How a Queen and Grandmother Rose to Global Glory

The email message from a learned reader of my American columns, a cyber friend in Alabama, read, in its entirety: “She was the most admired and respected person in the entire world.” Thus did I learn the sad news, not altogether unexpected but hard to assimilate, of the death of the queen.I remembered the day 70 years and eight months ago, when my late brother was the first member of our family downstairs early one morning and came back upstairs, having looked at the headline in the Globe and Mail and had his breakfast, and said to my parents and me the famous sentence (in our family): “There was a bug in my cereal and the king is dead.”I had a rush of gratitude to my parents for taking us to the coronation the following year; we traveled to Britain and back on Royal Mail Ship Queen Elizabeth, then the largest vessel in the world. The entire trip remains unforgettable. Somewhere in my attic is the copy of the Toronto Telegram of February 7, 1952, with the one-inch black border around all of the front page, the huge grim headline, and the fine picture of the late king.And I recalled some of the many occasions when I met the queen, in the normal course in my capacity as publisher of the London Daily and Sunday Telegraph, of which titles she was a loyal reader. It is a magnificent achievement that never in 70 years of unwaveringly dutiful service did the queen embarrass or annoy any of those scores of millions of people whom she served in the United Kingdom and much of the Commonwealth.The queen was not flamboyant nor, as far as could be detected, particularly imaginative, but she was extremely intelligent, remarkably well-informed, and a source of unfailingly sage advice to scores of prime ministers who governed in her name (as more than a dozen of them have told me).When Elizabeth was confident of the discretion of her interlocutor, she shared some piercing and often amusing aperçus about some of the eminent people, foreign and domestic, that she had worked with. In these times of almost uniform republicanism and profound secularization, the monarchy, atop an official church, seems something of an anachronism, particularly the nonresidential monarchy of Canada.Yet at this time, as we contemplate the long and unexceptionable reign of Queen Elizabeth II, a huge number of people will note, often with surprise, what a startling event is her passing and what a pillar she has been in the lives of all of us. This is a time for great nostalgia also, as the passing of the queen breaks the last link of eminent personalities connecting us to the grandeur and the sacrifice of World War II and the mighty victories of the democracies led by Winston Churchill, Franklin D Roosevelt, Charles de Gaulle, and W. L. Mackenzie King.In her time as the presumptive heir and as a young monarch, the British Empire shed all of the great nations of South Asia from Pakistan to India to Burma, much of the Middle East, and much of Africa, and Hong Kong, and dwindled down to Gibraltar, the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, St. Helena, the Falklands, and not much else beyond the home islands of the United Kingdom.This process, which could easily have been a terrible debacle rolling out across decades of strife and war and bitterness, certainly had its awkward moments. No one, though, and certainly not historians, will deny that it unfolded with as much civility and goodwill as could be imagined, and though it must at times have been tedious and even demoralizing, the queen played an indispensable and always admirable role in the devolution of the jurisdictions that she served.She did her almost superhuman best to make the Commonwealth work, and it must be said that in general, while she was the head of it, it did work, in its way. Predictions are hazardous but the queen, whom much of the world now sincerely mourns, did all anyone could to make the Commonwealth a useful association of both sophisticated and developing countries sharing distinct traditions and ambitions.The current fractious and scattered condition of the former empires of other European colonial powers furnishes an informative contrast to the relatively satisfactory fraternity of the Commonwealth. Throughout her life not only as monarch but as the presumptive heir, going back to her service as a teenager in the military auxiliary during World War II, and even to news film footage of her accompanying her parents in the Royal Naval Review of 1937 and other public events, she has always operated well within the parameters of appropriate behavior: an easy smile and good sense of humor, but never silly or frivolous or in questionable taste; with the gravity her position has required, but never pompous, cold, or cynical; always accessible to public admiration and sympathy, but never commonplace, and always dignified, but never stiff or priggish.She was not an outstanding orator, and never engaged in any histrionics to embellish her remarks, but had a sure sense of occasion. When the British forces returned victorious from the Falklands, she knew to emulate her greatest predecessor, Elizabeth I, and went down to the south coast of England and greeted the returning warriors with bonfires of welcome.In the distressed time of the days between the death and funeral of Princess Diana, she ordered a state funeral, returned from Scotland, and steadied the nerves of the realm with a two-minute television and radio address expressing her sorrow and her confidence in words beginning, “As your queen and as a grandmother,” and found les mots justes exactly.I do not put on the airs of an intimacy with her that I did not have, but I can say that she had an exemplary sense of humor. In my role as honorary colonel of the Governor General’s Foot Guards, I accompanied her in a regimental review as she produced new colors for the regiment on a steaming hot August day in Ottawa in 1997. My uniform was suited to winter events and was not designed by Hugo Boss or other experts in stylish military attire. She said, “I’m not used to seeing you like this,” and I managed, adapting the reply of Elvis Presley when President Nixon commented on his brown satin suit: “Your Majesty, you dress for your job and I dress for mine.” She laughed and said, “On days like this, I think I have a better costumer.”The last test of the success of the reign that has just ended will be the performance of the new king. It eventually became clear that one of the greatest of all of Julius Caesar’s triumphs was the selection of his grandnephew, Octavian (Augustus) Caesar, as his successor, as one of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s many acts of exceptional executive judgment was the choice of Harry Truman as his successor.The conduct of the late queen and Prince Philip’s sons has not always been optimal. It is a mere formality for the prince of Wales to be confirmed as king and there is every reason to be optimistic that he will be a distinguished as well as a conscientious monarch.If he were to be as indiscreetly opinionated as king as he sometimes was as heir, especially in certain faddish areas, serious problems would result. Adapting a phrase of Churchill’s from 70 years ago, as one whose early youth was spent in the challenged but unquestioned glories of the era of George VI, I can hopefully and confidently express the wish and the anthem: “God save the King”Written for the National Post and The New York Sun.

How a Queen and Grandmother Rose to Global Glory

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