Nation should learn from Queen’s courage and resilience

TO be honest, I wasn’t expecting to write this column, as I am currently on holiday. But the events of the past few days made me think that it would be wrong not to say something.

I am sure there is little which hasn’t been said more eloquently by others, but it feels like a time when those who are lucky enough to be given a platform for their views, including me, should step forward and at least try to sum up what is a momentous time for our nation, and many other nations.

As a great believer that our country, and the world, should be a meritocracy, where people’s actions and not their birth are what should define them, it might seem incongruous to pay tribute to a monarch.

Yet in her lifetime of service, her calm and steadfast presence throughout such a large chunk of our history, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II has more than earned the flood of tributes which have been given over the last few days since her death.

Although many people have spoken of sadness, there is much to be celebrated too about the long life of the Queen, who at 96 lived as long and as full a life as anyone can expect.

The sense of loss that many people will have felt over the last few days is not so much a reflection of her death, but the fact she will not be part of our lives any more.

It feels like that jarring sense of the unexpected which comes when you are walking up a flight of stairs in the dark, and your foot tries to reach for that extra step which isn’t there.

Your foot goes through the air and comes down suddenly, unexpectedly having missed the step which you thought was there, but isn’t.

The feeling of a lurching shock at the ground not being so firm under your feet.

The Queen was the calm and assured presence which was always there in times of the most seismic events, telling us during the Covid pandemic that we would see our families again, that we would meet again.

For many families, she was the extra person at the Christmas table, reflecting on the year as we sat with our nearest and dearest. She was among the finest details of our lives, the figurehead on our banknotes and our stamps, the person who we sang to before major sporting events.

Her loss is not simply the death of a kind and much-loved lady but the end of a period of our history, and the dawning of a new one.

How many of us will sing the national anthem and falter at the words ‘God Save the Qu... King’?

Yet as much as the Queen’s historic reign will be difficult to follow, we could take a moment to reflect on how she, as a 25-year-old, was suddenly thrust into her role upon the death of her father.

She took on the mantle of monarch despite her own grief, and somehow was able to steer a course which included reassuring her own family – her beloved Philip and her children – that she would always be there for them, as well as the nation.

The nation could do much to learn from that courage and resilience, as we embark on what will be another testing time for our country, and the world.

God Save the King.

The Queen was the calm and assured presence which was always there in times of the most seismic events