise to remember that there are still many republicans in this country who have stayed their hand, and kept quiet in recent years on account of the Queen’s great popularity.
If Charles’s standing with the public should slump as a result of silly, self-inflicted wounds, these republicans will be quick to pounce, and their numbers could quickly swell.
Despite all this, I believe our new King to be a decent, cultured and well-intentioned man — far to be preferred over his indulgent greatgreat grandfather, Edward VII, or his spineless great uncle, Edward VIII, who gave up the throne.
If he can emulate his mother by remaining silent about public issues while avoiding confrontation with politicians, and if he behaves in a circumspect and kingly way, he will be doing himself, and the precious office he holds, a great service. Somehow he looked the part in his appearances yesterday. Perhaps he has already been touched by the mystique of monarchy.
There are, it must be said, also problems within the Royal Family that are not of his making. One is the position of his brother Andrew, who has effectively been deprived of his royal role as a consequence of allegations that he sexually abused Virginia Giuffre more than two decades ago when she was 17.
Although he continues strenuously to deny these allegations, in February Prince Andrew reached an out- of- court settlement with his accuser said to be worth £7.5 million. Is this the end of the matter? Andrew may be a smouldering piece of potentially lethal ordnance.
And then there is Prince Harry, who unfortunately for him arrived too late on Thursday to be at his grandmother’s bedside. He is dramatically at odds with his father, Charles, and with his brother, William. In fact, he is estranged from most of the Royal Family.
Perhaps, at least in the shortor term, the Queen’s death will induce Harry to build bridges with those who still plainly love him but from whom he has emotionally separated himself.
But I fear that, as long as he remains married to Meghan, these two self-absorbed and not entirely straightforward iconoclasts will continue to detonate bomblets that are liable to hurt the King.
I’m afraid to say that, unless they desist, the only solution will be to deprive them of their royal titles so that their barbs, already tiresome to a growing number of people, will be rendered less damaging.
King Charles III is not without his problems and challenges — that’s for sure. I haven’t even mentioned the possibility that Australia and New Zealand may react to the death of the Queen, who was popular in those countries, by declaring republics, and jettisoning the monarch as head of state.
And then there is Scotland. It is possible that affection for the Queen north of the border helped to keep the glue in place as the United Kingdom threatens to fall apart. Her demise could be cited by nationalists as a reason to break up our country.
Yet despite all these storm clouds, I remain hopeful that the reign of King Charles will be a fruitful one, and that he will in due course hand over an institution to Prince William which is in as good a state as it is today.
The reason for my optimism lies in what has happened since the Queen died. Not even two full days yet, though it seems like an age. I feel as though I have learnt a lot about my country, and its greatness.
When a considerable former president dies in the United States
‘The monarchy will endure . . . it heals divisions’
France, there is of course much grief and mourning. Tears are shed and eloquent speeches are delivered. But it is not the same.
It is not the same because, much more than any alternative system, monarchy has deep roots in people’s hearts, as we have witnessed since Thursday, and will see until long after the Queen has been laid to rest in St George’s Chapel, Windsor, beside her husband.
She was the best of monarchs, of course. She became a wise older woman who gave us stability and reassurance in a way a younger woman, or perhaps any man, could never quite do. She was a unifier of classes and nations. A healer.
This rare woman was woven into the life of our country. Our parents and grandparents and even their parents have known her as we have. I was born a month before she became Queen. The span of her reign is the span of my life.
I write these words from Italy, which got rid of its monarch in 1946. I think many Italians are probably a little envious of our institution. I suspect they think that the Queen was a sweet elderly woman, whereas we know that she was much, much more.
None of her immediate successors is likely to have her special gifts since she was unique. But unless they are fools — and I don’t think King Charles is a fool — the monarchy will endure because it symbolises our sense of nationhood, and heals many of our divisions.
Elizabeth II showed us as perfectly as is possible the benefits of monarchy. There’ll be trouble ahead. Of course there will. There always is. But we’ll be all right if we remember what our dear Queen has done for us.