1/5/2024 0 Comments Queen elizabeth iword search![]() I want to suggest she say to him, “Prime Minister - you really shouldn’t have had those Downing Street pandemic parties when everyone else was locked down watching ‘East Enders’ with a grumpy relative or two. If I could meet the Queen today, I would tell her how worried I am about Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s behavior. As a politically neutral part of Britain’s governing machinery - allowed by custom to advise, warn and be consulted - the Queen is the people’s best shot at a highly-placed person who might, just might, drop a timely word in a powerful ear. The Queen is like a sympathetic ear, a court and a listener of last resort. ![]() We were Black and White Brits, relics of the old empire, who acknowledged a connection-with each other, and with the woman who had succeeded her father King George VI before we were even born.Īt 96, Elizabeth still holds her often fractious subjects together and puts the “United” in a “Kingdom” where Scotland, England and Northern Ireland can periodically threaten to part ways. We joked, but with affection and respect. “She worries about everybody,” he said, and we both laughed as he waved me through the barrier. “I do love the Queen and I know she worries about me,” I said, tongue in cheek. When I confessed that I did not have it, he replied, “What’s the matter with you? Don’t you love the Queen anymore?” passport that I had been born in England, asked whether I had my British passport with me. A middle-aged immigration officer with a strong Jamaican accent, upon seeing in my U.S. Much more recently, a telling exchange unfolded upon my arrival at London’s Heathrow Airport. Years later I basked in reflected glory when my mother was presented to the Queen in a group of people being honored for their community service. As a child, I saw her once: she was being driven down Prince’s Street, in Edinburgh. Why do I care about this anniversary and the Queen and the monarchy?Īs an expatriate Englishwoman, I admit regretfully that I have never met the monarch. During the long Jubilee holiday, the British are planning street parties, concerts, countless loyal addresses and presentations, and the enjoyment of the family’s “balcony wave” from Buckingham Palace. Like Hamlet’s father’s ghost, Her Majesty could a tale unfold, private and public, some of which at least might harrow up the soul and freeze the blood.īut the Platinum Jubilee is a time for celebration of one woman’s consistent devotion to her duty and of the nation’s own 70-year story. My mother is long gone, but that new young queen, then just 25, lives on and celebrates her Platinum Jubilee this summer. Thus the new reign of Queen Elizabeth II began. A window cleaner called to her from his ladder: “Have you heard? The King is dead!” Professor of English Rosemary Haskell In February 1952, a few years before I was born, my mother was wheeling my older sister in her pram along a street in suburban London.
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