Lesser known facts about Pope Benedict XVI

Those who missed my retrospective on Pope Benedict XVI’s papacy can read parts 1 and 2.

Today’s post, the last one about this holy man, looks back at lesser known facts about his life.

N.B.: This is a lengthy post!

Let’s start with Charles Moore’s January 3 article for The Telegraph, ‘Pope Benedict XVI was the last of the generation of leaders that knew war’.

Conversations about the Second World War with John Paul II

Charles Moore met Benedict only once, about 20 years ago. At that time, he was Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, popularly known as God’s rottweiler.

Moore says that (emphases mine):

the bit of the job he enjoyed the most was each Friday evening when he, a German (who had been forced into the Hitler Youth, aged 12) would spend an hour or more in informal conversation with the Polish pope (who had endured the Nazi persecution of his church about an hour’s drive from Auschwitz).

These two men, both born in the 1920s, had experienced Germany’s disgraceful assault on Poland, which plunged the world into violence. They had seen Hitler’s diabolical destructiveness followed by Stalin’s reign of atheistic tyranny over eastern Europe. Yet here in Rome, half a century later, the German and the Pole were friends, co-workers and men of God, talking about theology, in a world largely at peace.

I think this shared experience, from unwillingly opposite sides, gave the two popes a depth of understanding which those of us brought up in easier times tend to lack. The passing of their generation should be acknowledged as a loss. There are many lessons to be learnt from them … and indeed from their entire age-cohort.

John Paul II and the future Benedict XVI agreed on most things, but had different emphases. The Pole, a philosopher by training, was obsessed by the possibilities of human love, which he saw fulfilled in Jesus Christ. This made him full of optimism and courage. “Be not afraid” was the text of his great inaugural sermon as pope, which inspired millions suffering behind the Iron Curtain.

The German agreed but, being a theologian and an official of the Curia, he thought more specifically about the Church. He had a strong sense of the depth and continuity of Christian civilisation, particularly in Europe. This made him passionately interested in liturgy. It should not be rendered “flatter” in order to improve superficial comprehension, he argued, because liturgy is not “like a lecture”: it works “in a manifold way, with all the senses, and by being drawn into a celebration that isn’t invented by some commission but that comes to me … from the depth of the millennia and, ultimately, of eternity”.

Benedict also, perhaps, had more cultural pessimism than John Paul II. Living in the post-war West, he witnessed not tyranny but consumerism, triviality and boredom. The Church’s duty to understand the spirit of the age did not mean it had to accept it. It had to shelter truth, as well as proclaiming it.

Being Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith

The then-Cardinal Ratzinger told Moore that, as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under John Paul II:

it was his job to “help the Pope with the necessary Noes”, given that John Paul II was temperamentally inclined to say “Yes”.

Margaret Thatcher met two Popes

Margaret Thatcher and her husband Denis were Protestant but, for whatever reason, were among the couples who received a papal blessing from Paul VI in June 1977, some years after they had married.

Moore has the story, which she related to him when they met Benedict XVI:

When Margaret Thatcher was old, a kind friend, Carla Powell, invited her to stay with her near Rome and meet Pope Benedict in the Vatican. I was asked to accompany the party. By this stage, Lady Thatcher had poor short-term memory. I felt I should remind her of what was happening. “Isn’t it exciting?” I said to her. “We’re going to see the Pope tomorrow.” “Yes,” she replied, “but what does one say to a pope?”

It was a reasonable question. I must admit that I had no answer to it, and still don’t. The formalities of a brief audience leave no time to ask for useful tips about the secrets of the universe. Besides, Benedict XVI was a shy man and Lady Thatcher had become, as I say, rather vague.

I need not have worried. Even in old age, she was a tremendous actress, and once she was on the dais and recognised by the crowds, she behaved with perfect poise as pope and ex-prime minister exchanged pleasantries. As we descended, I pointed out to her the pen in which newly married couples, in their finery, always gather for a papal blessing. Lady T rushed up to them, “We did that a long time ago,” she announced, recalling her wedding with Denis nearly 60 years earlier, “and it’s a wonderful thing to do.”

Joseph Ratzinger’s childhood dream

Melanie McDonagh’s New Year’s Day column for The Telegraph tells us that young Joseph Ratzinger’s childhood dream was to be a priest.

I was somewhat envious reading the following, as I, too, wanted to be a priest in my childhood but, unlike the young Bavarian, had to make do with my grandmother’s green silk scarf for a vestment and the coffee table as an altar:

The death of Pope Benedict has left me desolate, not least because I muffed a chance to have a last interview with him. I thought I could postpone a meeting until I was properly prepared, which is always stupid when you’re talking about a 95-year-old. Yep. I am an idiot. But his death led me back to Peter Seewald’s biography, which is revelatory about his early life. It recalls little Joseph’s Christmas letter to the Christ Child at the age of seven, asking for a green vestment to play at saying mass with his brother and sister. Back then in Bavaria, you could get tiny altars, with all the kit, for the purpose. In later life, Pope Benedict would recall that playacting at saying mass somehow made the future come to life. But the real giveaway about his direction of travel was that when people asked the little boy what he wanted to be when he grew up. He would answer solemnly: “A cardinal”. He went one better than that though.

Amazing. Childhood really can influence our adult lives.

Rosamund Urwin’s obituary of the late Pope for The Sunday Times was excellent. It also includes a photograph of young Joseph Ratzinger in his Luftwaffe uniform. Excerpts follow in the next several sections.

Childhood

Urwin tells us that the Ratzinger household was a devout one:

Born Joseph Ratzinger in 1927 in Bavaria, the son of a policeman, his pious parents had him baptised four hours after delivery. He was a child when Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933.

The home atmosphere also influenced his brother Georg. I wonder if Joseph shared his Mass kit with him:

In 1951, he was ordained alongside his brother, who died in 2020.

The Guardian has more:

Born in the village of Marktl am Inn, Bavaria, Joseph was the third child of three and second son of a former hotel cook, Maria (nee Peintner) and a police commissioner, also Joseph, both devout Catholics. His childhood was unusual because of the extraordinary piety of the family, which separated him from his contemporaries. There was never, it seems, a time when young Joseph did not want to be a priest.

His father’s opposition to the Nazis is reported to have curtailed his police career. A lasting memory for Joseph was, as a boy, seeing Nazi supporters beat up his local parish priest in Traunstein, near the Austrian border. On another occasion, in 1941, a younger cousin who had Down’s syndrome was taken away by Nazi officials under their eugenics programme to perish with many others.

Membership of the Hitler Youth was compulsory for the two Ratzinger boys.

Wartime

Returning to Rosamund Urwin’s article, it is hard to imagine what serving a sick despot must have been like:

The family opposed fascism and the Nazi party, but he was forced to join the Hitler Youth at 14 when it became compulsory, and was later drafted into the German military, serving on the auxiliary staff in the Luftwaffe and then digging trenches on the Hungarian border. After Hitler’s death, he deserted, risking being shot if captured.

His horror at Nazi Germany and the bloodshed was part of the inspiration for his becoming a priest after the war ended, when he found consolation in the sight of Ulm Cathedral. When he arrived home, he said: “The heavenly Jerusalem itself could not have appeared more beautiful to me.”

The aforementioned Guardian obituary has more about his wartime service:

Like other 16-year-olds, Joseph was called up in 1943, serving first with an anti-aircraft battery in Munich and then with an infantry unit on the Hungarian border, before finding himself for six weeks in an American prisoner of war camp.

Ministry

Rosamund Urwin says that the Revd Joseph Ratzinger did not spend much time as a pastor. Academia took him to the top:

His time in parish ministry was limited: he preferred academia, becoming a professor of theology at Bonn University. In 1977, he became archbishop of Munich and Freising, and then a cardinal. This allowed him to vote in the conclave to elect the new pope after the deaths of Paul VI and John Paul I.

In Rome, Ratzinger met the charismatic Polish cardinal Karol Wojtyla, on whose behalf he campaigned and who became Pope John Paul II. The pair grew close and Ratzinger became the pontiff’s right-hand man, their partnership shaping the church for the next three decades.

However, it appears that Cardinal Ratzinger wanted to retire but John Paul II refused his request:

Benedict did not appear to want to be Pope before he was elected in 2005. Then simply Cardinal Ratzinger, he was already 78 and had previously stated that he would like to retire to his house in Bavaria and write books. The historian Michael Hesemann, who interviewed Ratzinger’s older brother Georg at length, said the brothers, who were close, had intended to travel together. After a number of mini-strokes in the 1990s, the cardinal asked the man he would succeed as pope, John Paul II, if he could retire from his position, but was turned down.

It was his leadership of John Paul II’s funeral that put him in the media spotlight and made cardinals see him as John Paul II’s natural successor, and he became the first German to be elected pope in almost a thousand years.

It was a good funeral. The BBC televised it, and I ran across many non-Christians who watched it with great interest, glued to the screen. I was happy to answer their questions.

From progressive to conservative

When I was growing up, my mother found Ratzinger’s pronouncements appalling. This was before he was put in charge of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith. She went so far as to vent her frustration to the nuns at my school. Unfortunately for her, the nuns were on Ratzinger’s side of the argument. Those were the days of the later and looser implementations of Vatican II in parish churches.

By the time he became Benedict XVI, she was too ill to notice, but she would have been pleased to know that he became theologically conservative over the years:

In his younger years, Ratzinger had been viewed as a progressive, but he became a resolute theological conservative as he aged, earning the nickname “God’s rottweiler”.

The aforementioned Guardian obituary states that Ratzinger’s views on Vatican II began to change in 1968:

His personal Road to Damascus came in 1968 at Tübingen, which had embraced the Europe-wide outbreak of student unrest of that period. It profoundly disturbed Ratzinger and caused him to decamp the following year for the more traditionally minded Regensburg, and, more significantly, prompted a wholesale re-evaluation of his commitment to the reform movement in the church.

In Catholic circles, he began to voice his disillusion at the effects of the modernisation ushered in by the council, and at the constant demand for change and innovation. He started to advocate a reinvigorated central church government to hold the line against liberals, and to defend the traditions of Catholicism that he came to see increasingly as its strength. As a symbol of this change of heart, in 1972 Ratzinger defected from Concilium to the group of conservative-minded theologians who were founding a rival journal, Communio.

The need to halt the reform process was fast becoming mainstream thought in the European Catholic church. When, in 1977, Ratzinger was appointed by the Vatican as cardinal archbishop of Munich, he used his new platform to attack progressive theologians, such as his former academic colleague and friend the Swiss theologian Father Hans Küng.

Such a stance chimed well with the incoming regime of Karol Wojtyła, elected in 1978 as Pope John Paul II. He was another second Vatican council figure who was also now wary of what it had set in train. In 1981, Ratzinger was named head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, one of the most senior positions in the Roman curia. He worked closely and harmoniously with John Paul, notably to rein in the radical liberation theologians of Latin America, whom both suspected of importing Marxist thought into Catholicism by the back door, and to silence dissenters such as the distinguished American scholar Father Charles Curran, who had publicly questioned official teaching on sexual morality …

It was often easier for otherwise loyal Catholics concerned by the draconian actions of the Vatican in regard to popular, liberal theologians to blame Ratzinger rather than John Paul II. The pope managed to evade any sort of categorisation within his lifetime, not least by dint of his personal charisma, while, as his right-hand man, the apparently dour, inflexible Ratzinger was a more convenient target. But, as pope, Benedict largely avoided such targeting of individuals. The attack on dissidents was, it seems, his master’s bidding.

I am not surprised. I never liked John Paul II, having always suspected there was something else behind his ever-present smile. It was during his tenure that I left the Catholic Church and became an Episcopalian.

The Guardian has more on this topic:

In September 2005, soon after his election, he spent four hours in discussion with his former friend Küng. Under John Paul II, Küng had been banned from teaching in Catholic universities. Yet at the end of their meeting, Benedict put out a statement praising Küng’s work on dialogue between religions. His guest remained to be convinced. “His stances on church policy,” Küng remarked, “are not my own.”

Benedict was also rather better than John Paul II at giving the impression of listening and consulting. Some spoke of him having a “big tent” approach to the church, wanting to restore harmony to what had become a fractured and fractious world Catholic family. His decision in 2007 to relax restrictions on the use of the Tridentine Rite, a 16th-century form of the mass that had been largely withdrawn, to the distress of many elderly and traditionally minded Catholics in the late 1960s, was another aspect of the same all-inclusive approach (though his move was later reversed by Pope Francis).

He was also the first Pope in years to don traditional papal garb, engaging in:

the occasional bout of dressing up in long-discarded items from the wardrobes of medieval popes such as the camauro, a red bonnet trimmed with white fur. He may not have had charisma, like his predecessor, the former actor John Paul II, but he undeniably had charm.

Fanta, cats and a pilot’s licence

Urwin tells us how Ratzinger enjoyed spending his free time:

Those around him described him as warm but shy. A bibliophile, he was reported to have told visitors: “My true friends are the books.” He played the piano and loved classical music, especially Mozart and Beethoven, his pet cats and Fanta — having a can of the fizzy drink every day.

Benedict held a pilot’s licence and when he was younger used to fly a helicopter from the Vatican to the Pope’s summer residence, Castel Gandolfo. He had an interest in style too, wearing fashionable sunglasses and slip-on shoes that many thought were made by Prada (they weren’t).

A clerical outfitters near the Vatican supplies all the Popes with their clothing and shoes. Pope Benedict opted for the traditional garments, including papal slippers, which are made of the softest leather.

Benedict was the first Pope to adopt social media:

Though traditional, he — or his advisers — did embrace social media, joining Twitter a decade ago using the handle @Pontifex, which Francis has since inherited.

By the way, the 2019 film about him and his successor Francis has a fictitious scene in it:

The 2019 film The Two Popes, which starred Anthony Hopkins as Benedict and Jonathan Pryce as Francis, fuelled wider interest in their relationship. It was a heavily fictionalised account, ending with the pair watching football as Francis tried to teach Benedict the joys of the sport. Its director later admitted the bromance-style denouement was made up — Benedict was more of a Formula One fan.

Papal problems

Benedict had many problems to face during his time as Pope:

It would not be an easy eight years: accusations of child sexual abuse by priests and a broader cover-up by the church dogged his tenure.

He repeatedly spoke out against misconduct, demanded investigations and issued new rules to make it easier to discipline predatory priests, but was criticised for seeming unwilling to hold the wider church hierarchy to account. The sexual abuse scandals threatened to overshadow his trip to the UK in September 2010, but in the end it was deemed a success and Benedict was applauded for his warmth and for urging Britain to work for the common good of society.

As head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under John Paul II, it had been his responsibility to read dossiers compiled about priests accused of child abuse, and many, even among the faithful, felt he should have done more to stem and to punish abuse.

He later became the first pope to meet victims of clerical paedophiles. In February, he asked for forgiveness from victims of sexual abuse, but denied accusations that he was involved in concealing cases while he was Archbishop of Munich and Freising.

However, as I wrote, a group of French men and women stated in a 2010 letter that Benedict XVI was, in their words:

the first pope to address head-on, without compromise, the problem. Paradoxically, he is the subject of undermining and personal attacks, attacks relayed with a certain complacency on the part of the press.

Even The Guardian agrees with that assessment. John Paul II, the darling of everyone everywhere, did not even look at it:

He was the first pope to look the abuse scandal in the eye and attempt to tackle it. He may have made only a start, but his predecessor had simply swept it under the carpet and even given sanctuary to known abusers. Benedict withdrew that protection and promised a thorough review that would stop such a betrayal happening again. Delivery of the promise, though, was patchy …

Benedict, to his credit, did not try to bury his head in the sand over the scandal. When details had first emerged in the late 1980s in the US and Canada, some reports ended up on the desk of Cardinal Ratzinger at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Later, it was alleged that he had failed to acknowledge them, but the cardinal archbishop of Vienna, Christoph Schönborn, presented a different picture – of Ratzinger wanting to set up full investigations into accusations against a number of senior clerics – including Schönborn’s own predecessor, Cardinal Hans Groër, later exposed as a paedophile – but being blocked by other senior figures around the now grievously ailing John Paul II, notably the secretary of state, Cardinal Angelo Sodano.

By 2001, the reports of abuse and cover-up had grown so serious and so widespread that Ratzinger was placed in charge of coordinating the church’s response. His first act was to demand that every accusation be reported to him – in an effort to stop local bishops sweeping reports of abuse under the carpet, paying off victims with out-of-court settlements that bought their silence, and then reassigning the culprits to new parishes where they could carry on preying on the young. However, John Paul’s inner circle continued to limit Ratzinger’s ability to act in his new role.

It is possible that he was too elderly by the time he became pope to effect any real change:

His efforts, though sustained, were insufficient in their scope. There remained a tendency – clearly expressed in his letter to the Irish – to lay the blame on the local bishops and therefore to distance the Vatican from any responsibility. In such a centralised, hierarchical structure as world Catholicism, the buck should always end up in Rome.

Try as he undoubtedly did, with sincerity and anguish, Benedict was perhaps too old and too set in the ways of the church he had grown up with to contemplate more radical change.

Returning to Urwin’s article, ill health continued to dog him, and his retirement paved the way for Francis to take a similar decision, should he wish to do so:

When he was asked why he had chosen to resign, Benedict explained that the decision had come about during a mystical experience: “God told me to do it.”

It is likely that he has set a helpful precedent for his successor: Francis, who had half of his colon removed in 2021, has repeatedly said that he too would step down if his health became a barrier to serving as pope.

Benedict’s death makes the possibility of retirement for Francis less contentious, as it would mean there would be only two popes — one serving and one emeritus — rather than three. However, his retirement plans would again expose their differences: the humble Francis has said he would call himself the emeritus bishop of Rome and would not live in the Vatican — instead choosing a home for retired priests in the Italian capital “because it is my diocese”.

‘The devil worked against him’

In my second post, I said that I had read years ago that the devil was plaguing Benedict and there were certain rooms in the Vatican that he no longer felt comfortable entering because he felt a deep spiritual attack in those places.

I was relieved to find a new article on the subject to share with you. On January 2, Crux posted ‘Personal secretary to Benedict XVI says “the devil worked against him”‘:

Retired Pope Benedict XVI’s longtime personal secretary has given an interview in which he says he believes the devil was working against Benedict throughout his papacy, but the scandals which erupted during his reign had nothing to do with his historic resignation.

Speaking to the Italian newspaper La Reppublica, German Archbishop Georg Gänswein said the word “scandal” was perhaps “a bit strong” to describe the many crises that erupted during Benedict XVI’s papacy, but that “it’s true that during the pontificate there were many problems” …

“It’s clear, he always tries to touch, to hit where the nerves are exposed and do the most damage,” he said, saying he could often feel the devil at work, and, “I felt him very against Pope Benedict.”

Gänswein, 66, currently serves as Prefect of the Papal Household and was Benedict XVI’s personal secretary since before his election to the papacy in 2005, meaning he accompanied the late pontiff throughout his eight-year reign and remained with him after his historic resignation and the nearly 10 years since.

Gänswein recalled the moment when Cardinal Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI. He found it unusual, even portentous:

Gänswein said the large doors to the Sistine Chapel swung open and he entered the chapel, but didn’t know that his boss had been elected until “I saw him, down at the end. He was all white, even his face. His hair was already white.”

Benedict, he said, was already wearing the white papal zucchetto and his white cassock,

“But he was pallid, very pallid. And there, in that moment, he looked at me,” Gänswein said, saying his response was, “Holy Father, I don’t know what to say, congratulations or prayers.”

He then pledged his life to serve the newly elected pope, in life and “until or also in death.”

Gänswein said that his experience of his boss’s resignation was far from straightforward:

Reflecting on the day Benedict’s historic resignation went into effect, Gänswein said the first thing that comes to mind is the moment they left the apostolic palace to board the helicopter for Castel Gandolfo.

“I turned out the lights, and this for me was already a very emotional act, but also very sad,” he said, saying he tried to hold himself together, “but the pressure was too big,” and he began to weep, describing the feeling as “a type of tsunami above, under, around. I no longer knew who I was.”

Benedict, he said, “was in a state of incredible calm, as he was in the days preceding.”

Gänswein said Benedict XVI had first confided his decision to resign several months prior, in September 2012, and that his first reaction was “Holy Father it’s impossible. We can think of reducing your commitments, this yes, but to leave, to renounce, it’s impossible.”

He said Benedict let him speak, but responded saying, “you can imagine that I have thought well about this choice, I have reflected, I have prayed, I have fought, and now I communicate to you a decision made, not a thesis to be discussed. It is not a quaestio disputanda, it is decided.”

From that moment, Gänswein said he was sworn to silence.

In hindsight, Gänswein said he recalled that Benedict had been “very closed, very pensive,” since the summer of 2012, which he thought was because the late pontiff was concentrated on finishing the last in his Jesus of Nazareth book series.

“When he revealed his decision to me, I understood that I was mistaken: it was not the book that worried him, but it was the internal battle of this decision, a challenge,” he said, saying things went ahead like normal for the next few months.

Gänswein said that the child abuse scandals affected Benedict deeply. He began dealing with them as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and was the first senior prelate so to do:

Asked if Benedict XVI was referring to the clerical abuse scandals when, shortly after his election, he denounced “filth in the church” while presiding over the Via Crucis at the Colosseum during Holy Week in 2005, Gänswein said, “It must not be forgotten that as prefect he was the first, one of the first, to come into contact with this terrible scourge of abuse.”

“It’s obvious that that experience couldn’t not be present in the Via Crucis of 2005,” he said, recalling how Benedict at the beginning of his papacy asked for prayers so that “I may not flee for fear of the wolves.”

Gänswein said he is unaware of what exactly, or who, Benedict was referring to, but the image of the wolf in that context “means it is not easy to be coherent, counter-current, and maintain this direction if many are of another opinion.”

Gänswein also said that Benedict’s visit to Celestine V’s tomb in 2009 had nothing to do with his resignation, either. Celestine V was the last pope to retire. He retired 600 years before Benedict did.

Furthermore, the other problems during Benedict’s papacy did not influence his decision to retire:

Gänswein also rejected rumors that the crises which erupted during Benedict’s papacy, and the intense criticism he endured, were factors in his decision to resign. He said he once asked Benedict about it, and the response was, “No, the question never influenced my resignation.”

“Feb. 11, 2013, I said my motives: I lacked the strength to govern. To guide the church, today, strength is needed, otherwise it doesn’t work,” was Benedict’s response, Gänswein said …

Responding to critics who frowned on Benedict’s decision to resign while his predecessor, John Paul II, continued to reign while openly afflicted by the effects of Parkinson’s, Gänswein said Benedict was never bothered by the comparison.

“He told me once: I cannot and do not want to copy the model of John Paul II in sickness, because I have to face my life, my choices, my strengths. This is why the pope allowed himself to make this decision, which to me required not only a lot of courage, but also a lot of humility,” he said.

Gänswein said the decision to announce Benedict’s resignation on Feb. 11 was made to coincide with the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes …

He and Benedict were together that morning but, outside of praying, they were silent.

Gänswein described the atmosphere in the room when Benedict announced his retirement to the cardinals:

Benedict chose to make his announcement in Latin, Gänswein said, because he insisted that “an announcement like that must be made in the language of the church, the mother tongue.”

“You heard from his voice that the pope was moved and tired, both things,” he said, saying he began to notice “movement” among the cardinals when Benedict began to speak in Latin, and that some understood “there was something strange” happening faster than others.

By the time the former dean of the College of Cardinals, Italian Cardinal Angelo Sodano, who passed away last year, got up and responded to Benedict, saying his announcement came like lightening in a clear blue sky, “everyone realized what was happening,” Gänswein said.

In terms of Benedict’s post-retirement title of “pope emeritus,” Gänswein said it was chosen by Benedict himself.

“I think that faced with a decision so exceptional, to return to cardinal would not have been natural. But there is no doubt that there was always only one pope, and he is called Francis,” he said.

Benedict’s resignation, he said, shows that “the sacred is sacred, and it also has human aspects.”

“I believe that with his resignation Pope Benedict also demonstrated that the pope, if he is always the successor of Peter, remains a human person with all of their strengths, but also with their weaknesses,” he said, saying, “one is needed, but you must also live the other. Because strength is needed to accept one’s own weakness.”

Defender of celibacy in the priesthood

The Guardian‘s obituary tells us that Benedict felt strongly about Catholic priests remaining celibate:

In January 2020, Benedict publicly defended clerical celibacy, as Francis was considering allowing married men to become priests in limited circumstances. “I cannot keep silent,” he wrote in a book, From the Depths of Our Hearts: Priesthood, Celibacy and the Crisis of the Catholic Church, arguing that priestly celibacy protected the mystery of the church.

An atheist’s apologia for Benedict

Brendan O’Neill, an atheist, wrote a moving post for Spiked on the day Benedict died, December 31, 2022.

In it, he explored the late Pope’s understanding of freedom and the Enlightenment:

In the 2000s, both before and during his papacy, Benedict devoted his brilliant mind to doing battle with moral relativism. He viewed relativism, where the very ‘concept of truth has become suspect’, as the great scourge of our times. He railed against ‘the massive presence in our society and culture of [a] relativism which, recognising nothing as definitive, leaves as the ultimate criterion only the self with its desires’. He said that the cultural elites’ dismantling of truth, even of reality itself (witness transgenderism’s war on biology), might present itself as ‘freedom’ but it actually has severely atomising and authoritarian consequences. The postmodern assault on truth is pursued under the ‘semblance of freedom’, he said, but ‘it becomes a prison for each one, for it separates people from one another, locking each person into his or her own ego’.

In short, absent any notion of universal truth, devoid of social standards we might define ourselves by (or against), we’re left with just the individual, playing around in his own prison of identity. ‘A large proportion of contemporary philosophies… consist of saying that man is not capable of truth’, said Benedict. ‘But viewed in that way, man would not be capable of ethical values, either. Then he would have no standards. Then he would only have to consider how he arranged things reasonably for himself…’ Relativism means letting oneself be ‘tossed here and there, carried about by every wind of doctrine’, he said. We’re in that moment now. The march of moral relativism has not made a freer, more content society but an agitated, uncertain one. Post-truth, post-reality, even post-biology, the individual is not liberated, but lost, left utterly alone to ‘arrange things reasonably for himself’.

Perhaps Benedict’s most important insight was that this dictatorship of relativism represented a negation of the Enlightenment.Too many right-wingers and ‘Trad Caths’– youthful influencers who take refuge from wokeness in the incense-fused safe space of the Catholic Church – blame every ill on the Enlightenment. Technocracy, scientism, the pseudo-rational deconstruction of language and reality – it’s all apparently a logical consequence of man’s grave folly of believing he could master nature and shape the future.

Benedict knew better. What we are witnessing is a ‘radical detachment of the Enlightenment philosophy from its roots’, he said. Modern rationalists tell us that ‘man, deep down, has no freedom’, and also that he ‘must not think that he is something more than all other living beings’, Benedict noted. This is proof, he said, that those who pose as the contemporary guardians of Enlightenment thought have in fact come to be ‘separated from the roots of humanity’s historical memory’. Enlightenment thinkers did believe man was higher than beasts. They did believe man was capable of freedom. Today’s supposed rationalists act ‘in total contradiction with the starting point of [Enlightenment thought]’, Benedict said.

It should not be surprising that Benedict had a deeper, more subtle understanding of the Enlightenment than many of the coarse rationalists in the New Atheist set did. For he was a critical student of Enlightenment thought, as Maurice Ashley Agbaw-Ebai outlined in his excellent study of Benedict published last year: Light of Reason, Light of Faith: Joseph Ratzinger and the German Enlightenment. Agbaw-Ebai argues that Benedict’s theology was one steeped in rationality, speaking to his decades-long engagement with Enlightenment thinkers.

Indeed, Benedict held that Christianity was a ‘religion according to reason’. He argued, rightly, that the Enlightenment sprung from the traditions and tensions within Christianity itself – ‘the Enlightenment is of Christian origin’, he said. One of his most striking utterances was to say that the Enlightenment had ‘given back reason its own voice’. That is, it took ideas of reason from Christianity and expressed those ideas in the voice of reason alone …

Benedict’s beef was not with reason, then, as his ill-read critics would have us believe, but with what he referred to as ‘purely functional rationality’. Or scientism, as others call it: the modern creed of evidence-based politics that judges everything by experiment rather than morality. Ours is a ‘world based on calculation’, Benedict lamented. ‘[It] is the calculation of consequences that determines what must or must not be considered moral. And thus the category of good… disappears [my emphasis]. Nothing is good or bad in itself, everything depends on the consequences that an action allows one to foresee.’

We see this cult of calculation everywhere today. Industry and growth are judged not according to whether they will be good for us, but through the pseudo-science of calculating their impact on the planet. Human activity is likewise measured, and reprimanded, by calculating the carbon footprint it allegedly leaves. Parenting has been reduced from a moral endeavour to a scientific one – you must now follow the calculations of parenting experts and gurus if you don’t want your kids to be messed up. Benedict was right about our world of calculation – it chases out questions of morality, truth and freedom in preference for only doing what the calculating classes deem to be low-risk in terms of consequences. When everything is devised for us by a calculating elite, freedom suffers, said Benedict – for ‘our freedom and our dignity cannot come… from technical systems of control, but can, specifically, spring only from man’s moral strength’.

Benedict was most concerned with defending the specialness of humankind against the claim of the ‘functional rationalists’ that man is essentially little more than a clever animal. This is why he agitated so firmly against the calculating classes’ belief that ‘man must not think that he is something more than all other living beings’. He’d be branded a speciesist if he said this today – how dare you assume that polluting, marauding mankind is superior, more important, than the beasts of the Earth? One of my favourite comments from Benedict was made at his installation Mass as pope in April 2005. He said: ‘We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary.’

No, I do not share Benedict’s belief in God. I am an atheist. But Benedict’s agitation against the idea that humanity is a consequence of evolution alone was a profoundly important one. A key part of today’s functional rationalism is evolutionary psychology, a science particularly beloved of Dawkinites and the so-called Intellectual Dark Web. It holds that virtually everything human beings think and do can be explained by evolutionary processes, as if we are indistinguishable from those monkeys that first came down from the trees; as if we are propelled into tribal affiliations and warfare and sex by traits stamped into us by the ceaseless march of nature. This, too, chases out the small matter of morality, the small matter that we have risen above our nature and now really are ‘more than all other living beings’, in Benedict’s words. We are capable of choice, we are capable of good. Good – a terribly old-fashioned concept, I know.

A life in pictures

The Guardian has a marvellous selection of photographs of Joseph Ratzinger throughout his life, including a family photo and one of the joint ordination with his brother Georg, who predeceased him in 2020.

Benedict’s legacy

Commonweal‘s obituary states that opinion will be divided on Benedict’s papacy:

After the “long nineteenth century” (as characterized by John O’Malley) of the Catholic Church was brought to an end by the calling of the council in 1959, Benedict XVI was in some ways the last pope of the delayed conclusion of the twentieth-century Catholic Church, a short century beginning with John XXIII and Vatican II and ending in 2013 with the election of the first non-European and non-Mediterranean pope. Joseph Ratzinger was a brilliant theologian and public intellectual, but also a provocative cleric who as pope had the courage to risk unpopularity. He will remain one of the most widely published and widely read popes in Church history, and likely one of the most controversial. Few committed Catholics will be indifferent or dispassionate about him.

Lying in state and funeral

On New Year’s Day 2023, the day after Benedict’s death, the Vatican issued an announcement about his funeral. The Sunday Telegraph reported:

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI will have a “solemn but simple” funeral this week, the Vatican said, in a ceremony that will be presided over by a sitting pope for the first time in centuries.

The funeral on Thursday will be in accordance with the former pontiff’s wishes and will be led by Pope Francis.

The unusual circumstances will mean the Vatican is navigating uncharted waters as it hammers out the finer details of the event.

I am certain that everything worked out well. His funeral was held today, Thursday, January 5.

The article has a photo of him lying in state privately at the Vatican in a chapel. That was taken before he was moved to St Peter’s Basilica for public viewing:

The Vatican released the first photos of Benedict following his death on Saturday at the age of 95, showing him resting on a catafalque in the chapel of the former convent inside the Vatican city state where he spent his retirement.

His head resting on a pillow, the former pope was dressed in red vestments and a cream-coloured mitre, his hands clutching a rosary.

The corpse was flanked on one side by a Christmas tree and on the other by a Nativity scene.

On Monday morning, Benedict’s body will be transferred to St Peter’s Basilica, where the faithful will be able to pay their respects.

After the funeral, he will be buried in the papal tombs under St Peter’s Basilica.

On Monday, January 2, the Mail reported on the crowds paying their respects at St Peter’s. The paper included many moving photographs:

Catholics bowed their heads and say prayers as they fill up St Peter’s Basilica to pay their respects to Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI – this is where he will lie in state for three days before a ‘simple’ funeral at the Vatican on Thursday.

The doors of the basilica were swung open just after 9am today so the public, some of whom had waited for hours, could visit the late pontiff …

His body – dressed in a mitre, the headgear of a bishop, and a red cloak-like vestment in preparation – was placed on a simple dais, with two Swiss guards standing on either side as mourners walked by … 

Before the rank-and-file faithful were allowed into the basilica, prayers were intoned and a small cloud of incense was released near the body, its hands clasped on its chest.

By mid-morning the queue to enter the basilica snaked around St Peter’s Square.

Once allowed to enter, the public filed up the centre aisle to pass by the bier with its cloth draping.

While the number of visitors was large, there were no signs of the huge crowds who came to pay their respects to Pope John Paul II in 2005, when millions waited for hours to enter the basilica. 

Last night, Benedict’s long-time secretary, Archbishop Georg Gaenswein, and a handful of consecrated laywomen who served in his household, followed a van by foot in a silent procession toward the basilica. 

Some of the women stretched out a hand to touch the body with respect.

The Catholic News Agency has the prayers for Benedict’s funeral Mass, some of which were read in Latin.

Francis’s future

News reports have been circulating that Pope Francis could retire.

On the day that Benedict died, The Guardian reported:

For the first time in almost 10 years, there will be only one pope. But that may be temporary.

Pope Benedict XVI’s death, nine years and 10 months after he unexpectedly stepped down, eases the way for his successor, Francis, to follow suit. It is a move he has long suggested he wants to make.

Benedict was the first pontiff for 600 years to retire rather than die in office – a shock move that was a gamechanger, according to Vatican experts.

Soon after Francis greeted hundreds of thousands of followers gathered in St Peter’s Square following his election, Benedict’s successor began hinting at the possibility of his own retirement.

He said he would like to see the resignation of popes become normalised, and later said he had a feeling his pontificate would be brief, describing his predecessor’s decision to step down as “courageous”.

Last summer, he raised the prospect again. On his return to Rome after a papal visit to Canada, he told reporters the “door is open” to his retirement. It would not be “a catastrophe”, he said …

The Vatican is a deeply factional place. There are many enemies of Pope Francis’s relatively progressive agenda with its focus on poverty, refugees and the climate crisis. This Christmas, he criticised “hunger for wealth and power”.

Some of Francis’s opponents have tried to rally support for conservative values around Benedict as an alternative figurehead.

In thinking about the possibility of retirement, Francis – who turned 86 earlier this month – will have considered the impact of two retired popes on his own successor.

With Benedict’s death, the path to retirement becomes a little easier. 13 March will be the 10th anniversary of Francis’s election as the Roman Catholic church’s 266th pontiff. Some time around then, or in the following months, perhaps after a key synod of bishops in the autumn, may seem an appropriate time for an announcement.

The veteran Catholic journalist Catherine Pepinster gave us more of a picture for the paper, ‘It’s a papal version of Succession: at Benedict XVI’s funeral, the plotting will begin’:

Airlines usually upgrade cardinals to first class and offer them champagne. But when the leaders of the Roman Catholic church fly into Rome’s Fiumicino airport this week for the funeral of the former pope Benedict XVI, they may well forgo the fizz as a sign of their mourning. It’s hard to imagine, though, that they will refrain from engaging in the whispers and the politicking that is so typical of a gathering of top Catholic prelates. The funeral will be a time to remember and mourn Benedict – but the plotting that will take place may resemble an episode of Succession …

When a pope dies in office, cardinals come from across the globe to bury him and elect his successor. This time, of course, there is no need to do so. There is already a pope – Francis, the man picked in 2013 to succeed him. But when he leads Benedict’s funeral on 5 January, the cardinals may well wonder if they will be back in Rome soon for another conclave. At 86, Francis himself is already physically frail …

There are some in the Roman Catholic church who would dearly love another pope to be elected very soon …

Certain followers of Benedict who asserted that all Catholics should be utterly loyal to a pope when he sat on the throne of Peter have shown no such fidelity to Francis, and have constantly criticised his efforts at reform …

In 2005, when John Paul II died, the conservatives were well-organised and encouraged the voting members of the College of Cardinals ­– those under 80 – to pick Joseph Ratzinger, who took the name Pope Benedict XVI. When Benedict quit eight years later, the liberals were better organised …

Who will the cardinals elect next time? We Catholics in the pew, whether conservatives or progressives, have to accept that cardinals are as human as the rest of us, and not averse to plotting. But maybe we should offer a prayer that the Holy Spirit may, on the next occasion, help them find someone who could be what a pope always used to be – a unifying figure.

On January 3, The Times reported that the conservatives are gearing up:

The death of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI could deepen divisions at the top of the Catholic Church by both “removing a brake” from Pope Francis and emboldening his conservative critics to try to succeed him, analysts said today.

Giuseppe Rusconi, a leading Vatican journalist, said the death of Benedict, formerly Joseph Ratzinger, at the age of 95 would have consequences for his conservative followers and his more progressive successor.

“The conservatives have been weakened by Ratzinger’s death but they will now feel authorised to be more openly critical of Pope Francis, while Francis will no longer feel overshadowed by Pope Benedict and be free to cross new boundaries in his reforms,” Rusconi said. “A brake has been removed, both as regards the conservatives’ criticisms and the radical quality of Francis’ reforms” …

Sandro Magister, another veteran Vatican observer, noted there was a void on the conservative wing of the church, and predicted a competitive “free for all” in the Vatican, with different agendas jostling for influence. Magister said Benedict’s continued presence in the Vatican after his retirement had acted as a check on Francis and his supporters. “[Now] there’s likely to be a free for all, without any clear guidelines. We are in a phase of confusion now, the opposite of the clear, limpid, rational thought of Pope Benedict,” he added.

Of the 132 cardinals aged under 80, and therefore eligible to vote in a conclave to elect a new pope, 83 were appointed by Francis. About a dozen cardinals, mainly senior conservatives, will also lose the right to vote this year.

Unlike other commentators, these two journalists do not think Francis will retire any time soon:

Rusconi does not expect Francis, born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Buenos Aires, to follow Ratzinger’s example any time soon …

Magister said Francis was unpredictable but was unlikely to resign soon. “His resignation is more practicable now, but I don’t see it as imminent,” he said. “His activism is remarkable for a man of his age. His diary is packed with engagements.”

However, the editor of the Catholic paper La Croix International said that Francis’s health is very poor:

Robert Mickens, the editor-in-chief of La Croix International, a Catholic newspaper, said he expected Francis to resign as early as this year, possibly after the October synod. Mickens said the Pope was having difficulty with unscripted speech, sometimes slipping into Spanish expressions and rambling. “He’s way overweight, which doesn’t help his knee problem,” he added …

Mickens said there would be a gathering of ultra-conservative political leaders and representatives of European royalty at Benedict’s funeral on Thursday. “Ratzinger represents a Europe that is no longer or is slipping away. His funeral brings down the curtain on an era.”

Although Francis may have stacked the deck in favour of church liberals with his appointments to the college of cardinals, it was impossible to predict who might emerge as Pope from the next conclave, he said. “I know conservatives are working right now, trying to influence the succession. Bergoglio has opened a Pandora’s box with synodality [increased democratic debate] and conservatives are alarmed that it could result in radical changes that can’t be undone,” Mickens added.

Talk about the end of an era, which is where I began this post.

Fortunately, Joseph Ratzinger is now at rest with such temporal worries behind him. I hope to meet him one day in eternity.

The rise and fall of Matt Hancock — part 3

My series on Matt Hancock MP continues.

Those who missed them can catch up on parts 1 and 2.

Today’s post takes us further into the late Spring up to the early autumn of 2020. The Government’s policy on coronavirus held the UK hostage at home, for varying amounts of time, depending on what part of the country one lived in.

Testing centres popped up around the country. Hancock, who was Health Secretary at the time, urged everyone to go to one of these centres to find out if they had the virus. The narrative was that the asymptomatic could still have it and transmit it to someone else. What a load of cobblers. As Mike Yeadon, who used to work for Pfizer said, if you’re ill, you’ll know about it.

A mobile phone app also appeared: Test and Trace. Another load of rubbish, which was very expensive. Surprisingly, many Britons with smartphones used it. Another good reason for not having a smartphone.

Imperial College’s SAGE modeller, Prof Neil Ferguson, was discovered to have broken lockdown with his mistress, who lived on the other side of London.

In May, news emerged that Boris’s top adviser Dominic Cummings slipped off from London with his wife and son to Barnard Castle, County Durham. As penance, Boris made Cummings give a 90-minute press conference in the Downing Street Rose Garden. Excruciating.

England’s Independence Day was declared on the Fourth of July. Then-Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s hospitality plan, Eat Out to Help Out, started a short while later, boosting restaurant sales.

During this time, the borders were open and people could travel freely. The problem were the sudden embargos which interrupted holidays at inconvenient hours of the day. Britons were often told to return home from a European country, mostly France and Spain, at midnight or 4 a.m.

However, it wouldn’t be long before the long tentacles of SAGE would find more doom and gloom in the autumn.

More extracts from Matt Hancock and Isabel Oakeshott’s Pandemic Diaries, serialised in the Mail, continue, with news items I bookmarked from the time. Emphases mine below.

May 2020

Amazingly, Hancock managed to achieve his testing goal of 100,000, which seemed impossible when he announced it only a month earlier.

These are the principal extracts from the Mail for the entries below, unless otherwise indicated.

Friday, May 1:

We did it, and with a very comfortable margin. 122,347 tests! Let the naysayers put that in their pipe and smoke it! I’d be lying if I didn’t say I enjoyed my moment, given how desperately certain people were willing me to fail.

Then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson was fascinated by Australia’s low rate of infection. Little did he know at the time that Australia would go into a prolonged lockdown lasting months.

Sunday, May 3:

We still haven’t figured out what to do about borders. [Dominic] Raab, [Grant] Shapps and Sunak all want to keep the borders open. Crucially, they’re supported by the Prof [Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty]. On the other side, Priti Patel and I are in favour of far tougher measures, as is Boris.

Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon was enjoying her power over her people, starring in daily briefings which the BBC televised. She gave her briefings at lunchtime. The UK government gave theirs in the early evening.

Monday, May 4:

Tonight, Nicola Sturgeon announced a ‘summer push to elimination [of Covid]’, a policy which has about as much hope of working as Chairman Mao’s attempt to eliminate sparrows by getting the Chinese population to bang pots and pans.

Much as I’m sure Nicola would love to build a Trump-style wall between her fiefdom and the rest of Great Britain, we’re all in this together. One person who’s clearly not keen on a hermit lifestyle is Prof Neil Ferguson [who was advising the Government on its Covid response]. 

I wasn’t particularly sympathetic when I heard he’d been caught breaking the rules [by meeting with his lover]. He’s issued a grovelling apology, but it was obvious he couldn’t continue to act as a Government adviser.

Ferguson resigned from SPI-M, SAGE’s modelling team, but was reinstated in 2021.

The care home situation continued to loom large. Infections and deaths were ever present. Furthermore, families were rightly distressed by having to press up against a window to see their elderly loved ones, a situation that persists in some care homes even today.

Boris suggested that Hancock hire Kate Bingham, a venture capitalist with a background in pharmaceuticals, as the head of the Vaccine Taskforce.

Also on May 4, we discovered that Good Morning Britain‘s star presenter Piers Morgan was a ‘Government-designated essential worker’. His test was negative, but he was experiencing symptoms, so he stayed off air for a few more days. The Mail reported that Hancock tweeted his best wishes before Morgan got the results of his test:

Mr Hancock, who had his own battle with coronavirus and who has previously clashed with the GMB host on the ITV morning show, tweeted that he hoped if Mr Morgan did test positive for Covid-19 that the symptoms would be mild. 

On May 7, Hancock announced that Baroness Dido Harding would head the Test and Trace programme:

Delighted that @didoharding has agreed to step up to lead our vital cross-govt Test and Trace programme pic.twitter.com/dJuVs4kpRp

— Matt Hancock (@MattHancock) May 7, 2020

On May 9, the Mail on Sunday reported that Boris and Cabinet members were clashing with the beleaguered Health Secretary:

Matt Hancock is living on ‘borrowed time’ as Health Secretary following clashes with the three most powerful members of the Government over the Covid crisis, The Mail on Sunday has been told.

Mr Hancock is understood to have pleaded ‘give me a break’ when Boris Johnson reprimanded him over the virus testing programme – leading to open questioning within Downing Street over Mr Hancock’s long-term political future.

His run-in with Mr Johnson follows battles with both Rishi Sunak and Michael Gove over the best strategy for managing the pandemic.

Shortly after Mr Johnson returned to work at No 10 a fortnight ago, he and Mr Johnson had a tense exchange about the the Health Department’s ‘grip’ on the crisis, during which Mr Hancock said to the Prime Minister, in what has been described as a ‘petulant’ tone: ‘That’s not fair – give me a break.’

He is also being blamed in some Government quarters – or scapegoated, according to his allies – for not moving quickly enough to do more to protect care homes from the epidemic. 

On Wednesday, May 13, Hancock announced a new genomics initiative in order to better understand the virus:

NEWS: We’re launching a genomics study to further understand #coronavirus – harnessing our world leading genomics science to improve treatments & save lives. Details: https://t.co/4kUPVAfehR pic.twitter.com/HrWi8Wu8WT

— Matt Hancock (@MattHancock) May 13, 2020

Thursday, May 14:

People are starting to blame us for discharging elderly people from hospital into residential settings without testing them properly, before we introduced strict rules. The evidence simply doesn’t bear that out: care home outbreaks rose sharply long after we had enough tests to put that right.

That day, a Labour peer was mystified as to why the Government did not know how much PPE there was:

The answer is not excellent. Don’t you know how many items on average the @NHSuk needs each day of the various types of #ppe? If you do, tell us? If you don’t, why on Earth not and how can you do your job?

— Lord Toby Harris (@LordTobySays) May 14, 2020

Friday, May 22:

Westminster is abuzz with claims that Cummings broke lockdown rules, going to stay with his parents while he had Covid, which looks like a mega breach.

Saturday, May 23:

Downing Street called asking if I’d do some media [to support Cummings], but I’m uneasy. Despite all the reassurances, it feels off.

In the end, I issued a supportive tweet, saying he was right to find childcare for his toddler when both he and his wife were getting ill.

[Former Chancellor] George Osborne messaged me this evening warning me not to stick my neck out for Cummings again. ‘Lie low’ was his advice.

Sunday, May 24:

I spent much of the day fielding angry messages, many of them questioning why the PM is still standing up for Cummings. The answer is that he rules through fear and intimidation, squashing those who dare to challenge him or get in his way.

Monday, May 25:

Cummings tried to draw a line under the Barnard Castle affair by holding a press conference in the Downing Street garden. He sat behind a table, squinting awkwardly into the sun, looking like a sulky teenager who’d been sent outside to do his work for disrupting the class.

Afterwards, I found myself feeling strangely sorry for Boris.

Cummings has only one setting – divide and destroy – and now the boss is having to say some pretty stupid things as he machetes his way through the resulting mess.

The only thing for it was to keep backing Cummings – silence from me would only create an unhelpful story – so this evening I tweeted that I welcome the fact that Cummings ‘has provided substantive answers to all the questions put to him’. Apparently it got me some credit in No 10, but I can’t say I felt good about it.

Away from the Cummings s*** show, we had a Cabinet meeting to discuss plans for easing restrictions. It was a bizarre Cabinet, held on Zoom without a single mention of the Cummings-shaped elephant in the room. 

In fact, an absurd amount of bandwidth was occupied by a discussion about whether – when we allow two households to get together outside – people should be permitted to walk through a house to get to a friend’s garden. 

It’s fine by me, but are people going to ask whether they will also be able to go inside to use the loo? ‘If they’re quick and disinfect the handle?’ the Prof replied.

Who could believe that under a Conservative government, the long arm of the State would find its way into people’s loos?

On Tuesday, May 26, a Sky News reporter called out to Hancock asking if he was going to sack Cummings. Ermm, it wasn’t Hancock’s responsibility, only Boris’s:

The absolute state of the British media 🤦‍♂️ pic.twitter.com/4T4Yt2U4oz

— Mahyar Tousi (@MahyarTousi) May 26, 2020

June 2020

Thursday, June 4:

Boris messaged me at 6.43am saying he was ‘going quietly crackers’ about not testing enough people. He told me he sees it as our ‘Achilles heel’. He was in a proper flap. ‘What is wrong with our country that we can’t fix this?’ he complained. 

I tried to calm him down. ‘Don’t go crackers,’ I said. ‘We now have the biggest testing capacity in Europe.’ Tempting as it was, I refrained from saying we did this against the obstruction of his own No 10 operation.

Wednesday, June 17:

In an embarrassingly crude power grab, [European Commission President] Ursula von der Leyen is trying to wrest control of vaccine research and procurement from EU member states.

Never mind that health is a matter for individual countries: the woman who once sent German army units on manoeuvres with broomsticks – because they didn’t have any rifles – wants to move responsibility for scientific development and manufacture into the sticky paws of Brussels bureaucrats.

I may have voted to Remain, but it’s enough to make a Brexiteer out of anyone.

Friday, June 19:

A massive blow-up with Kate [Bingham, head of the Vaccine Taskforce]. She simply doesn’t see the need to order 100 million doses of the Oxford vaccine – she wants 30 million – and can’t seem to grasp almost everyone may want or need it.

I warned her during today’s meeting that if we don’t get our ducks in a row on this one, we risk a complete car crash.

She pushed back hard. But with the other elected Ministers on my side, I won the argument [for buying 100 million doses].

‘I’m not happy with that meeting,’ Kate snapped afterwards. ‘Nor me,’ I replied.

‘We will create a guide for you to explain what we are doing – there are enormous risks with this,’ she said, as if I don’t spend all my time thinking about how to save lives.

Kate pressed on, claiming that the technology that underpins the vaccine Oxford is working on [Astra-Zeneca] ‘is neither proven nor scaled’, and that she has ‘an expert team who are working round the clock, pushing hard’.

I told her: ‘We need to have tried everything feasibly possible to accelerate delivery. I’ve been asking the same question over and over again and not yet had a satisfactory answer – hence my frustration.’

This only seemed to wind her up further, prompting a mini-lecture about the dangers of trying to go too far too fast.

‘The worse case is we kill people with an unsafe vaccine,’ she said. ‘We need to tone the comms to register the fact this is risky and unproven.‘

If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s being patronised.

On Wednesday, June 24, Hancock, riding high as the chap in charge of the nation’s health, appeared on Robert Peston’s ITV current affairs show:

🌎 𝐋𝐈𝐕𝐄 🌎 Use #Peston to join the conversation
@Peston & @AnushkaAsthana are joined by Sir Paul Nurse (@TheCrick), Health Secretary @MattHancock, Cherie Blair (@Tcbooth), Tory MP @GregClarkMP & US commentator @davidfrum https://t.co/k1prktzcZh

— Peston (@itvpeston) June 24, 2020

July 2020

July 4 was Independence Day from coronavirus in England.

However, separate regulations applied in Leicester, which still had a high rate of infection. Even so, nothing was stopping them travelling elsewhere to socialise or shop:

Separate laws were published for Leicester

Residents are banned from staying overnight away from home "without reasonable excuse”, gatherings are restricted and non-essential businesses closed

But the law does not stop people leaving Leicester and heading to pubs etc elsewhere

— Lizzie Dearden (@lizziedearden) July 3, 2020

On Sunday, July 5, Hancock expressed concern over high infection rates and overcrowded working conditions in certain factories in Leicester. It seems he was thinking of certain textile factories operating like sweatshops:

Matt Hancock says he v worried about employment practices in some factories in Leicester – talks of problems “under the radar” that “need action” #Marr

— Nick Eardley (@nickeardleybbc) July 5, 2020

Monday, July 6:

The Vaccine Taskforce have consistently argued that we only need to back three [vaccine] brands. My view is that, to hedge our bets, we need more. Any one of the vaccines could fail in clinical trials.

Fortunately, Rishi and Steve Barclay at the Treasury are totally onside.

Wednesday, July 8:

Rishi’s announced a new Eat Out To Help Out initiative. I did my best to sound supportive, but in truth I’m worried that it might backfire and lead to a spike in cases.

Thursday, July 16:

In my box tonight was one particularly startling note relating to the way Covid has been getting into care homes. The main takeaway is that the virus is primarily being brought in by staff, not by elderly people who’ve been discharged from hospital.

This explains a lot, including why the rise in care home deaths came so much later than would have been the case if hospital discharges were the primary cause. We must ban staff movement between care homes, fast.

On Friday, July 17, news emerged that deaths from natural causes were being classified as coronavirus deaths because of a previous positive test. A retired journalist had the story:

This emerged only because, says source: "We noticed that hospital deaths were falling but community deaths were up and wondered why …

"It turns out you could have been tested positive in February, recovered, then hit by a bus in July and you'd be recorded as a covid death".

— Joe Murphy (@JoeMurphyLondon) July 17, 2020

He pointed out that Public Health England (PHE) never announced how they were tabulating deaths. Scotland, of course, tabulated theirs differently:

PHE say there is no WHO time limit to when covid should be counted as a factor.

But Scotland count things differently.

What infuriates me is that we, the public, were not given this information by PHE to make up our own minds with the facts.

— Joe Murphy (@JoeMurphyLondon) July 17, 2020

The question remains: how many ‘Covid’ deaths were true Covid deaths?

Saturday, July 25:

Anyone coming back from Spain from midnight tonight will have to self-quarantine for 14 days. This is very bad news for a lot of British holidaymakers.

Department for Transport officials kept pushing for 24 hours’ notice for the Spain decision, which I thought was curious – Grant Shapps is normally an ‘action this day’ Minister – until I discovered that Grant and his family had just flown there on holiday. The officials were trying, perhaps too hard, to protect their Minister.

In Cobra meetings, Nicola Sturgeon’s political games have become incredibly debilitating and significantly limit scope for open discussion. She sits like a statue, lips pursed like the top of a drawstring bag, only jolting into life when there’s an opportunity to say something to further the separatist cause.

The minute someone presses ‘End Meeting’, you can almost hear her running for a lectern so she can rush out an announcement before we make ours. We now chew over big decisions elsewhere and relegate formal meetings to rubber-stamping exercises.

Monday, July 27:

Downing Street is in a semi-panic about a second wave.

Tuesday, July 28:

Sturgeon is on manoeuvres again, trying to persuade us all to sign up to her impossible and anti- scientific zero-Covid plan.

Sure, we’d all love zero Covid, but that’s about as realistic as a bagpipe-playing unicorn.

She just wants to look and sound tough, then blame us when her policies don’t work.

I can hardly bear to watch her on TV any more.

Wednesday, July 29:

Testing is a continuing concern. We still haven’t sorted procurement for what Boris calls ‘Operation Moonshot’. The idea is to carry out literally millions of Covid tests a day to keep the economy going.

Also on that day:

Officials say we mustn’t eliminate staff movement across care homes because it might lead to a shortage of staff. Yet research shows the risk of outbreaks in care homes doubles if carers are coming and going.

On Thursday, July 30, Bradford was experiencing a high rate of coronavirus. Hancock put restrictions in place.

This was Bradford Council’s message:

Tonight Matt Hancock has announced new restrictions on families meeting in areas of the North of England, including Bradford. We ask people to follow these new guidelines. We’ll be able to respond in more detail once we have clarity from the govt of what it means for our district https://t.co/f2LfrdnHfr

— Bradford Council (@bradfordmdc) July 30, 2020

Hancock’s restrictions prohibited people meeting up at each other’s homes:

2/4 We've been working with local leaders across the region, and today I chaired a meeting of the Local Action Gold Committee. Based on the data, we decided that in Greater Manchester, parts of West Yorkshire & East Lancashire we need to take immediate action to keep people safe.

— Matt Hancock (@MattHancock) July 30, 2020

4/4 We take this action with a heavy heart, but we can see increasing rates of covid across Europe and are determined to do whatever is neccessary to keep people safe.

— Matt Hancock (@MattHancock) July 30, 2020

SkyNews had a report on the story:

Matt Hancock said the move to ban households from meeting indoors in parts of northern England was part of "immediate action" to keep people safe from #coronavirus.

Sky's @joepike has the latest on this breaking story.

Read more here: https://t.co/jOtdLfRg8i pic.twitter.com/yOGddeidRJ

— Sky News (@SkyNews) July 30, 2020

Fortunately, for them, it might have felt like an eternity but it was temporary.

What wasn’t temporary was his announcement earlier that day that GP appointments would have to take place remotely. This is still in place today, causing untold distress to millions of Britons.

The Guardian reported:

All GP appointments should be done remotely by default unless a patient needs to be seen in person, Matt Hancock has said, prompting doctors to warn of the risk of abandoning face-to-face consultations.

In a speech setting out lessons for the NHS and care sector from the coronavirus pandemic, the health secretary claimed that while some errors were made, “so many things went right” in the response to Covid-19, and new ways of working should continue.

He said it was patronising to claim that older patients were not able to handle technology.

The plan for web-based GP appointments is set to become formal policy, and follows guidance already sent to GPs on having more online consultations.

But the Royal College of GPs (RCGP) hit back, saying it would oppose a predominantly online system on the grounds that both doctors and patients benefited from proper contact.

They don’t seem to think so now, do they?

The article continues:

Addressing the Royal College of Physicians in London, Hancock noted the huge increase in online consultations as much of the NHS closed its doors to focus on the crisis. In the four weeks to mid-April, 71% of routine GP appointments were done remotely against 25% in the same period a year before.

Outlining what he said were the ways the pandemic had demonstrated the need for greater uses of technology in healthcare, Hancock said that before the coronavirus, “there was a view advanced by some which held that anyone over the age of 25 simply could not cope with anything other than a face-to-face appointment”.

He said: “Of course there always has to be a system for people who can’t log on. But we shouldn’t patronise older people by saying they don’t do tech.”

The rise in online consultations had been welcome, he argued, especially in rural areas. “So from now on, all consultations should be tele-consultations unless there’s a compelling clinical reason not to,” Hancock said.

“Of course, if there’s an emergency, the NHS will be ready and waiting to see you in person – just as it always has been. But if they are able to, patients should get in contact first – via the web or by calling in advance.”

Sure, Matt.

What a disaster that policy has proven to be.

The month seemed to end on a positive note with regard to agency staff working in multiple care homes.

July 31:

Good news on banning staff movement in care homes. After I blew my top, officials got the message.

August

By August, even though England was open and people were socialising again, rules were still in place. They caused a lot of confusion, including in Government. Only Boris had mastered them.

Monday, August 3:

To ram home his point about how complicated the Covid rules have got, Boris went round the [Cabinet] table asking everyone to set them out simply. We had endless different answers, and he got them all right. 

‘I hope colleagues feel I have justified my general reputation for mastery of detail by being RIGHT this morning about the rules. It’s two households inside and six outside,’ he said triumphantly.

Boris was eager for people to get back to work. He saw self-administered tests — lateral flow tests — as the answer.

Friday, August 7:

Boris is having a sugar rush about DIY Covid testing, which he believes could lead us to what’s he’s dubbed – in emphatic capital letters – ‘COVID FREEDOM DAY’. I have no idea who he’s been talking to, but he’s very fired up.

He thinks rapid home tests are the way to ‘get Whitehall and the whole British army of bludgers and skivers’ back to the office and ‘douse all remaining embers of the disease’. Today, I’m on a short break in Hay-on-Wye. When we got to the pub, there was great excitement. I’m not used to people recognising me, so the universal recognition is a bit of a shock. Something I’ll have to get used to, I suppose.

The following year, everyone would know who he was — and not just in the UK. How happy I am that The Sun released that photo of him and his girlfriend. It went viral, worldwide.

Hancock announced the end of Public Health England, which, strangely enough, still seems to be around.

Tuesday, August 18:

[Hancock has announced plans to abolish Public Health England.] On reflection, I should have been more brutal earlier. It wasn’t fit for purpose, and I should have cleared out senior figures who blocked the expansion of testing, basically because they didn’t want the private sector involved.

In response, Angela Rayner [deputy Labour leader] has been tweeting the usual tripe about Tories wanting to privatise the NHS by stealth. Does anyone seriously listen to this c**p any more?

The truth is, we wouldn’t stand a chance of winning this fight against Covid if it wasn’t for support from business. From manufacturing tests to developing the vaccine, the private sector – alongside the NHS and academia – has been critical to the fight.

Friday, August 21:

Border enforcement is a mess. Everyone who flies in to the UK has to fill out a passenger locator form, which they’re supposed to hand to officials on arrival at the airport, but half the time the documents go straight in the bin.

We can blame compulsory masks for secondary school pupils on Nicola Sturgeon. The UK government fears the woman.

Tuesday, August 25:

Nicola Sturgeon blindsided us by suddenly announcing that when schools in Scotland reopen, all secondary school pupils will have to wear masks in classrooms. In one of her most egregious attempts at oneupmanship to date, she didn’t consult us. The problem is that our original guidance on face coverings specifically excluded schools.

Cue much tortured debate between myself, Education Secretary Gavin Williamson and No 10 about how to respond.

Much as Sturgeon would relish it, nobody here wants a big spat with the Scots. So, U-turn it is.

Amazing — and not in a good way.

Boris was worried about the British economy, and rightly so.

Wednesday, August 26:

I was minding my own business, when suddenly, ping! Ping! Boris sprang into life. It was 6.29am. He veered off the reservation, suddenly going off on one about how the virus isn’t really killing many people any more so ‘how can we possibly justify the continuing paralysis?’

He noted that an 80-year-old now has a six per cent chance of dying, which he didn’t think was enough to justify what we’re doing.

‘If I were an 80-year-old and I was told that the choice was between destroying the economy and risking my exposure to a disease that I had a 94 per cent chance of surviving, I know what I would prefer,’ he argued.

This exchange, which continued on WhatsApp pretty much all morning, was more than a little stressful, given that it represented a fundamental challenge to our entire pandemic response.

I’m not quite sure what he expected – that the Chief Medical Officer, Chief Scientific Adviser, Cummings and I would all suddenly throw our hands up and say: ‘You know what, you’re right, this whole thing has been a huge mistake. Let’s ditch everything we’re doing and pretend none of it ever happened’?

Fortunately, after a few hours he ran out of both statistics and steam. All the same, I sense a very definite shift in attitude. Something has unsettled him. Who has he been on holiday with?

By the next day, Boris had gone back to normal.

Thursday, August 27:

Overnight, Boris’s creeping suspicion that everything we’re doing has been a catastrophic over-reaction has evaporated as quickly as it appeared, to be replaced by annoyance at the discovery that there is a supply/demand gap for testing. 

In fact, we are a victim of our own success. Our advertising campaign encouraging more people to come forward for tests has been a bit too effective, and now we’re overwhelmed.

Saturday, August 29:

Boris has started going on about ‘freedom passes’. I think he envisages some sort of app that would allow anyone who can prove they’re negative to get back to normal. I can see the appeal, but I can also see the likely furore over anything resembling ‘Papers, please’.

Covid cases are rocketing in France. ‘We need to draw lessons pronto,’ Boris said, asking if the French have tried local lockdowns or whether it is ‘a case of the whole frog getting slowly boiled?’

September 2020

Wednesday, September 2:

Test and Trace is now identifying more than half of new cases. ‘It’s like the system actually works!’ I messaged Dido Harding [head of Test and Trace] excitedly. ‘Who would have guessed!!’ she replied.

Hancock talked about a vaccine in a coronavirus briefing.

Tuesday, September 8:

I got a blast from No 10 about talking up the vaccine yesterday. Other than Boris, nobody there has ever really believed we can make it happen. In reality, their scepticism suits me, because it means they’re not meddling. The last thing I need is Cummings interfering or the project going through the Cabinet Office mincer.

Restriction tiers across England were looming. An example would be the aforementioned restrictions in Leicester and the north of England where coronavirus was prevalent.

Tuesday, September 15:

The PM is still dithering over restriction tiers, a classic Boris battle between head and heart.

Thursday, September 17:

Cases are growing. Sage [the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies] thinks we need a two-week ‘circuit-breaker’. Boris seemed confused, doing that thing he does, emphatically verbalising the arguments for and against out loud – alarming everyone as they try to work out where he’s going to land.

Friday, September 18:

We are now at 6,000 new Covid infections a day in England alone, nearly double the figure last week.

By 10pm, No 10 had done a complete about-turn. They now want tougher local lockdowns and more warnings about what happens if people don’t follow the rules. Apparently the PM wants to explain that we have to balance Covid with other health and economic factors. 

Well, no s***. What’s really infuriating is that the people who want action to control the virus didn’t insist on me being there [at meetings] to press the point.

Monday, September 21:

Boris is torn. Everyone’s getting heavy with him, from the Prof to Sage, who say there will be ‘catastrophic consequences’ if we don’t act now. They’ve proposed a two-week circuit-breaker.

Friday, September 25:

An alarming note from the modelling people who advise Sage. They say the epidemic is ‘close to breaching the agreed reasonable worst-case scenario’. Meanwhile, public finances are a horror show – from April to August, the figure borrowed was £173.7 billion. 

Rishi has clearly been using these figures to freak out the PM. But the only sustainable way to get the economy back on track is to defeat the virus, not pretend it’s gone away.

Saturday, September 26:

We’ve spent millions promoting the [NHS Covid] app, including buying wraparound ads in loads of publications. Just as I was allowing myself a moment of satisfaction at a job well done – or at least not ballsed up – there came news of fresh horror. A major glitch has emerged: the app can’t take data from NHS Covid tests.

I sat very still, trying to absorb the full implications of the fact that we’ve just spent tens of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money on an NHS app that… doesn’t link to the NHS. Which genius thought it would not need to do this, first and foremost? Which other genius signed it off on this basis?

Given the multiple overlapping responsibilities of the various quangos involved, Whitehall’s institutional buck-passing and the involvement of two mega tech companies (Google and Apple), we just didn’t know.

What I did know was the buck stopped with me, and it was probably time to adopt the brace position. I prayed that word of this hideous blunder would not reach Cummings, but that was of course too much to hope. Naturally he went nuts when he found out, and I can’t say I blame him.

I find this sort of screw-up personally mortifying. Should I have asked such a basic and obvious question? I took it for granted that we would link our own app up to our own tests. Never assume!

To be continued tomorrow.

The Queen was racing’s ‘patron saint’ and ‘best friend’

After Queen Elizabeth II died earlier this month on Thursday, September 8, 2022, Royal historians and experts said that we would never find out the actual time of her death.

On Thursday, September 29, however, her death certificate showed up on news broadcasts. I saw it on GB News in the late afternoon.

Guido Fawkes was right once again. His slogan is, ‘You’re either in front of Guido or behind’, meaning that most political pundits are behind.

At 3:07 p.m. that day, he tweeted that the Queen had died, then removed the tweet after getting a lot of flak for it.

However, the late Queen’s death certificate says that she died at 3:10 p.m. on September 8. Princess Anne oversaw the document’s contents.

Once again, Guido was correct.

One of the late monarch’s favourite pastimes was horse racing.

George V, whom she referred to affectionately as Grandfather England, got her interested in riding as a little girl.

On September 10, The Times reported:

When she was a child, her grandfather, George V, would lower himself to his hands and knees so that the young princess could lead him forward by his beard, as though he were a horse. She had her first riding lesson aged three; the following year she was bequeathed her first pony, Peggy, and that was that — she was still riding a pony at 90.

As a teenager, she became interested in horse breeding (emphases mine):

Her infatuation with the sport spawned from her inaugural visit, aged 16, to the Beckhampton stable of Fred Darling, who trained for her father. It was May 1942 and two of the King’s horses, Big Game and Sun Chariot, had recently won the season’s opening classics at Newmarket. Having run her palm down the silken coats of each racehorse, the young princess would not wash her hands for the rest of the day.

When she married Prince Philip in 1947:

She could barely conceal her excitement when she received a thoroughbred filly foal as a wedding present from the Aga Khan III. As it transpired, however, Astrakhan had troublesome knees, although she did manage to win an ordinary race in 1950.

When George VI died in 1952:

She inherited the Royal Studs at Sandringham in 1952 and became fascinated by the inexact science of breeding thoroughbreds. She immersed herself so intensely in this quest that royal historians declared her to be better informed than any of her antecedents …

The Royal Studs are the oldest thoroughbred breeding establishment in the world, and by any measure, Her Majesty’s tenure enhanced them. Of the five classic races run annually in Britain, the only one to elude her was the Derby. She was the leading flat owner in Britain in 1954 and 1957, while Estimate’s triumph in the 2013 Gold Cup, Royal Ascot’s signature race, was the first posted by a British monarch in the 200-year history of the race …

The Queen took as much pleasure from winning ordinary races with moderate horses as from a winner at Royal Ascot, where her horses won 23 races. And she bankrolled her own success: not a penny from the public purse was spent on the Royal Studs.

Horses that did not make the grade were deployed elsewhere:

For all the triumphs, notably the brace of classics won by Dunfermline in the silver jubilee year of 1977, the Queen was more concerned that each of her racehorses was given the opportunity to maximise its inherent ability. Conversely, those failing to make the grade were found new homes from which to pursue other equine disciplines.

The Queen was interested in treating horses with kindness:

Her primary concern was for her horses’ welfare. She espoused the virtues of kindness over brute strength, never more so than in her approach to breaking in young horses.

To that end, she employed the man known as The Horse Whisperer and had a bit part to play in his future fame by encouraging him to write a book:

She had heard of the extraordinary deeds of a self-styled “Californian cowboy” who would rise to global acclaim under another sobriquet, “the Horse Whisperer”. Monty Roberts was invited to Windsor to demonstrate his “Join-Up” techniques in 1989, and the repercussions were instant.

The Queen quickly adopted Roberts’s non-confrontational approach to breaking in young horses. His methods were revolutionary; so much so that the Queen insisted he should write a book to spread the gospel. To date, The Man Who Listens to Horses has sold more than 5 million copies worldwide.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) gave the Queen more than one horse as a gift during her reign. The most famous of them was Burmese:

… Burmese, was given to her by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in 1969. Burmese earned her place in the royal heart after the monarch rode her for 18 consecutive years at Trooping the Colour. The black mare came to greater public prominence in 1981, when a teenager at the ceremony fired blanks from a gun that startled Burmese but failed to ruffle her accomplished rider.

The Queen got Princess Anne interested in riding. In 1971, aged 21, the Princess Royal won the European Eventing Championship and was voted the BBC Sports Personality of the Year. She became an Olympian in 1976 at Montreal, riding in the British team’s Eventing challenge on the Queen’s horse, Goodwill. She continued to be involved in international riding events until 1994, her final year as president of the Fédération Équestre Internationale.

The Queen’s presence at so many prominent race meetings encouraged the presence of Middle Eastern potentates to also participate:

Her totemic presence on racecourses acted like a magnet, drawing wealthy Middle Eastern potentates to race their own horses in Britain, in the process ensuring that Britain remains pre-eminent in the global racing hierarchy.

It is unclear who will take the Queen’s place at the races in the years to come:

it is daunting to contemplate how flat racing will evolve in the Queen’s absence.

On September 10, The Telegraph featured an article on the Queen’s love of the sport, ‘Revealed: How racehorse-loving Queen Elizabeth spoke to trainer just two days before her death’.

This happened on Tuesday, September 6, as the Queen waited for Boris Johnson and Liz Truss to make their separate visits to her at Balmoral:

Clive Cox, who trained the final winner of the monarch’s career on Tuesday, described her as “sharp as a tack” during their telephone call.

The Queen’s horse raced at Goodwood that afternoon and the Queen awaited a briefing as to the horse’s — Love Affair’s — condition before the event:

The two-year-old won convincingly at Goodwood later that day, bringing to an end an owning and breeding career that saw her win some of the biggest prizes in the sport.

Clive Cox did not expect to speak with the monarch that day:

Cox, who trains several of her string, said: “Every time I have had a runner for Her Majesty I have spoken to her on the morning of the race.

“Those conversations have been the greatest privilege of my life but when I called on Tuesday I was told that the Queen was quite busy, which was understandable.

“But at 10 o’clock the phone rang and it was Her Majesty on the line.”

The racing community mourned the Queen’s death. Some surmise that, had she not been Head of State, she would have made an excellent trainer, or at least go to race courses more often:

Nicky Henderson, the former champion jumps trainer who handled many of her National Hunt horses, described her as “racing’s patron saint” and “racing’s best friend”, saying: “I bet she would have loved to go racing every day, but her diary was a bit different to most people’s.”

Traditionally committed to flat racing, Queen Elizabeth inherited the Queen Mother’s string of jump horses upon her death in 2002.

Henderson said training a winner for her during the Platinum Jubilee celebrations this summer at Worcester had been a “huge thrill”.

The Queen’s excitement at watching racing on television once brought her security detail running, Henderson says:

I remember once having a winner for her and she told me she’d been watching it in the sitting room. The horse led over the last, but it was a tight finish so she stood up and screamed it home.

With that, she said the security guards burst open the door thinking there had been some ghastly drama, but found her shouting at the television rather than an intruder! That always tickled me.

Legendary jockey Frankie Dettori rode many of the Queen’s horses:

Frankie Dettori, who rode more than 50 winners for Queen Elizabeth, said racing had lost its greatest friend.

“She was an incredible lady. I have been riding for the Queen for the last 30 years. She was such a special person and such a great sense of humour.

“Her knowledge of racing was incredible and her dedication to horses was plain for everyone to see.

“She loved her horses and loved the breeding side. She knew the families inside out.”

On September 14, the Daily Mail posted an article with a short video from 1991 showing the Queen’s excitement at winning a race at the Derby that June.

The video was part of a 1992 BBC documentary on the Queen’s life.

Apparently, the Queen bet on horses only when she was in the family box at the Derby. She did not own this horse, by the way:

Appearing on the 1992 BBC documentary Elizabeth R, the Queen and other members of the Royal Family are seen at Epsom for the 1991 Derby, taking part in the grand racing tradition of a low-money sweepstakes.

Even at Epsom, she watched on the television:

Her Majesty draws Generous from the hat in the sweep, and stands inside in the box to watch the 2420-metre race on the television.

As the horses turn onto the straight, Generous emerges with a handy lead.

Here’s what happened next — the Queen in an unusual burst of spontanaiety:

She dashed in to stand by the Queen Mother:

The Queen runs through the room with binoculars in hand to watch the three-year-old stallion get over the line from the balcony, which is opposite the finishing post. 

‘That’s my horse, isn’t it? That’s my horse!’ the Queen said while turning to her mother as she looks at Generous. 

‘Oh my god, Mother! We won!’

After the monarch watched the winning horse and trainer come back to parade in front of the excited crowd, an aide presented her with her winnings.

‘What do I get?’ Her Majesty asked, with the aide replying: ‘Well, you get 16, Ma’am.’ 

‘Sixteen pounds! Oh!’ she exclaimed.

It is believed the Queen never made bets aside from the Royal Family’s annual sweepstake at the Epsom Derby. 

She also told the Queen Mother how lovely it was to be at a race meeting in person. Normally, she attended only Ascot and the Derby.

The Mail says that the Queen was interested in even the smallest minutiae of horse breeding:

At the time of her death, she’d won 534 races from 3,205 runs as a racehorse owner and it is thought she made $13.1million from her hobby over the last 31 years.

Biographer Ben Pimlott quoted a horse-world confidante in his book, The Queen, when he described her passion for the animals and the sport.

‘She is very interested in stable management — and happiest with the minutiae of the feed, the quality of the wood chipping and so forth,’ he wrote.

There was no bluffing the Queen when it came to horses:

Top trainer Richard Hannon Senior said Her Majesty’s horse knowledge put many highly credentialed trainers to shame.

‘I always had to do my homework when I ran one of Her Majesty’s horses or when she came to visit our stables,’ he said.

‘She knows all the pedigrees of her horses inside out. There’s no small talk when discussing her horses. She knows all the bloodlines going back decades.

‘She also used to say to me after a stable tour, ‘It’s nice to come to a place that doesn’t smell of fresh paint’.’ 

It was a view shared by her racing adviser John Warren. 

‘If the Queen wasn’t the Queen, she would have made a wonderful trainer. She has such an affinity with her horses and is so perceptive,’ Warren once said.

The British Horseracing Authority paid tribute to the much-loved monarch as it suspended race meetings when news of her death broke. 

‘All of British Racing is in mourning today following the passing of Her Majesty The Queen. Her passion for racing and the racehorse shone brightly throughout her life,’ the authority said in a statement. 

The Queen leaves yet another legacy — her love of breeding horses.

As with so many other things she championed, who will pick up where she left off?

How Victoria’s son Edward VII transformed Royal events

The British royals were not always at the top of the league table when it came to pageantry.

In fact, in the 18th and 19th centuries, Britain was probably near the bottom.

The Guardian‘s 2017 article about Operation London Bridge, about which I wrote yesterday, says (emphases mine):

For a long time, the art of royal spectacle was for other, weaker peoples: Italians, Russians, and Habsburgs. British ritual occasions were a mess. At the funeral of Princess Charlotte, in 1817, the undertakers were drunk. Ten years later, St George’s Chapel was so cold during the burial of the Duke of York that George Canning, the foreign secretary, contracted rheumatic fever and the bishop of London died. “We never saw so motley, so rude, so ill-managed a body of persons,” reported the Times on the funeral of George IV, in 1830. Victoria’s coronation a few years later was nothing to write home about. The clergy got lost in the words; the singing was awful; and the royal jewellers made the coronation ring for the wrong finger. “Some nations have a gift for ceremonial,” the Marquess of Salisbury wrote in 1860. “In England the case is exactly the reverse.”

Near the end of Queen Victoria’s reign, courtiers and constitutionalists became concerned about the public perception of the monarchy during her latter years and death.

Something would have to be done:

Courtiers, politicians and constitutional theorists such as Walter Bagehot worried about the dismal sight of the Empress of India trooping around Windsor in her donkey cart. If the crown was going to give up its executive authority, it would have to inspire loyalty and awe by other means – and theatre was part of the answer. “The more democratic we get,” wrote Bagehot in 1867, “the more we shall get to like state and show.”

It was Edward VII — historians add his son George V here, too — who transformed embarrassing displays into sheer pageantry.

Victoria never trusted Edward VII to be a reliable heir. Many think she lived so long in an effort to prevent him from succeeding her. As I have mentioned before, there is a parallel between the two of them and the late Queen and Charles III.

Yet, Edward VII’s ten-year reign was considered to be a good one.

He is the one who started codifying and defining what royal pageantry should be, in life and in death:

Obsessed by death, Victoria planned her own funeral with some style. But it was her son, Edward VII, who is largely responsible for reviving royal display. One courtier praised his “curious power of visualising a pageant”. He turned the state opening of parliament and military drills, like the Trooping of the Colour, into full fancy-dress occasions, and at his own passing, resurrected the medieval ritual of lying in state. Hundreds of thousands of subjects filed past his coffin in Westminster Hall in 1910, granting a new sense of intimacy to the body of the sovereign.

That said, one German still did not think the Brits were up to scratch with military processions:

In 1909, Kaiser Wilhelm II boasted about the quality of German martial processions: “The English cannot come up to us in this sort of thing.” Now we all know that no one else quite does it like the British.

George V, whom the then-Princess Elizabeth referred to as Grandfather England, carried on his father’s vision of pageantry and brought the Royal Family closer to his subjects via the wireless:

By 1932, George V was a national father figure, giving the first royal Christmas speech to the nation – a tradition that persists today – in a radio address written for him by Rudyard Kipling.

In The Times‘s article, ‘Modern-day royal funerals trace their traditions to Victoria’, Valentine Low, the author of Courtiers, tells us about the funerals of Edward VII and George V.

Before going into her son’s and grandson’s deaths, he says that Victoria’s funeral broke two previous conventions:

For the previous 200 years the funerals of sovereigns had been held in the evening: hers was the first to be held in the daytime. It was also the first to be filmed.

Edward VII’s Highland terrier, Caesar, was the star of his funeral, much to the annoyance of those attending the service. They knew how ill-behaved the dog could be. Only the King had a fondness for him. Royal historians who spoke on GB News said that the dog was in the funeral procession in St George’s Chapel, Windsor.

Low says:

Caesar immediately captured the public imagination, and became a cult figure. His “memoirs”, entitled “Where’s Master?” were a popular Christmas present that year.

Low also says that the King’s favourite horse was in the outdoor procession in London:

At the funeral of Edward VII — who had insisted his obsequies, unlike those of his mother, were planned well in advance — his favourite charger, Kildare, walked behind the coffin in the procession from Westminster to Paddington, her master’s boots reversed in the stirrups. Behind her, led by a Highlander, trotted Caesar, the late King’s rough-haired terrier.

From Paddington Station, the Royal train transported the King’s coffin to Windsor.

George V’s death in 1936 was the first occurrence of the Vigil of the Princes at Westminster Hall. It was private:

When George V lay in state in Westminster Hall, on the evening of the fourth day King Edward VIII and his three brothers decided to pay a last tribute to their father by standing around the coffin in full-dress uniform, stationing themselves between the officers already on vigil.

He wrote later: “I doubt whether many recognised the King’s four sons among the motionless uniformed figures bent over swords reversed. We stood there for 20 minutes in the dim candlelight and the great silence. I felt close to my father and all that he stood for.”

On the day of his funeral, radio listeners were able to hear the funeral procession as it happened:

For all the expressions of public grief, and the growing involvement of the media — the funeral of George V was the first to have radio microphones placed along the processional route so that the world could listen to the tramp of feet and the thump of muffled drums — it should not be forgotten that royal funerals are also moments of private grief for the families themselves.

George VI never expected to become king. However, his older brother Edward VIII abdicated, and he had to step up. Continuing his father’s Christmas broadcasts proved to be difficult, and he had to get the help of a speech therapist, the Australian Lionel Logue, in order to overcome his stammer. The film, The King’s Speech, is a moving account of that story.

George VI and the Queen Mother never left England, even at the height of the Second World War. The princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret, lived in Windsor Castle for much of the war.

When he died in 1952, the whole country mourned:

Immense crowds lined the streets for the funeral procession of George VI, the shy, simple, devoted king who had seen the country through the Second World War. As two minutes’ silence was observed around the country, miners in South Wales knelt at the coalface, heads bowed, their helmets on their knees.

Not many Britons had television sets at that time, yet his funeral was the first to be televised, setting a new marker for the visibility of the Royal Family:

Of all the modern royal funerals it was that of George VI that saw one of the most poignant moments of private royal grief. His funeral was the first to be televised, but what the cameras were unable to capture was how, too frail to attend the funeral of her son, Queen Mary watched the procession from the window of Marlborough House.

Her friend and lady-in-waiting Lady Airlie, who sat with her, wrote: “As the cortège wound slowly along the Queen whispered in a broken voice, ‘Here he is,’ and I knew that her dry eyes were seeing beyond the coffin a little boy in a sailor suit. She was past weeping, wrapped in the effable solitude of grief. I could not speak to comfort her. My tears choked me.

“The words I wanted to say would not come. We held each other’s hand in silence.”

Another relatively recent development in monarchs’ deaths is the known role of their personal physicians in their final hours.

In the case of George V, his doctor’s role was revealed long after his death:

Half a century after George V’s death it emerged that his life had been ended prematurely by his doctor, Lord Dawson, who hastened his journey to the next world so that it could meet the deadlines of the respectable morning newspapers, in particular The Times.

“The King’s life is moving peacefully towards its close,” was the final notice issued by Dawson at 9.30pm on the night of January 20, 1936. Not long afterwards he injected the king with 750mg of morphine and a gram of cocaine — enough to kill him twice over — in order to ease the monarch’s suffering. However he had another motive, too, as revealed in a 1986 biography by the historian Francis Watson. Dawson wrote in his notes: “The determination of the time of death of the King’s body had another object in view, viz, of the importance of the death receiving its first announcement in the morning papers rather than the less appropriate field of the evening journals.”

In the case of Elizabeth II, we knew that her physician was Professor Sir Huw Thomas, 64, and read of her final hours.

The Guardian‘s 2017 article stated:

In these last hours, the Queen’s senior doctor, a gastroenterologist named Professor Huw Thomas, will be in charge. He will look after his patient, control access to her room and consider what information should be made public.

On Friday, September 9, 2022, the day after her death, The Times reported:

The doctor overseeing the Queen’s medical care had been in charge of her health for the past eight years, during which time she became increasingly frail but insisted on continuing with her royal duties.

Professor Sir Huw Thomas, 64, is head of the medical household and was physician to the Queen. He was appointed a physician to the royal household in 2005 and promoted to the most senior role in July 2014.

The details about the Queen’s health provided by Buckingham Palace yesterday were sparse, but the language hinted at the severity of the situation. Doctors were “concerned” and the Queen remained “under medical supervision”. The latter phrase was likely to mean that her health problems were serious enough that they required active monitoring by doctors.

Thomas oversaw the Queen’s care during the coronavirus pandemic and advised her to reduce her workload after she underwent preliminary tests and spent a night at King Edward VII’s Hospital in west London last October.

He said during an interview about being knighted for his royal duties: “It’s been a busy couple of years in this role . . . You very much become part of that organisation and become the personal doctor to the principal people in it, who are patients just like other patients.”

The royal doctors at Balmoral might have needed to be involved in anything from interpreting vital signs to prescribing medication that could ensure, as the palace statement added, that the Queen “remained comfortable”.

Those of us who admire the  British royals have much for which to thank Edward VII and George V. They gave us the transparency and majesty we have come to expect today.

The Queen’s death: how Operation London Bridge probably worked

In 2017, The Guardian posted a long article: ‘”London Bridge is down”: the secret plan for the days after the Queen’s death’.

Halfway through, it says (emphases mine):

The reporting for this article involved dozens of interviews with broadcasters, government officials, and departed palace staff, several of whom have worked on London Bridge directly. Almost all insisted on complete secrecy. “This meeting never happened,” I was told after one conversation in a gentleman’s club on Pall Mall. Buckingham Palace, meanwhile, has a policy of not commenting on funeral arrangements for members of the royal family.

Royal funeral plans are top secret, which makes the article even more amazing. I don’t know how the journalist, Sam Knight, managed it.

Queen Victoria’s death

Until Queen Elizabeth II, Queen Victoria was the United Kingdom’s longest reigning monarch.

A monarch’s death is preceded by an announcement about illness, signifying that the end is near:

“The Queen is suffering from great physical prostration, accompanied by symptoms which cause much anxiety,” announced Sir James Reid, Queen Victoria’s physician, two days before her death in 1901.

Her longevity produced a shockwave of reaction, particularly as she did not perceive her heir, Edward VII, to be worthy of succession. This suggests a parallel between the Queen and Charles III:

It is not unusual for a country to succumb to a state of denial as a long chapter in its history is about to end. When it became public that Queen Victoria was dying, at the age of 82, a widow for half her life, “astonished grief … swept the country”, wrote her biographer, Lytton Strachey. In the minds of her subjects, the queen’s mortality had become unimaginable; and with her demise, everything was suddenly at risk, placed in the hands of an elderly and untrusted heir, Edward VII. “The wild waters are upon us now,” wrote the American Henry James, who had moved to London 30 years before.

The parallels with the unease that we will feel at the death of Elizabeth II are obvious, but without the consolation of Britain’s status in 1901 as the world’s most successful country. “We have to have narratives for royal events,” the historian told me. “In the Victorian reign, everything got better and better, and bigger and bigger. We certainly can’t tell that story today.”

George V’s death

In a well run monarchical system, a symbiosis exists between monarchs and their subjects:

The bond between sovereign and subjects is a strange and mostly unknowable thing. A nation’s life becomes a person’s, and then the string must break …

This is what happened when the Queen’s grandfather died. Note how George V’s physician thought it was important for the news to make the morning rather than the evening newspapers:

“The King’s life is moving peacefully towards its close,” was the final notice issued by George V’s doctor, Lord Dawson, at 9.30pm on the night of 20 January 1936. Not long afterwards, Dawson injected the king with 750mg of morphine and a gram of cocaine – enough to kill him twice over – in order to ease the monarch’s suffering, and to have him expire in time for the printing presses of the Times, which rolled at midnight …

“For a little while,” wrote Edward VIII, of the days between his father’s death and funeral, “I had the uneasy sensation of being left alone on a vast stage.”

Other Royal deaths

Sometimes, Royal deaths are unexpected events, leading to differences in who finds out first:

On 6 February 1952, George VI was found by his valet at Sandringham at 7.30am. The BBC did not broadcast the news until 11.15am, almost four hours later …

“It is with the greatest sorrow that we make the following announcement,” said John Snagge, the BBC presenter who informed the world of the death of George VI. (The news was repeated seven times, every 15 minutes, and then the BBC went silent for five hours).

Also:

When Princess Diana died at 4am local time at the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital in Paris on 31 August 1997, journalists accompanying the former foreign secretary, Robin Cook, on a visit to the Philippines knew within 15 minutes.

I do remember watching BBC1’s Peter Sissons on the Saturday evening when the Queen Mother died in 2002:

On the BBC, Peter Sissons, the veteran anchor, was criticised for wearing a maroon tie. Sissons was the victim of a BBC policy change, issued after the September 11 attacks, to moderate its coverage and reduce the number of “category one” royals eligible for the full obituary procedure. The last words in Sissons’s ear before going on air were: “Don’t go overboard. She’s a very old woman who had to go some time.”

I thought his maroon tie was disrespectful, as was the way he read out that bit of news. It was as if he did not care. That started my dislike of the BBC’s treatment of current affairs, which only escalated afterwards.

The Duke of Norfolk

As the Royal Family has been Anglican for centuries, it is ironic that the person they entrust with their funerals and coronations is the highest ranking Catholic layman of the realm, the Duke of Norfolk.

Dukes of Norfolk have been organising these events since 1672:

The 18th Duke of Norfolk, the Earl Marshal, will be in charge. Norfolks have overseen royal funerals since 1672. During the 20th century, a set of offices in St James’s Palace was always earmarked for their use.

The current Duke is Edward William Fitzalan-Howard, 65. In April 2022, he ran a red light while talking on his mobile phone. He was found guilty of these traffic violations on September 26 and pleaded not to have his driving licence revoked for six months. His request was refused.

On his role as Earl Marshal, the Daily Mail reports:

Edward William Fitzalan-Howard, 65, became England’s most senior peer and the 18th duke following the death of his father Miles in 2002.

For more than 350 years, his ancestors have passed down the ancient office of Earl Marshal – meaning that they are responsible for overseeing funerals for members of the Royal Family, the coronations of Britain’s monarchs, and even state openings of parliament. 

And because the office is hereditary, it meant that the peer’s grandfather Bernard Fitzalan-Howard, the 16th Duke of Norfolk, was responsible for organising Elizabeth II’s Coronation in 1953, the state funeral of Winston Churchill in 1965 and the investiture of Charles as the Prince of Wales in 1969.

Eddie, as he is known to his friends, oversaw the planning and execution of the most majesty send-off of a Sovereign in living memory – as 2,000 VIPs including King Charles and the British royal family emperors, kings and queens, prime ministers, presidents, and members of the public including decorated war heroes, members of the Armed Forces and NHS staff who worked tirelessly during the pandemic attended Westminster Abbey for the state funeral …

… an overwhelming majority of Britons (86%) believe that the Duke of Norfolk did a ‘good job’ of commemorating the late Monarch. 

The duke began planning the Queen’s funeral the week of his father’s death 20 years ago, though plans for the service – codenamed Operation London Bridge – have been in place since the 1960s. Eddie held annual meetings in the throne room of Buckingham Palace, working closely with Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Mather, a long-serving member of the royal household who commanded the bearer party at Churchill’s funeral, for the first 10 years. In the two decades which followed, the number of people involved swelled from just 20 to 280 in April this year.

Just days before the funeral, the peer explained that the funeral was being held in Westminster Abbey for the first time in more than 200 years – since George II in 1760 – so that 2,000 guests could attend. He also revealed that he extended the Queen’s lying in state at Westminster Hall for an extra day ‘to allow an additional 85,000 people to file past the coffin’. 

His niece Lady Kinvara Balfour told Tatler magazine: ‘In organising the Queen’s funeral (and the coronation to come), Uncle Eddie has done a truly outstanding job. What a show of elegance, efficiency and rare precision he has produced for our nation, and the world – just like the late Queen Elizabeth II herself did. He is an incredible father of five, a grandfather too’. 

As for the guilty verdict on his traffic violations:

His Grace The Duke of Norfolk, Edward William Fitzalan-Howard, 65, appeared at Lavender Hill Magistrates Court after being caught by the officers who told the court he appeared to run a red light while not paying attention.

The Duke pleaded guilty to one count of driving his six year-old blue three-litre diesel BMW while using a hand-held device in Battersea Park Road, south-west London on April 7.

The Oxford-educated father of five, who is a descendant of Elizabeth I, was also fined £800, with £350 costs and ordered to pay an £80 victim surcharge.

His Grace received six penalty points for using his mobile phone.

‘That means, as you know, you will be disqualified for six months because you have more than twelve points on your licence,’ magistrate Judith Way told him.

‘We have been advised of the test for exceptional hardship and it is the burden of the defendant to show exceptional hardship,’ announced magistrate Judith Way.

Before the ruling was handed down, his Grace had tried to argue it was necessary for him to keep his licence.

The highest-ranking duke in England argued he would suffer ‘exceptional hardship’ if he was disqualified, highlighting his official duties along with his conservation work to prevent ‘nature’s complete collapse’ and ‘the end of mankind’. 

In his hereditary role as Earl Marshal he told the court he is in charge of the coronation of King Charles III and asked for part of the hearing to be held in private in the interests of ‘national security’, while his legal team told the court he needed to be able to drive to ensure the organisation went smoothly.

His Grace, of Arundel Castle, Arundel, Sussex already has nine penalty points on his driving licence for two speeding offences and this latest conviction means he has been subjected to the minimum six-month ban under totting rules.

Dismissing The Duke’s application to keep his licence, Ms Way said: ‘We have heard sworn evidence from the defendant.

‘We accept this is a unique case because of the defendant’s role in society and his role in the King’s coronation and even though inconvenience may be caused we do not find exceptional hardship.

‘We know the need for security clearance for any driver and we do not think this is insurmountable for his high-profile role.

‘We believe the defendant has the means to employ a driver.’

Indeed he does.

Managing the Queen’s death rituals

Keeping in mind that The Guardian‘s article was written in 2017, this was true in the event:

During London Bridge, the Lord Chamberlain’s office in the palace will be the centre of operations … The government’s team – coordinating the police, security, transport and armed forces – will assemble at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport.

Michelle Donelan, formerly of the Department for Education, is the new Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.

Someone in that group of officials also had the job of printing tickets for various events:

for invited guests, the first of which will be required for the proclamation of King Charles in about 24 hours time.

Everyone on the conference calls and around the table will know each other. For a narrow stratum of the British aristocracy and civil service, the art of planning major funerals – the solemnity, the excessive detail – is an expression of a certain national competence. Thirty-one people gathered for the first meeting to plan Churchill’s funeral, “Operation Hope Not”, in June 1959, six years before his death. Those working on London Bridge (and Tay Bridge and Forth Bridge, the Duke of Edinburgh’s funeral) will have corresponded for years in a language of bureaucratic euphemism, about “a possible future ceremony”; “a future problem”; “some inevitable occasion, the timing of which, however, is quite uncertain”.

Operation London Bridge had been in place for well over 50 years and was regularly updated from then until this month:

The first plans for London Bridge date back to the 1960s, before being refined in detail at the turn of the century. Since then, there have been meetings two or three times a year for the various actors involved (around a dozen government departments, the police, army, broadcasters and the Royal Parks) in Church House, Westminster, the Palace, or elsewhere in Whitehall. Participants described them to me as deeply civil and methodical. “Everyone around the world is looking to us to do this again perfectly,” said one, “and we will.” Plans are updated and old versions are destroyed. Arcane and highly specific knowledge is shared … The coffin must have a false lid, to hold the crown jewels, with a rim at least three inches high.

Processions were also carefully timed.

After the Queen died, the military personnel involved rehearsed day and night to get everything exactly right.

King Charles III was also involved:

… in the hours after the Queen has gone, there will be details that only Charles can decide. “Everything has to be signed off by the Duke of Norfolk and the King,” one official told me … In recent years, much of the work on London Bridge has focused on the precise choreography of Charles’s accession. “There are really two things happening,” as one of his advisers told me. “There is the demise of a sovereign and then there is the making of a king.” Charles is scheduled to make his first address as head of state on the evening of his mother’s death.

In the event, he made it the following evening at 6 p.m.

The Throne Room at Buckingham Palace was the site for the Queen’s lying at rest before going to Westminster Hall:

In every scenario, the Queen’s body returns to the throne room in Buckingham Palace, which overlooks the north-west corner of the Quadrangle, its interior courtyard. There will be an altar, the pall, the royal standard, and four Grenadier Guards, their bearskin hats inclined, their rifles pointing to the floor, standing watch. In the corridors, staff employed by the Queen for more than 50 years will pass, following procedures they know by heart.

It is ironic that The Guardian published an article waxing incandescent over staff redundancies — lay-offs — because this piece makes it abundantly clear that they knew the King would bring in his own staff:

“Your professionalism takes over because there is a job to be done,” said one veteran of royal funerals. There will be no time for sadness, or to worry about what happens next. Charles will bring in many of his own staff when he accedes. “Bear in mind,” the courtier said, “everybody who works in the palace is actually on borrowed time.”

Dying in Scotland

Although the article does not mention it, the Queen’s death in Scotland activated Operation Unicorn.

However, that operation dovetailed with London Bridge:

The most elaborate plans are for what happens if she passes away at Balmoral, where she spends three months of the year. This will trigger an initial wave of Scottish ritual. First, the Queen’s body will lie at rest in her smallest palace, at Holyroodhouse, in Edinburgh, where she is traditionally guarded by the Royal Company of Archers, who wear eagle feathers in their bonnets. Then the coffin will be carried up the Royal Mile to St Giles’s cathedral, for a service of reception …

Thankfully, her coffin was flown back to London. According to this, a train journey would have been difficult to organise if she had travelled by rail:

put on board the Royal Train at Waverley station for a sad progress down the east coast mainline. Crowds are expected at level crossings and on station platforms the length of the country – from Musselburgh and Thirsk in the north, to Peterborough and Hatfield in the south – to throw flowers on the passing train. (Another locomotive will follow behind, to clear debris from the tracks.) “It’s actually very complicated,” one transport official told me.

Coming by plane also enabled an extra day of viewing at Westminster Hall.

How the media probably found out

Informing the media is also a big part of Royal deaths, especially the Queen’s.

Radio and television channels had — and have — their response plans ready.

In the case of the Queen, the following more or less happened:

For many years the BBC was told about royal deaths first, but its monopoly on broadcasting to the empire has gone now. When the Queen dies, the announcement will go out as a newsflash to the Press Association and the rest of the world’s media simultaneously. At the same instant, a footman in mourning clothes will emerge from a door at Buckingham Palace, cross the dull pink gravel and pin a black-edged notice to the gates …

The BBC has a special, secret transmission system, RATS:

At the BBC, the “radio alert transmission system” (Rats), will be activated – a cold war-era alarm designed to withstand an attack on the nation’s infrastructure. Rats, which is also sometimes referred to as “royal about to snuff it”, is a near mythical part of the intricate architecture of ritual and rehearsals for the death of major royal personalities that the BBC has maintained since the 1930s. Most staff have only ever seen it work in tests; many have never seen it work at all. “Whenever there is a strange noise in the newsroom, someone always asks, ‘Is that the Rats?’ Because we don’t know what it sounds like,” one regional reporter told me.

Royal experts were at the ready because they were pre-booked a long time ago. Media outlets have had obituaries ready to go, with only minor updates for the death to be added:

All news organisations will scramble to get films on air and obituaries online. At the Guardian, the deputy editor has a list of prepared stories pinned to his wall. The Times is said to have 11 days of coverage ready to go. At Sky News and ITN, which for years rehearsed the death of the Queen substituting the name “Mrs Robinson”, calls will go out to royal experts who have already signed contracts to speak exclusively on those channels. “I am going to be sitting outside the doors of the Abbey on a hugely enlarged trestle table commentating to 300 million Americans about this,” one told me.

Radio stations were also prepared with suitable music:

For people stuck in traffic, or with Heart FM on in the background, there will only be the subtlest of indications, at first, that something is going on. Britain’s commercial radio stations have a network of blue “obit lights”, which is tested once a week and supposed to light up in the event of a national catastrophe. When the news breaks, these lights will start flashing, to alert DJs to switch to the news in the next few minutes and to play inoffensive music in the meantime. Every station, down to hospital radio, has prepared music lists made up of “Mood 2” (sad) or “Mood 1” (saddest) songs to reach for in times of sudden mourning. “If you ever hear Haunted Dancehall (Nursery Remix) by Sabres of Paradise on daytime Radio 1, turn the TV on,” wrote Chris Price, a BBC radio producer, for the Huffington Post in 2011. “Something terrible has just happened.”

Incredibly, all television presenters wore black immediately:

… there will be no extemporising with the Queen. The newsreaders will wear black suits and black ties. Category one was made for her. Programmes will stop. Networks will merge. BBC 1, 2 and 4 will be interrupted and revert silently to their respective idents – an exercise class in a village hall, a swan waiting on a pond – before coming together for the news. Listeners to Radio 4 and Radio 5 live will hear a specific formulation of words, “This is the BBC from London,” which, intentionally or not, will summon a spirit of national emergency …

According to one former head of BBC news … The rehearsals for her are different to the other members of the family, he explained. People become upset, and contemplate the unthinkable oddness of her absence. “She is the only monarch that most of us have ever known,” he said. The royal standard will appear on the screen. The national anthem will play. You will remember where you were …

The passing of the Queen will be monumental by comparison. It may not be as nakedly emotional, but its reach will be wider, and its implications more dramatic. “It will be quite fundamental,” as one former courtier told me.

And so it turned out to be.

Media broadcasts

I’m still wrapping my head around 12 days of continuous news coverage focusing on the Queen.

Somehow, it never got boring.

That is because there were seven decades of historic reign to cover, as well as the years between 1926 — the year of the Queen’s birth — and 1952, when she succeeded George VI:

… there will be an almighty psychological reckoning for the kingdom that she leaves behind. The Queen is Britain’s last living link with our former greatness – the nation’s id, its problematic self-regard – which is still defined by our victory in the second world war. One leading historian, who like most people I interviewed for this article declined to be named, stressed that the farewell for this country’s longest-serving monarch will be magnificent. “Oh, she will get everything,” he said. “We were all told that the funeral of Churchill was the requiem for Britain as a great power. But actually it will really be over when she goes.”

… The second Elizabethan age is likely to be remembered as a reign of uninterrupted national decline, and even, if she lives long enough and Scotland departs the union, as one of disintegration. Life and politics at the end of her rule will be unrecognisable from their grandeur and innocence at its beginning. “We don’t blame her for it,” Philip Ziegler, the historian and royal biographer, told me. “We have declined with her, so to speak.”

The obituary films will remind us what a different country she inherited. One piece of footage will be played again and again: from her 21st birthday, in 1947, when Princess Elizabeth was on holiday with her parents in Cape Town. She was 6,000 miles from home and comfortably within the pale of the British Empire. The princess sits at a table with a microphone. The shadow of a tree plays on her shoulder. The camera adjusts three or four times as she talks, and on each occasion, she twitches momentarily, betraying tiny flashes of aristocratic irritation. “I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service, and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong,” she says, enunciating vowels and a conception of the world that have both vanished.

Conclusion

In summary:

London Bridge is the Queen’s exit plan. “It’s history,” as one of her courtiers said. It will be 10 days of sorrow and spectacle in which, rather like the dazzling mirror of the monarchy itself, we will revel in who we were and avoid the question of what we have become.

It was an incredible time which galvanised the United Kingdom:

“I have to be seen to be believed,” is said to be one of her catchphrases. And there is no reason to doubt that her funeral rites will evoke a rush of collective feeling. “I think there will be a huge and very genuine outpouring of deep emotion,” said Andrew Roberts, the historian. It will be all about her, and it will really be about us. There will be an urge to stand in the street, to see it with your own eyes, to be part of a multitude. The cumulative effect will be conservative. “I suspect the Queen’s death will intensify patriotic feelings,” one constitutional thinker told me, “and therefore fit the Brexit mood, if you like, and intensify the feeling that there is nothing to learn from foreigners.”

That is quite true. The conclusion that most of us drew from television coverage was that no one does monarchy and ritual quite like Britain. We are still the greatest in that regard.

On Monday, September 19, four million television viewers tuning in from around the world to pay their respects agreed.

The ‘sacred mysteries’ of the Queen’s final rituals in Westminster

Today’s post was supposed to be a comprehensive retrospective of what people around the world experienced this week in seeing Queen Elizabeth II being laid to rest.

However, I have information and reflections for more than one post.

Today’s will look at the religious aspects and history of Westminster and some Royal funeral traditions.

Westminster’s religious history

One thing I learned is that the area that is called Westminster, which we connect with the Abbey and the Palace (where the Houses of Parliament meet) was originally a monastery with a church on the site.

‘West’ refers to the location being to the west of where most people were settled long before the Norman Conquest in 1066.

The word ‘minster’ is the Anglicised version of the Latin ‘monasterii’, ‘monasterium’ and ‘monasteriensis’, dating back to 669.

My curiosity was piqued when I read the inscription of the four tall candlesticks immediately flanking the Queen’s catafalque. Unfortunately, I do not have the full wording, but ‘Westmonasterii’ and ‘Petri’ are on them, gold lettering on a red border, just underneath where the large, thick beeswax candles sit.

Then came the story of how the monastery became linked to St Peter, the fisherman who became a bold Apostle preaching Christ after the first Pentecost.

In 2017, Cambridge University Press published a paper by Bernhard W Scholz, Sulcard of Westminster: Prologus de construccione Westmonasterii.

An extract reads, in part (emphases mine):

Sulcard, a monk of Westminster in the eleventh century, is the author of the first history of his monastery, the unprinted Prologus de construccione Westmonasterii. In this brief tract he describes the foundation of Westminster in the days, as he claims, of King Æthelberht of Kent, and the patronage and endowment extended by various benefactors, notably Archbishop Dunstan of Canterbury and King Edward the Confessor. Sulcard also records the marvellous dedication of Westminster by St. Peter, patron of the church, and two other miracles worked in Westminster by the prince of the apostles.

Of the original church, replaced by the structure we know today, the Wikipedia entry for Westminster Abbey states:

According to a tradition first reported by Sulcard in about 1080, a church was founded at the site (then known as Thorn Ey (Thorn Island)) in the seventh century at the time of Mellitus, a Bishop of London. Construction of the present church began in 1245 on the orders of King Henry III.^[5]

Here is where St Peter comes in. A tradition dedicated to him continues today:

A late tradition claims that Aldrich, a young fisherman on the River Thames, had a vision of Saint Peter near the site. This seems to have been quoted as the origin of the salmon that Thames fishermen offered to the abbey in later years, a custom still observed annually by the Fishmongers’ Company …

Sulcard‘s entry reads:

The sole work which Sulcard is known to have produced is the so-called Prologus de Construccione Westmonasterii (“Prologue concerning the Building of Westminster”), dedicated to Abbot Vitalis of Bernay (c. 1076—?1085) and hence datable to about 1080.^[2] It relates the history of the abbey, beginning in the time of Mellitus, bishop of London (604—17), with the foundation of its first church on what was then Thorney Island by a wealthy Londoner and his wife. It concludes with the dedication of a new church erected by King Edward the Confessor (r. 1042–1066) for the monastery. In the dedication to Vitalis, Sulcard writes that he intended his work to serve as a ‘commemorative book’ (codex memorialis) for his house. He was primarily interested in promoting the cult of St. Peter, the abbey’s patron saint, who is said to have miraculously appeared in the early 7th century to dedicate the church in person. Two copies of the history are extant, the earliest being a chartulary from Winchester (c. 1300), BL, Cotton MS Faustina A.iii, fols. 11r—16v. The other copy is in BL, Cotton MS Titus A.viii, fols. 2r–5v. The title is not contemporary, but derives from the heading in the former chartulary, to which it serves as a prologue.^[3]

Apart from relating local traditions about St. Peter’s miraculous involvement, the narrative of Sulcard’s prologus is relatively free of embellishments.^[1]

It does not appear that the monks had an easy time of it on Thorney Island:

Thorney Island was the eyot (or small island) on the Thames, upstream of medieval London, where Westminster Abbey and the Palace of Westminster (commonly known today as the Houses of Parliament) were built. It was formed by rivulets of the River Tyburn, which entered the Thames nearby. In Roman times, and presumably before, Thorney Island may have been part of a natural ford where Watling Street crossed the Thames,^[1] of particular importance before the construction of London Bridge.

The name may be derived from the Anglo-Saxon Þorn-īeg, meaning “Thorn Island”. ^[2]

Thorney is described in a purported 8th century charter of King Offa of Mercia, which is kept in the Abbey muniments, as a “terrible place”. In the Spring of 893, Edward the Elder, son of Alfred the Great, forced invading Vikings to take refuge on Thorney Island.^[3] Despite hardships and more Viking raids over the following centuries, the monks tamed the island until by the time of Edward the Confessor it was “A delightful place, surrounded by fertile land and green fields”. The abbey’s College Garden survives, a thousand years later, and may be the oldest garden in England.^[4]

Since the Middle Ages, the level of the land has risen, the rivulets have been built over, and the Thames has been embanked, so that there is now no visible Thorney Island. The name is kept only by Thorney Street, at the back of the MI5 Security Service building; but a local heritage organisation established by June Stubbs in 1976 took the name The Thorney Island Society.

In 1831 the boundaries of the former island were described as the Chelsea Waterworks, the Grosvenor Canal, and the ornamental water in St James’s Park.^[5]

Thorney Island is one of the places reputed to be the site of King Canute’s demonstration that he could not command the tides, because he built a palace at Westminster.

In 2000, the politician John Roper was created a Life peer and revived the name of Thorney in Parliament by taking the title Baron Roper of Thorney Island in the City of Westminster.^[6]

Royal traditions at Westminster Hall

The Daily Mail has an excellent article on Westminster Hall’s history from 1087 to the present, beginning with William the Conqueror’s son, William II, or William Rufus.

The Queen’s lying in rest was another historic milestone. By September 15, just four days before her funeral, someone described it as a:

piece of history that will never be repeated.

Before the public viewing started, Westminster Abbey’s clergy and the Archbishop of Canterbury conducted a 20-minute service, accompanied by the Abbey choir.

Although the Hall is unconsecrated ground, it nonetheless felt as if it were a church.

The hundreds of thousands of people who filed past over four days, until 6:30 a.m. on the morning of Monday, September 19, 2022, also respected it as such. The continuing silence was overwhelming in its beauty.

Although there are traditions relating to monarchs long ago, the Westminster Hall visitation is a relatively new one, as The Telegraph‘s Tim Stanley tells us:

The modern lying-in-state was invented in 1910, for the funeral of Edward VII. No tickets were issued; rich and poor queued in torrential rain. As the doors opened at Westminster Hall, a work girl was heard to cry, “They’re givin’ ’im back to us!”

When the ceremony was repeated for George V in 1936, cynics sneered at its elitist “pomp”. The writer G K Chesterton advised them to open a history book. In aiming to modernise royalty by bringing George’s body closer to the people, he said, the court turned the clock back to the Middle Ages, to when kingship was more personal and tangible. The coffin of a medieval sovereign was generally topped with a waxwork effigy, so that even the lowliest subject could see what he looked like.

The body of a monarch was, in a sense, sacred, transformed by coronation into an instrument of God. But, like Doubting Thomas, we need to see to believe. Hence even as monarchy became more absolutist over time, better convinced of its divine rights, the principal actors still felt the need to put on a show.

France’s monarchy was even more open than ours. The public could watch Louis XIV and his family at Versailles:

Louis XIV, the Sun King of France, rose every morning, washed, shaved and dressed in front of an audience of around 100 people. Anyone could come to see him at Versailles; all you needed to get in w[ere] a hat and a sword, and the concierge did a nice sideline in selling both. Tourists could watch the royal family going to chapel, eating, even playing cards – you could say Versailles was the Center Parcs of its day, though reviews were scathing about the pickpocketing and the smell. The palace did not benefit from modern plumbing. People relieved themselves in the corridors. There’s a story that Marie Antoinette once stepped out for a walk and a woman in the window above emptied a chamberpot over her head.

Returning to Westminster Hall last week, Stanley says:

Let’s call it what it is: a pilgrimage. The body has been returned to the people; the people have come to see it, drawn by belief, by spectacle or raw instinct. When I entered Westminster Hall, I saw at once that it was a shrine, marked by candles and shrouded in silence. Phones were banned.

Alone at the coffin, some bowed, some curtsied, some crossed themselves. These ritual gestures, observed Chesterton back in 1936, are “not only more serious but more spontaneous” than the “ghastly mummery of saying a few words” … The poverty of the 21st-century imagination betrays the dead and the living. Tradition honours with awe, and it provides those left behind with the language and actions to articulate the inexpressible.

The person who willingly submits to the ritual of the lying-in-state, argued Chesterton, “may not be an exceptional person but at least he understands what is meant by an exceptional occasion.” By contrast, the bright spark who stands above it all forfeits the wisdom of the crowd, and by rejecting history, discards a part of themselves, too – so that they are ignorant even of their own identity. Worse, they are without hope. If you believe, as we are encouraged to believe today, that death is it, the funeral is a “goodbye” that can’t even be heard by the deceased. But if you believe, as the late Queen did, that there is a life after this one, then the rite is a demonstration of faith that things will continue.

To inhabit a tradition means not only to participate in it but to pass it on. Its survival is a tribute to the perseverance of life itself. We will be told that all we’ve seen is old hat; we’ll be told that even if it was grand, Queen Elizabeth was its last shout. Well, they’ve said that a million times before, and yet here we are lining the streets, or crowding around the television, bearing witness to an ancient institution that has the audacity to claim its origin from King Solomon.

Bemusement? It renders clarity. Despair? It offers hope.

I will return to faith in a moment.

Also writing for The Telegraph, Christopher Howse described the ‘sacred mysteries’ surrounding royal ceremonies:

The lying-in-state of Queen Elizabeth, her coffin covered by the royal standard upon which rested the Imperial State Crown, made an argument hard to reduce to words. It argued for a constitutional monarchy and the ancient conventions surrounding it. Millions of people this week have quietly taken part in recognising that reality.

In religion, an old saw says: lex orandi lex credendi – the law of prayer is the law of belief. In other words, prayers and liturgy express implicit meanings behind them. Perform the rites and you learn what you believe.

Something similar operates in state ceremonial. I know that traditions are reinvented, and that the lying-in-state in Westminster Hall is little over a century old. But it incorporates remarkably old elements. In the Imperial State Crown, for example, is the sapphire of St Edward, said to have been part of the coronation ring of King Edward the Confessor, who came to the throne in 1042.

It is not too soon now … to consider the coronation of King Charles. There is antiquity here too, the inheritance of which should not be thrown away. The motet Zadok the Priest, for example, has been sung at every coronation since 973, for King Edgar. The words are based on the First Book of Kings (1:38): “Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet anointed Solomon king. And all the people rejoiced and said: God save the King! Long live the King! God save the King!”

… Some of my fears have been assuaged by the words of King Charles. He had once spoken of being the defender of faiths, rather than the faith of the Church of England implied by the abbreviations found on our coinage: FID DEF – fidei defensor. In his first address on coming to the throne, King Charles called the Church of England “the church in which my own faith is so deeply rooted”.

The Coronation takes place within the service of Holy Communion (even if films from 1953 omit images of Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh receiving the Sacrament, as they did).

And, no matter what, we are better off with an established church in England than without one, precisely for these reasons:

Sometimes I find the Church of England annoying. Who doesn’t? But I’d rather have it as the Established Church than not … as the godly anointing of the head of state and supreme governor of the Church of England, the Coronation must retain the Christian elements that define it.

The only noise we heard was during the changing of the guard, which took place every 20 minutes. Unless one does it as a job, i.e. in front of one of the palaces, it is difficult to stand completely still in one place for much longer.

Lucy Denyer wrote an article for The Telegraph describing what an honour it was for her to see her husband as part of that guard:

My husband is – imperceptibly, infinitesimally – swaying. Backwards and forwards he goes, gently, so, so gently. Blink and you’d miss it; to all intents and purposes he is standing stock still, eyes front, unsmiling, upright. You’d only catch the tiny movement if you were looking very intently.

… The rocking – forwards and backwards from the heel to the ball of the foot – keeps the blood flowing; stops him passing out. Watch really carefully and they’re all at it. 

The Queen herself also did that when standing for long periods of time. It does work.

She, too, commented on the silence:

Inside, under the bright lights hanging from the mediaeval beams, it is silent, bar the tapping of feet, the discreet click of an official photographer’s lens and once, the wail of a baby.

Suddenly comes the bang of sword on stone, the signal for the guard to change. It is precisely 12:20am and the four on the corners swing their swords in a graceful arc in perfect time, before making their careful way down the steps of the dais on which the late Queen’s catafalque stands …

My husband tells me afterwards that all he could think of, at this point, was not to trip, fall – and become a global meme.

She discussed the power of ritual and solemnity of a vigil:

A vigil can at once be grand or simple, awe-inspiring or strangely intimate – or all of those things – and Queen Elizabeth II’s is no exception. Ignore the velvet ropes and the electric lights – and the anoraks, trainers and clutched plastic bags – and this could be a moment from another time; it is timeless.

Soothing, too; the endless river of people filing by the coffin. Most slow, some bow, others curtsey, some blow kisses. Many linger after they have passed by, reluctant to leave this sanctuary that it has taken them so long to reach. Exhaustion is etched on faces; there is the odd dazed-looking child stumbling along between its parents.

Among this stream of awkward humanity, the officers on guard stand in marked contrast – statues, doing their duty. They have been practicing all week: their entrances and exits, their synchronised sword drills run through at home in spare half hours with umbrellas. Standing orders have been dusted off, breastplates refitted, helmets adjusted, boots polished. I have seen the pomp and ceremony hundreds of times, yet never carried out so silently; there is no shouting of orders in here.

The sword bangs once more; it is time to leave. On top of the coffin, the Black Prince’s Ruby suddenly flashes red. I pause, bow my head, say a prayer of thanks – for Her Majesty’s life, but also, in her death, to have been able to see this, to watch my husband carry out this enormous honour.

Returning to Windsor — and to God

After the Queen’s committal at St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle, Tim Stanley wrote a moving tribute for The Telegraph:

The Committal was a homecoming. To Windsor and to God.

This is one of England’s holiest spots, burial site of kings, church of the Order of the Garter, it once hosted a splinter of Christ’s cross. Its slender pillars are like the trunks of ash trees. 

Beneath its canopy of silver lattice, the coffin was borne to the quire and rested at the catafalque, to a setting of Psalm 121: “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills.”

Then the choir sang the Russian contakion of the departed, also performed at the Duke’s funeral, a nod to the family’s Orthodox heritage. Absent a eulogy, it was the music that expressed Her Majesty’s character and convictions, including a motet arranged by Sir William Henry Harris who, it is believed, taught the young Princess Elizabeth how to play the piano. As a child, she could often be found in the organ loft listening to him play for the services down below, especially at Christmas.

The words by John Donne crystallised the message of the readings: “Bring us, O Lord God… into the house and gate of Heaven”, where there shall be no darkness “but one equal light”, no noise “but one equal music” and one “equal eternity”.

Put another way, Elizabeth II lived as a queen but, in death, she is a soul equal to any other, returned to God. In an age of atheism, when Christians are persecuted across the world, it’s remarkable that perhaps history’s largest ever TV audience was given over to a statement of unafraid Christian belief – and over the course of the Committal, one cleric after another expressed the vision of their church with utter clarity.

There is the reality of mortality, as described by the Dean of Windsor in Psalm 103: “The days of man are but grass… As soon as the wind goeth over it, it is gone.”

There is the certainty of life after death, as stated in the prayers: “We rejoice at thy gracious promise to all thy servants, living and departed, that we shall rise again at the coming of our Saviour Jesus Christ.” And there is the vision of triumph at the end of times, as the Dean quoted from Revelation: “There shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying.”

This passage was read at the funerals of the Queen’s grandparents and father, casting us back over an unbroken line of succession.

There was no qualification in any of these words, no Thought for the Day “some might say, others will feel differently”, but instead pure hope rooted in unshakable faith. The Queen has died, but her story does not end. That’s true for the monarchy, as well …

Finally, the coffin lowered into the ground as the Dean continued: “Go forth upon thy journey from this world, O Christian soul.” The Garter King of Arms proclaimed the late Queen’s titles; a bagpiper played a lament from the North Quire Aisle, slowly walking into the distance, till the figure and his tune became a ghost in the ash forest. You might say that physically we were in England, but spiritually we were in Balmoral.

And the congregation awoke from its reverie into a new era …

Later, of course, the family would say a very private farewell to Queen Elizabeth, and she would be laid next to her beloved husband – concluding a set of rites that, like Russian dolls, grew smaller and more precious in form. 

For the public, the emotional journey to this moment was intense. Over 10 days, the lying in state allowed us to participate in the Queen’s farewell and, let’s be honest, make it a little bit about us. How British were the queues, we said, how democratic the whole thing.

But at the Abbey and the Chapel, we saw what this was really all about: namely the late Queen, her precious traditions and the principles they exist to pass on. Ultimately, the Committal articulated love – for country, for family, for horses and dogs, all the things that make a life worth living.

The Church of England is preoccupied by church growth programmes.

They do not need that at all.

What they need is a continuous replay of the Queen’s four days in Westminster Hall, her funeral at Westminster Abbey and her committal service at St George’s Chapel.

My message to Anglican clerics is: build it and they will come.

————————————————-

It is not too late to send the Royal Family a message of condolence:

Wherever you are in the world, you can send a message of condolence in memory of Her Majesty The Queen on our website:

— The Royal Family (@RoyalFamily) September 15, 2022

My better half and I were in London yesterday. Friends told us that floral tributes were still being laid in the relevant parks and at Windsor Castle.

It is good to see that mourners are still remembering our late monarch, especially as the Royal Family now have a chance to grieve in private for the next few days.

May God bless them on that difficult journey.

Long live the King.

Reflections on the Queen continue next week.

As the Queen lay at rest at Westminster Hall, the Elizabeth Line began

With the late Queen’s casket in London, those who wished to pay their respects at Westminster Hall began to queue.

This post covers the events of Wednesday, September 14 and Friday, September 16.

Parliament and commerce act ‘out of respect’

Some rather unusual developments in Parliament and elsewhere in the United Kingdom occurred, notionally ‘out of respect’ for the late monarch.

On Tuesday, September 13, Guido Fawkes posted a tweet about a fire drill for Tuesday, September 20, that would be turned into a virtual one, as it was ‘too close to Her Majesty the Queen’s funeral’, which took place on the 19th:

Fire Drill cancelled @Madz_Grant pic.twitter.com/zchOp25vMR

— Guido Fawkes (@GuidoFawkes) September 13, 2022

In Parliament, two female MPs — one Labour, one Conservative — decided to stop working ‘out of respect’:

MPs Stopped “Non-Urgent” Work Out of Respect for the Queen https://t.co/JEoEJlOr7w pic.twitter.com/kHCNVwMR42

— Guido Fawkes (@GuidoFawkes) September 12, 2022

Guido’s post conveyed the absurdity of it all. Note the first paragraph in particular (emphases his):

The Queen’s passing led many across the country to suspend their duties as a mark of respect over the weekend: the Met Office stopped reporting the weather, the football was called off, and the Bank of England delayed its decision on interest rates for a week, Norwich council have stopped residents locking up their bikes, and Wetherspoons has reportedly stopped selling condoms in its loos*. All as Her Majesty would have wanted.

A few MPs are also throwing themselves into a period of mourning. Both Victoria Atkins and Alex Davies-Jones closed their offices on Friday. “Out of respect” for the sovereign…

Alex Davies-Jones (Labour) was first. She left a Facebook message.

Victoria Atkins (Conservative) followed suit, also via Facebook.

Guido posted the messages and followed up:

This morning Davies-Jones clarified that her constituency office had “only closed on Friday out of respect for HM The Queen’s sad passing“, and is now open. If you’re a constituent of Victoria Atkins and you haven’t heard from her since Friday, though, you can probably assume your problems have been sent to the “non-urgent” pile. Presumably neither MP will be forgoing last Friday’s salary as a similar mark of respect…

*Guido remains sceptical about the truthfulness of this tweet…

More followed from the Palace of Westminster.

IPSA — the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority — the independent body that regulates and administers the business costs and decides the pay and pensions of the 650 elected MPs and their staff in the UK, announced a delay in publishing MPs’ expenses because the Queen had died:

It’s what should would have wanted! 😜

— Parky (@parky3998) September 13, 2022

Guido recalled that something similar happened nearly a year ago after the murder of Sir David Amess MP:

This latest nonsensical expression of sympathy with His Majesty the King’s recent bereavement comes just days after Guido revealed two MPs had suspended “non-urgent” casework as a mark of respect. IPSA’s move also comes almost a year after they stopped publishing MPs’ expenses details in the wake of Sir David Amess’s murder. It’s almost like they’re looking for any excuse…

Everyone knew there was going to be a long queue for four days in order to see the Queen lying at rest in Westminster Hall. The queue was quickly dubbed the Elizabeth Line, which is a nod and a wink to London’s Crossrail route of the same name which the Queen opened in May 2022. It was one of her last public appearances.

The public were angry over arrangements for MPs, peers and some parliamentary staff to get priority and to bring at least one guest to Westminster Hall while everyone else — including MPs’ staffers — would have to queue, day and night, for many hours. Guido’s tweet below received a lot of angry responses:

Why is everyone surprised ? The British public are of no value to this corrupt regime we live under

— Stephen Ashton (@Stepashton18) September 13, 2022

Guido posted the official instructions and said:

The parliamentary staffer squabble over the Queen’s Lying-in-State is about to get worse. Despite rumours that Commons Leader Penny Mordaunt is reviewing the decision to ban MPs’ staffers from skipping the queue, a new announcement on the parliamentary intranet reveals those who already have priority access – including grey passholders such as cleaners and cooks – are now even allowed to invite a guest as they pay their respects …

MPs and Lords are entitled to up to four guests; grey passholders are allowed one. Staffers, many of whom have a not dissimilar sense of entitlement, will have to queue up for 20 hours like everyone else. Unless they make friends with a priority attendee pretty quickly…

I do not know how that ended.

Meanwhile, the Royal Family, particularly the King and Queen Consort, were undertaking daily engagements around the country.

Speaking of the Royal Family, some staff at Clarence House, which, for a while, continues to be the residence of King Charles, received redundancy notices while he and the Royal Family were in Edinburgh.

On September 13, The Guardian reported (purple emphases mine):

Dozens of Clarence House staff have been given notice of redundancies as the offices of King Charles and the Queen Consort move to Buckingham Palace after the death of the Queen, the Guardian has learned …

Private secretaries, the finance office, the communications team and household staff are among those who received notice during the thanksgiving service for the Queen, at St Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh on Monday, that their posts were on the line.

Many staff had assumed they would be amalgamated into the King’s new household, claiming they were given no indication of what was coming until the letter from Sir Clive Alderton, the King’s top aide, arrived. One source said: “Everybody is absolutely livid, including private secretaries and the senior team. All the staff have been working late every night since Thursday, to be met with this. People were visibly shaken by it.”

In his letter, seen by the Guardian, Alderton wrote: “The change in role for our principals will also mean change for our household … The portfolio of work previously undertaken in this household supporting the former Prince of Wales’s personal interests, former activities and household operations will no longer be carried out, and the household … at Clarence House will be closed down. It is therefore expected that the need for the posts principally based at Clarence House, whose work supports these areas will no longer be needed.”

That said, staff will receive assistance in finding other posts:

Staff who are made redundant are expected to be offered searches for alternative employment across all royal households, assistance in finding new jobs externally and an “enhanced” redundancy payment beyond the statutory minimum.

A Clarence House spokesman said: “Following last week’s accession, the operations of the household of the former Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall have ceased and, as required by law, a consultation process has begun. Our staff have given long and loyal service and, while some redundancies will be unavoidable, we are working urgently to identify alternative roles for the greatest number of staff.”

However, former Royal Butler Grant Harrold told GB News at the weekend that staff contracts state they are in the employ of specific members of the Royal Family, e.g. Prince/King Charles. Therefore, most staff know that they might not have jobs for life.

The same thing happened when the Queen Mother died in 2002:

When the Queen Mother died, the Duke of York took over Royal Lodge at Windsor. While some of her 83 members of staff were redeployed within other royal households, others were let go.

The Guardian also reported that King Charles will not be paying inheritance tax as those assets are surrendered to the Government in return for a sovereign grant to the Royal Family:

King Charles will not pay tax on the fortune he has inherited from the late Queen, although he has volunteered to follow his mother’s lead in paying income tax.

Under a clause agreed in 1993 by the then prime minister, John Major, any inheritance passed “sovereign to sovereign” avoids the 40% levy applied to assets valued at more than £325,000.

The Crown Estate has an estimated £15.2bn in assets, of which 25% of the profits are given to the Royal Family as the sovereign grant. The estate includes the royal archives and the royal collection of paintings, which are held by the monarch “in right of the crown”.

These assets cannot be sold by the King and they are in effect surrendered to the government in return for a grant. The government’s guidance concludes that it would therefore be “inappropriate for inheritance tax to be paid in respect of such assets”.

Separately, Charles also inherits from the Queen the Duchy of Lancaster, a private estate that includes portfolio of lands, properties and assets held in trust for the sovereign.

He is exempt from inheritance tax on these assets, among others, in order to preserve “a degree of financial independence from the government of the day”.

And rightly so.

September 14

On Wednesday, September 14, the Queen’s casket lay at Buckingham Palace until the middle of the afternoon when the King, his siblings, his sons, his nephews Peter Philips and the Earl of Snowdon along with the Duke of Gloucester and Princess Anne’s husband Sir Tim Laurence walked behind it in a ceremonial procession to Westminster Hall.

The King and Queen Consort made the short journey from Clarence House to Buckingham Palace mid-morning, where the crowd warmly cheered them:

King Charles III has arrived at Buckingham Palace.

A car carrying the monarch has gone up The Mall towards the Palace, after departing Clarence House earlier.

Follow the latest: https://t.co/ITX0j7pfzP

📺 Sky 501, Virgin 602, Freeview 233 and YouTube pic.twitter.com/OCh4ETAIXa

— Sky News (@SkyNews) September 14, 2022

The King has just arrived at Buckingham Palace to cheers from the crowd. pic.twitter.com/v9xHzo00xd

— Emily Andrews (@byEmilyAndrews) September 14, 2022

While the Elizabeth Line began building near Westminster Hall near Parliament, other people remained at Buckingham Palace:

William Single, 19, said he got up at 5am to travel from Coventry in order to secure a spot outside Buckingham Palace to pay tribute to the Queen.

“I’m here because she served for 70 years and worked every day of her life, and I just want to say thank you,” he told @PA pic.twitter.com/rOz7bs3Vhb

— PA Media (@PA) September 14, 2022

Mourners’ flowers accumulated in the park, said to be more fragrant as the days passed. Nearby, this was the scene on The Mall:

Members of the Household Cavalry could be seen as crowds gathered along The Mall ahead of the ceremonial procession of the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Hall, London

📸: @VictoriaJonesPA pic.twitter.com/vZF6sxZDUK

— PA Media (@PA) September 14, 2022

Those in the Elizabeth Line could be assured of help throughout the ensuing four days:

No proof of disability will be required to use the accessible queue for the Queen’s lying in state, it is understood.

Marshals will be on hand to make sure people are in the correct line.

Together with stewards, they will be told to proactively look out for anyone struggling pic.twitter.com/YYmoKDW991

— PA Media (@PA) September 14, 2022

Nearly 2,000 law enforcement officers, stewards, other officials and volunteers were on hand for mourners:

There will be 779 professional stewards per shift, assisted by 100 civil service volunteer marshals, 40 adult scouts, and 30 members of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry charity, as well as Metropolitan Police officers on hand during the Queen’s lying in state

📸: @VictoriaJonesPA pic.twitter.com/eQizXAC3PI

— PA Media (@PA) September 14, 2022

The procession from Buckingham Palace began around 2:30 p.m. Other members of the Royal Family followed in cars in the cortege:

The Queen’s coffin has left Buckingham Palace for the last time.

Silence fell among the thousands-strong crowd as a muffled drum draped in black was beaten at 75 paces per minute.

📸: Gareth Fuller/@PA pic.twitter.com/Au5JnHETI9

— PA Media (@PA) September 14, 2022

King Charles, the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Sussex appeared solemn as they walked behind the coffin.

The sun shone as the procession moved onto The Mall in central London and members of the crowd threw yellow roses into the road as the gun carriage passed them pic.twitter.com/cj81WqhYpm

— PA Media (@PA) September 14, 2022

Once the cortege, which included other members of the Royal Family, arrived at Westminster Hall, a 20-minute service took place:

⚫️ A Service for the reception of Her Majesty The Queen's coffin at Westminster Hall:

— The Royal Family (@RoyalFamily) September 14, 2022

This video has the end of the procession, the placing of the Queen’s casket on the catafalque in Westminster Hall and the service, much of which is in traditional language and includes the funeral Collect from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. The Archbishop of Canterbury is there and the choir from Westminster Abbey sound like angels.

I’m not sure why the video shows an ‘unavailable’ message. Click on ‘Watch on YouTube’ and you should be able to see it. I still can, although it might expire in time:

Afterwards, the Royal Family returned to Buckingham Palace.

Outside, no one complained about waiting in the Elizabeth Line. These two women told Sky News why they were there.

Vanessa was first in the queue:

"It's a unique moment."

Vanessa is the first person in the queue to see the Queen at her lying in state after taking her place at the front of the line near Lambeth Bridge at 11.30am on Monday.

Latest: https://t.co/8AFWhoW82a

📺 Sky 501, Virgin 602, Freeview 233 and YouTube pic.twitter.com/g7iXXOLXuV

— Sky News (@SkyNews) September 14, 2022

Even the unpredictable weather couldn’t keep this lady away:

'She's the greatest in the whole wide world.'

A member of the public who's been queuing overnight for the Queen's lying in state tells @SkySarahJane she doesn't regret coming – despite the rain and the lack of sleep.

Latest: https://t.co/8AFWhoW82a

📺 Sky 501 and YouTube pic.twitter.com/D8jrHqjPuf

— Sky News (@SkyNews) September 14, 2022

Many people made friends quickly in the queue. It was wonderful hearing their stories, many more of which followed into the weekend.

September 15

On Thursday, September 15, The King and Queen Consort had a well deserved rest day at home. They left London on Wednesday evening via helicopter.

It is thought that Camilla was dropped off first at her home in Wiltshire. From there, Charles journeyed to his estate.

We discovered that Camilla had a broken toe. That must have made her walkabouts quite painful.

September 16

September 16 is an important date to the Welsh who resent having non-Welsh Princes of Wales. It is Owain Glyndŵr Day.

The last true Welsh prince was Owain ap Gruffydd (c. 1359 – c. 1415), also known as Owain Glyndŵr, Glyn Dŵr and, in English, Owen Glendower. Shakespeare gave him the name Owen Glendower in Henry IV, Part 1.

He took up his rightful place as Prince of Powys on September 16, 1400, at his estate. Owain became the last Welsh Prince of Wales in 1404, a ceremony witnessed by emissaries from Scotland, France and Castile (Spain).

He had been fighting the English under Henry IV for some time and continued to do so until 1412. Henry IV appointed Hotspur of Shakespeare fame, Henry Percy, to lead the English side of the battle.

In 1412, Owain disappeared, not to be seen for the next three years. Meanwhile, in 1413, Henry IV died and Henry V was more conciliatory towards the Welsh.

In 1415, one of Owain’s supporters, Adam of Usk, wrote in his Chronicle:

After four years in hiding, from the king and the realm, Owain Glyndŵr died, and was buried by his followers in the darkness of night. His grave was discovered by his enemies, however, so he had to be re-buried, though it is impossible to discover where he was laid.

Owain was 56 years old.

As of 2015, his final resting place remained uncertain.

The Tudors effectively conquered Wales and found little resistance in so doing. It is said that they made the Welsh more prominent in English society.

Future English monarchs installed non-Welsh Princes of Wales, including the new one, Prince William. One Welshman started a petition, ‘End “Prince of Wales” title out of respect for Wales’. As I write, it has over 32,000 signatures.

The petition reads, in part:

… the title has been held exclusively by Englishmen as a symbol of dominance over Wales. To this day, the English “Princes of Wales” have no genuine connection to our country.

The title remains an insult to Wales and is a symbol of historical oppression. The title implies that Wales is still a principality undermining Wales’ status as a nation and a country. In addition, the title has absolutely no constitutional role for Wales, which is now a devolved country with a national Parliament. Neither the Welsh parliament nor the people of Wales were notified, let alone consulted about this controversial decision.

The Welsh Nationalist Party, Plaid Cymru (pron. ‘Plied Cuhm-ree’), is not happy about Prince William’s appointment or the possible investiture in to follow in Wales within the next year or two.

On September 13, Guido reported that Plaid’s leader, Adam Price, made his views known:

Plaid Leader Insists Prince of Wales Title “A Decision for Wales” as 20,000 Sign Angry Petition https://t.co/Gg21ReTK1w pic.twitter.com/geTe7zKmta

— Guido Fawkes (@GuidoFawkes) September 13, 2022

Guido’s post says that the Welsh First Minister, Labour’s Mark Drakeford, opposes Prince William’s probable investiture in Wales, which his father had in 1969:

With Prince William assuming the Prince of Wales role last week, thousands of furious Welsh nationalists have signed a change.org petition demanding he be stripped of the title “out of respect for Wales” given its symbolism of “historical oppression“. Now Plaid leader – and Mark Drakeford’s right-hand man – Adam Price has waded in to pour fuel on the fire:

I welcome what the First Minister, Mark Drakeford, had to say on the question of an investiture. I’ve seen stories in the London press that an investiture is going to happen and I think that a line is crossed because that gives the Prince of Wales a quasi-official status in Welsh life. I think that’s a decision that we in Wales should make in a time when we’re living in a modern democratic Wales – it’s a decision we need to make here before any announcement is made […] I’m a republican, and there is sensitivity and pain around the [Prince of Wales] title for many of us…

However, not everyone in Wales was upset either by the prospect of King Charles or a new Prince of Wales. These residents of Caerphilly seemed content:

'He'll do a good job for us'

People in Caerphilly react to the news that Prince William has become the new Prince of Waleshttps://t.co/ScZlDi801W pic.twitter.com/kcNMRPXbH1

— BBC Wales News (@BBCWalesNews) September 13, 2022

It was against this historical backdrop that King Charles and Camilla Queen Consort visited Wales on Friday.

While the new Prince and Princess of Wales visited Sandringham to greet mourners and view their tributes …

Thank you to everyone in Sandringham today pic.twitter.com/lXtpfQdsWm

— The Prince and Princess of Wales (@KensingtonRoyal) September 15, 2022

… the King and Queen Consort attended a service in memory of the Queen at Llandaff Cathedral then travelled to Cardiff to the Senedd, where they received condolences in the chamber from members and speak with them afterwards.

I was hoping to find a video of them on walkabout. The crowds were warm and welcoming. Unfortunately, the news videos for that day are mostly about London with only two about Wales.

The service at Llandaff Cathedral was beautiful, especially the hymns, which I sang when I lived in the United States. Part of it was in Welsh. The bilingual Order of Service is here. This article from the Church in Wales (Anglican) has more.

The full video is available from the BBC for another 26 days.

The Bidding Prayer (p. 7) was exquisite, touching all the right notes for the late Queen and for the new King:

We are gathered in the sight of Almighty God
to give thanks for the life
of our Most Gracious Sovereign Lady Queen Elizabeth the Second,
for her steadfastness and devotion to her sacred calling,
her courage and unwavering sense of duty
to the people of this Realm and Commonwealth.
As we entrust her to our Redeemer and Lord,
in whose promises she gained assurance and hope,
we pray for our Most Gracious Sovereign Lord
King Charles the Third,
that God may grant him peace in these days of mourning,
wisdom as he faces the challenges of sovereignty
and grace to accept the mantle of his calling.

First Minister Mark Drakeford read 1 Kings, 3:4-15:

The king went to Gibeon to sacrifice there, for that was the principal high place; Solomon used to offer a thousand burnt-offerings on that altar. At Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream by night; and God said, ‘Ask what I should give you.’ And Solomon said, ‘You have shown great and steadfast love to your servant my father David, because he walked before you in faithfulness, in righteousness, and in uprightness of heart towards you; and you have kept for him this great and steadfast love, and have given him a son to sit on his throne today. And now, O Lord my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father David, although I am only a little child; I do not know how to go out or come in. And your servant is in the midst of the people whom you have chosen, a great people, so numerous they cannot be numbered or counted. Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, able to discern between good and evil; for who can govern this your great people?’

It pleased the Lord that Solomon had asked this. God said to him, ‘Because you have asked this, and have not asked for yourself long life or riches, or for the life of your enemies, but have asked for yourself understanding to discern what is right, I now do according to your word. Indeed, I give you a wise and discerning mind; no one like you has been before you and no one like you shall arise after you. I give you also what you have not asked, both riches and honour all your life; no other king shall compare with you. If you will walk in my ways, keeping my statutes and my commandments, as your father David walked, then I will lengthen your life.’ Then Solomon awoke; it had been a dream.

The motion of condolence and subsequent reception at the Senedd went well.

The Conservative leader, Andrew R T Davies, was happy with the Royal visit:

This lady, who was at the religious service, remembered the visits the Queen made after the Aberfan Disaster, 21 October 1966, which involved a huge slag heap destroying a school while children were in class. Five teachers and 109 pupils died. The lady in the video was 11 years old at the time:

This was the first time a monarch visited a disaster outside of wartime, with pressure from the usual quarters urging her to go to Aberfan. It was one of the rare times she came close to tears:

The lady whom GB News interviewed said that the Queen could not have done anything to help. What had happened was already done. She and other residents appreciated the Queen’s visits nonetheless.

The Royal Couple left Cardiff for London in the late afternoon.

That evening, at 7:30, the King, his sister and two brothers held the first of two Vigils of the Princes at Westminster Hall:

The Queen’s children hold a Vigil beside Her Majesty’s coffin in Westminster Hall, London. pic.twitter.com/Nch9a1LGUs

— The Royal Family (@RoyalFamily) September 16, 2022

As in Edinburgh, the public were allowed to file past to pay their respects to the late monarch. This was a first both at St Giles’ Cathedral and at Westminster Hall, where the tradition started with the death of George V in 1936. It was closed to the public that time and again in 2002, when the Queen Mother died.

Another Vigil of the Princes took place on Saturday, this time with the Queen’s grandchildren.

More to come tomorrow.

The Queen’s Operation Unicorn: protesters could not mar the filmic days in Edinburgh

Yesterday’s post introduced the significance of Scotland to Queen Elizabeth II.

In it, I mentioned that, after the 1707 Acts of Union, the history of Scotland began to be romanticised through the efforts of Queen Victoria, Prince Albert as well as Walter Scott’s novels.

Romantic history

A royal historian told GB News that Prince Albert was quite taken by the countryside in Aberdeenshire, which reminded him of his native Rhineland.

He and Victoria had an amazing love life, according to a television documentary I saw many years ago. In the early days, at least, he used to dress and undress her. Her silk stockings were a favourite part of the ritual.

After Albert died in 1861, Victoria moved up to Balmoral for a time and became close friends with one of his servants, John Brown, a Scot. A film about their relationship, Mrs Brown, made its debut in 1997.

In 1863, courtiers and the Royal Family thought that Brown could rehabilitate the mourning Queen. Instead, he began controlling her daily life at her holiday idyll.

In time, rumours about the extent of their relationship began circulating not only among her inner circle but also in London, where a republican sentiment began growing in her absence. Courtiers and the Royal Family changed tack, this time urging Brown to get the widowed Queen back to the capital to make public appearances.

Brown followed orders, although his and Victoria’s relationship was never the same afterwards.

On the other hand, her resumption of public appearances quelled restive republicans.

Brown remained a loyal servant, foiling an assassination attempt on the Royal Family. In 1883, he contracted pneumonia. Victoria visited him in his room and apologised for not having been a better friend. Brown died a short time later and left behind a diary, which, allegedly, has disappeared.

Victoria’s two main courtiers, Sir Henry Ponsonby and Sir William Jenner, found it and read it. Only they knew what happened to it afterwards. One of them said later on that the then-Prince of Wales — Edward VII — was so resentful of Brown that he threw a bust of the man over the palace wall in London after his death.

At Balmoral, John Brown is immortalised in two paintings which hang in the drawing room where Queen Elizabeth II received Boris Johnson and Liz Truss on Tuesday, September 6, 2022.

On September 7, The Times helpfully told us more about the room’s features, including the paintings which flank the fireplace (emphases mine):

Victoria and John Brown, her servant and close friend after the death of Prince Albert, feature twice in the room’s paintings. To the left of the mantelpiece they appear in Sir Edwin Landseer’s chalk and pastel drawing Sunshine: Balmoral in 1860 or Death of the Royal Stag. Albert stands proudly in the foreground with a gun over his shoulder, dogs at his heel and a stag at his feet. In the background Victoria sits side-saddle on a horse led by Brown, her ghillie.

To the right is Gilbert Sprague’s copy of another Landseer painting of Victoria, in mourning as she sits on her pony Flora outside Osborne House, her retreat on the Isle of Wight. Victoria commissioned the original in 1861 after Albert’s death, telling Landseer that she wished to be depicted “as I am now, sad and lonely, seated on my pony, led by Brown, with a representation of Osborne”.

Queen Elizabeth also experienced the magic of Scotland that her forebears helped to create.

As a child, she remembered happy days at Glamis Castle then Balmoral. As an adult, she associated possibly her happiest memories with Balmoral. There, the love of her life, Prince Philip, proposed to her. The happy couple also spent their honeymoon there.

On September 8, The Times published an insightful article: ‘Balmoral gave Elizabeth the chance to feel “free”‘, excerpted below:

Scotland played a large and emotional part in Elizabeth’s life. Her happiest memories were of the childhood days she spent with “Granny Strathmore”— Cecilia Bowes-Lyon, Countess of Strathmore and Kinghorne, who was also her godmother — at Glamis Castle.

At the family home in Angus she enjoyed parties, children’s theatre after tea, and visits to nearby Cortachy Castle, owned by Lord Airlie, where she once “borrowed” the young David Ogilvie’s little blue pedal car, much to his fury. At Balmoral, she felt she could be “normal” — almost a housewife, like ordinary people; it took her into another world. “Here I can be free,” she told a friend once.

Not that it was exactly ordinary; there were certain traditions. A piper played every morning before breakfast, and, when guests were staying, there would be pipers at dinner. The ladies would depart after the meal, leaving the men to talk over the brandy.

There were shooting parties, with the Queen and her dogs driving out to join the guns at lunch, then “picking up”: her dogs retrieving the birds they had shot. “She was an ace picker-up,” recalled one friend. Back at the house the first duty would be to feed the dogs.

She insisted on doing the washing-up after picnics, when Philip managed the barbecue and she did the rest. Those picnics — some of them in the evening, in one or other of the huts in the grounds of the estate, always kept open, and often used by members of the public — were famous occasions, remembered by guests long after for their combination of relaxed informality and perfectly organised routine.

Then it would be back to the castle. What one friend noticed, however, was that, as soon as Elizabeth walked through the door of Balmoral Castle, she became Queen again. This was the royal residence, and there was no mistaking who was in charge.

The Queen also enjoyed an annual week-long stay in Edinburgh at the Palace of Holyroodhouse. The city’s Lord Provost would deliver the keys to the palace to her in the Ceremony of the Keys and a closing ceremony of her returning them to him took place upon her departure.

She would visit St Giles’ Cathedral, probably the only Presbyterian cathedral in existence, and, beginning in the late 1990s, Holyrood, the Scottish parliament.

The independence movement strengthened by an SNP government has grown leaps and bounds since I last visited Scotland 30 years ago.

It is difficult to pin down what exactly the SNP expect as an independent nation, including where they stand on the monarchy. Although First Minister Nicola Sturgeon praised the Queen in death, she was less forthcoming in June during the Platinum Jubilee weekend:

After the scandal surrounding Prince Andrew, she said that there should be a “debate” about the future of the monarchy; she notably failed to deliver a message of loyalty at the time of the Platinum Jubilee; and she did nothing to contradict a statement from the Green Party, her allies in government, which accused the monarchy of “holding back” progress.

However:

None of that has diluted the Queen’s affection for Scotland, and her pride in her Scottish connections. As Sir Charles Fraser, who was purse bearer at the Palace of Holyroodhouse for nearly 20 years, commented: “Over many conversations with the Queen, she always spoke of her love for Scotland and her commitment to her Scottish ancestry. Throughout her reign she gave us leadership and hope, where others have failed.”

Incidentally, former Royal servants say that all of them enjoyed being at Balmoral and could hardly wait for their annual stay there. It seems that it was as delightful for them as it was for the Queen. 

Monday, September 12

In my preceding post, I wrote about a young woman getting arrested on Sunday, September 11, near St Giles’ Cathedral for an anti-monarchy poster with an obscenity written on it. This happened during the proclamation of Charles III as the new King.

People in England were upset about it, but Scotland has its own speech laws which are much stricter than ours:

Arrest is a product of stricter hate laws in Scotland under the SNP.

— Alan Rodger (@AlanRodger9) September 12, 2022

Guido Fawkes thought that the arrest was overkill. I tend to agree but, then again, I don’t know anything about Scottish policing (emphases his):

The 22-year-old woman who was arrested after holding up this anti-monarchy placard at St Giles’ Cathedral has been charged “in connection with a breach of the peace” and is reportedly due to appear at Edinburgh Sheriff Court today. Amid the emotional royalist fervour, the country is feeling it is even more important to stand up for universal and enduring values. The Free Speech Union has expressed concern that the protester been arrested for voicing anti-monarchist views during the Proclamation of King Charles III yesterday.  Defenders of free speech know that if they don’t stand up for views with which they disagree or even find offensive, they’re not defending free speech. Whatever your views on the monarchy, this protester has a right to hers.

… The Free Speech Union has already reached out to the protester to offer their assistance.

That day, Guido reported that the SNP’s deputy leader John Swinney expressed surprising pro-monarchy views. He sounded like a Conservative:

I was amazed at how far Swinney went yesterday on sky news, so supportive of monarchy and praising the accession council for putting scotland and the union centre stage.

Sadly they always pander to republicans for votes at election time though.

— British Alba (@BritishAlba) September 12, 2022

Guido said that, on Sunday, Swinney said he watched the broadcast of Charles III’s Accession Ceremony in London:

I thought that when I watched the accession council in London yesterday because right at the heart of it was the significance of Scotland’s place within the Union and the extraordinary significance that was attached to that and the declarations and commitments that the King made and the fact the Secretary of State for Scotland, the First Minister of Scotland, the Lord Advocate of Scotland, the Lord President of the Court of Session in Scotland, were signatories to the documents which essentially facilitate the accession.

On Monday, Swinney went further:

This morning, Swinney went even further in irritating the most ardent of Scottish nationalists, stating the SNP would continue to have the UK monarch be Head of State in the event of independence, as they promised during the 2014 referendum:

The monarch should be the head of state of an independent Scotland. It’s what we argued in the referendum in 2014 and it’s what we will continue to argue.

Will the death of the Queen accidentally cause a cooling of temperatures in the Scottish independence debate?

That is part of what Operation Unicorn — the days of mourning in Scotland — was designed to do.

For much of Monday, the Queen continued lay in rest at the Palace of Holyroodhouse. This allowed staff to pay their respects in quiet privacy from Sunday afternoon onwards.

Senior members of the Royal Family, such as Princess Anne, were there awaiting the arrival of King Charles. Upon his and the Queen Consort’s arrival, the Lord Provost would go to conduct the Ceremony of the Keys.

Meanwhile, in the morning, King Charles was in London, addressing both Houses of Parliament in the ancient Westminster Hall, adjacent to the Houses of Parliament.

Westminster Hall was built by William the Conqueror’s son, William Rufus (William II) in 1097. It is the largest hall of its kind in Europe. The beamed ceilings were added in 1399 when Richard II had the pillars removed so that everyone inside could see what was going on. On the two occasions when the Palace of Westminster caught on fire or when it was bombed during the Second World War, the first priority of firefighters is to save Westminster Hall over the parliamentary palace.

The building has been used throughout the ages as Parliament, as court for the trials of Charles I and the real Guido Fawkes (a traitor) but has also been the venue for coronation banquets. It is still used by both houses of Parliament and is open to the public on important occasions when it is used for the lying in state of distinguised politicians such as Winston Churchill (1965) and members of the Royal Family. The Queen Mother was the last person to lie in state there. I went to pay my respects to her in 2002. The Queen is lying in state there as I write.

The Queen also spoke there on her Silver Jubilee (1977), her Golden Jubilee (2002) and her Diamond Jubilee (2012). A beautiful stained glass window commemorating her Diamond Jubilee is installed on one side of the hall.

Charles’s visit was of historical significance and not only because he is the United Kingdom’s first King in 70 years.

Both Speakers — of the Lords and of the Commons — wore their dress robes, which are gilded. Their respective serjants of arms brought each House’s mace up to the appropriate Speaker and laid them down on a raised platform.

The Speakers stood across from each other below the raised platform on which Charles was due to speak. The maces were covered with a black cloth, indicating not only mourning but also that they were subservient to the Sovereign.

Peers and MPs, as well as staff members, were in attendance.

The Speaker of the Lords, Lord McFall spoke first to extend his and the Lords’ sympathy to the King.

The life peer, a Scot, is a testament to the progress people can make in modern Britain:

I like the fact that the first person to address Charles in the Westminster Hall event was John McFall, the Lords Speaker, who left school at 15, the son of a school caretaker, and went to university in his 20s, becoming a teacher and then an MP.

— Peter Walker (@peterwalker99) September 12, 2022

Sir Lindsay Hoyle spoke next for the Commons, reminding the new monarch of the increased powers of Parliament since the Glorious Revolution of 1688. The King smiled wryly:

Then it was time for the King to address the room:

The Telegraph‘s summary has the key points of his speech:

We gather today in remembrance of the remarkable span of the Queen’s dedicated service to her nations and peoples.

While very young her late Majesty pledged herself to serve her country and her people and to maintain the precious principles of constitutional government which lie at the heart of our nation.

This vow she kept with unsurpassed devotion. She set an example of selfless duty which, with God’s help and your counsels, I am resolved faithfully to follow.

The King had already met with senior Government ministers, including Liz Truss, over the weekend at Buckingham Palace. Shadow (Opposition) ministers also met with him:

After the event at Westminster Hall ended, a reception was held, but the King and Queen Consort did not attend as they were due to fly to Edinburgh.

While the Royal couple were on their way, people lined up along Edinburgh’s Royal Mile:

When the Queen first visited Scotland as sovereign in 1953, Edinburgh was packed. Today, nearly 70 years later, people have thronged the streets again to say goodbye. pic.twitter.com/meUvjV0Qr9

— James Cook (@BBCJamesCook) September 12, 2022

Once Charles and Camilla arrived at Holyroodhouse, they and other members of the Royal Family assembled to be led by members of Scottish regiments for the procession to St Giles’ Cathedral, for a service of remembrance.

I know from first hand experience that it is a long walk and did not envy the Royals who did walk behind the hearse, especially on the cobbled road.

The Royals who walked were the Queen’s children: the King, the Princess Royal, Prince Andrew and the Prince Edward. Vice Admiral Sir Tim Laurence, Princess Anne’s husband, also walked with them.

Prince Andrew was not allowed to wear his military uniform. He appeared in morning dress with his military medals.

A young heckler shouted at Prince Andrew in reference to sexual allegations with an underage girl, was quickly tackled by a member of the public, then police dragged him to his feet and arrested him:

Prince Andrew heckled as the Queen's coffin passes pic.twitter.com/85m9jUgszF

— Christopher Marshall (@chrismarshll) September 12, 2022

He was arrested for breach of the peace:

https://t.co/YRK7GpZn1b

— Joseph Anderson (@janderson_news) September 13, 2022

The SNP had toughened up that law in 2010:

According to @lizziedearden the Scottish protester was arrested under Section 38 of the Criminal Justice and Licensing (Scotland) Act 2010 introduced under an SNP government. https://t.co/wirtwwm0lx

— Guido Fawkes (@GuidoFawkes) September 12, 2022

The procession up the ancient road was deeply moving, like something out of a film.

Prince Charles wore the green sash and star of the Order of the Thistle.

The Queen’s coffin was draped in the Royal Standard of Scotland.

The Guardian‘s diary for the day added:

The Queen’s coffin is … dressed with a wreath of flowers consisting of white spray roses, white freesias, white button chrysanthemums, dried white heather from Balmoral, spray eryngium, foliage, rosemary, hebe, and pittosporum.

The hearse is flanked by a bearer party found by the Royal Regiment of Scotland and the King’s Body Guard for Scotland.

The cortege arrived at St Giles’ shortly after 3 p.m. Watching the procession, I do not think they allowed enough time.

Heralds and Pursuivants of Scotland stood outside the cathedral door to receive the Queen for one last time. The Guardian has a magnificent photo of their uniforms.

The Crown of Scotland (see photo) was placed on the Queen’s casket before the service.

Here is a photo of the military bearer party dressed in kilts placing the casket on the catafalque in the cathedral.

The Guardian reported (emphases theirs):

At the beginning of the service of thanksgiving for the Queen, Reverend Calum MacLeod welcomed the royal family, “representatives of our nation’s life” and “people whose lives were touched by the Queen in so many unforgettable ways”.

Among those attending the service are the prime minister, Liz Truss, as well as Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon.

Unfortunately, there is no video of the service, which was very well done and oecumenical.

The Order of Service is here.

Nicola Sturgeon read Ecclesiastes 3:1-15. We know the first several verses well but here are the next:

What gain have the workers from their toil? I have seen the business that God has given to everyone to be busy with. He has made everything suitable for its time; moreover, he has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live; moreover, it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil. I know that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it; God has done this, so that all should stand in awe before him. That which is, already has been; that which to be, already is; and God seeks out what has gone by.

The Church of Scotland has a transcript of the sermon that the Right Revd Dr Iain Greenshields preached:

Excerpts follow:

Death has been overcome, these are the words of hope expressed and centered around Jesus who died and rose again.

And this is clearly something that Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth acknowledged and personally embraced.

These last few days, as tributes to her Majesty have poured in and we have watched images of her on screen from her earliest years, capturing that remarkable life, yet now beginning to sink in that she is gone from us – “gone home” to express her own words.

Today, we gather in this place of worship and throughout the nation, to express our thanks to God, for her Majesty Queen Elizabeth’s extraordinary life.

We are united in sorrow at the death of our Monarch, but we are also so aware that His Majesty King Charles and all his family are not just grieving the loss of their Queen, but their mother, grandmother and great-grandmother too.

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth began her reign, like King Solomon by asking for wisdom, something that she demonstrated in large measure and to which was added duty, honour, commitment, and faith.

These are the words that we reach for today to describe the life and reign of Queen Elizabeth, whose passing is mourned not only in her native land but across the Commonwealth and the world, as has been so evident to us in recent days.

Most of us cannot recall a time when she was not our monarch.

Committed to the role she assumed in 1952 upon the death of her beloved father, she has been a constant in all of our lives for over 70 years.

She was determined to see her work as a form of service to others and she maintained that steady course until the end of her life.

People who were in her company always felt that they were being listened to carefully and attentively and with compassion.

She possessed a sharp, intelligent mind, with amazing recall, a kindly heart and a gentle sense of humour.

She understood the breadth of world affairs and also cared about what happened to all of her people.

And although sometimes buffeted by events around her, she continued resolutely and cheerfully fulfilled her responsibilities …

Much has been said about the Queen’s contribution to the life of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth which meant so much to her.

But here in Scotland we acknowledge with gratitude her deep links with our land and its people.

Her love of the Balmoral estate is well known and being there latterly brought her great comfort.

There she was valued as a neighbour and a friend and there she drew strength and refreshment during the summer months.

She was active in the life of civic Scotland, travelling across the country to support numerous causes, entertaining guests at Holyrood Palace and presiding at ceremonial events, many of which took place in this Church.

Here she received the Scottish crown in 1953, an event vividly memorialised in the painting by the Orcadian artist Stanley Cursiter.

Her links with the Scottish churches were also deep and lasting.

She was the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, but she worshipped in the Church of Scotland here north of the border, at Canongate Kirk and especially at Crathie Kirk where she took her pew each Sunday morning, prevented from doing so latterly only by infirmity.

She perceived little difficulty in belonging to two Churches and appreciating the strength of each.

It is clearly evident and without doubt that the Queen’s Christian faith was genuine, and often gave clear and sincere expression in those remarkable Christmas broadcasts.

She spoke unashamedly of her trust in God and of the example and teaching of Jesus Christ whom she sought to follow as best she could – indeed, of that faith she said she had no regret …

Today we mourn her passing but we also celebrate the long and happy reign that we experienced with her.

And we pray God’s blessing upon King Charles who will surely draw strength from his mother’s example and the many affectionate tributes of these days and from our assurance to him as a Church of our steadfast prayers at all times and of our unstinting support to him as was offered to his mother, the Queen.

The Cathedral’s website has more about the Queen’s visits.

The service lasted an hour and ended at 4:15.

The Royal party then returned to Holyroodhouse.

However, their day was far from over.

The King met with Nicola Sturgeon. He and the Queen Consort then went to Holyrood to visit the Scottish parliament where MSPs delivered a motion of condolence.

At 7:20 that evening, the senior Royals returned to St Giles’ for the Vigil of the Princes. It would be the first time that a female — Princess Anne — would take part.

More on that tomorrow.

The Queen’s death in Scotland and Operation Unicorn

It is probably no coincidence that the Queen spent her final months at Balmoral in the north east of Scotland, near Aberdeen.

Scotland, especially the eastern half of the country, is romantic in all senses of the word.

The Queen had many fond memories of her summers there.

Therefore, she and the Princess Royal — Princess Anne — devised Operation Unicorn, to be activated in case she should die in Scotland. It was a great success not only for her Scottish subjects but for all of us watching in the United Kingdom and around the world.

A brief history

The last monarch to die in Scotland was James V in 1542.

He and his family were Catholic. His infant daughter Mary Queen of Scots succeeded him. Regents governed Scotland while she was young. She was forced to abdicate in 1567 and was beheaded in England in 1587.

Mary’s son, James VI of Scotland, succeeded her in 1567. He, too, had regents until he reached majority age. Elizabeth I of England died in 1603 and, unmarried, had no successors. As James was the great-great-grandson of Henry VII, he had a rightful claim not only to the Scottish throne but also those in England and Ireland.

In the Union of England and Scotland Act 1603, the three kingdoms came under James’s rule. In England and Ireland, he was known as James I. His 22-year reign is known as the Jacobean era.

Interestingly, he returned to Scotland only once during that time, in 1617. He styled himself King of Great Britain and Ireland, only modified in the past century to replace Ireland with Northern Ireland.

Having the same monarch but the ability to maintain respective laws and customs allowed Scotland and England the flexibility to trade with each other without a complete union. Successive monarchs discussed union, but the two governments and the clergy vehemently disagreed on how to implement one.

By the 1690s, the whole of Europe was in a severe economic slump. In 1698, the Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies received permission to raise capital through public subscription. The Company decided to invest in the Darién Scheme. This far-sighted investment involved establishing a trading post at Darién Bay on the Isthmus of Panama — where the Panama Canal is today — to engage in commerce with the Far East. The colony was to be called New Caledonia, or New Scotland.

Unfortunately, the Darién Scheme proved to be a disaster. The wealthy Scots who invested in it lost their money and Scotland’s economy collapsed.

The Act of Settlement 1701 decreed that the monarch of England and Ireland would be a Protestant member of the House of Hanover. This meant that no more descendants of Charles I could accede to the throne. Anne acceded to the throne in 1702, reigning over not only those two countries but also Scotland. In a speech to the English parliament, she said that a union was absolutely necessary.

England and Scotland continued to be divided on political union, which affected trade and the status of Scots living in England once the English parliament passed the Alien Act 1705, which made them ‘foreign nationals’.

That year, with Queen Anne pressing for a resolution, negotiations between the two countries’ respective parliaments and commissioners began anew. The Act of Union passed the Scottish parliament first on January 16, 1707. The Scottish peer Lord Queensberry was instrumental in its passage by 110 votes to 69. The English parliament passed the Acts shortly thereafter. This resulted in the Acts of Union 1707. Most of these 25 acts are economic in nature. One provided for the establishment of the Church of Scotland, which is Presbyterian. It is called the kirk. Another act guaranteed the continued practice of Scottish law north of the border.

While the English were happy about the new legislation, Scottish residents were somewhat angry with Lord Queensberry. This dissatisfaction carries on today with the independence movement, led by the Scottish National Party (SNP), the third largest party in the UK parliament in Westminster. Tony Blair wanted Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to be devolved in order for his Labour Party to dominate politics in the first two of those nations. Little did he realise that the SNP would eclipse Labour in Scotland under the leadership of Alex Salmond and, afterwards, Nicola Sturgeon, the current First Minister.

Returning to 1707, however, Scotland began to flourish. Visitors to Edinburgh can clearly see that in New Town, where Princes Street is. Behind Princes Street are streets full of stately Georgian houses. Scotland began to contribute greatly to the good of the United Kingdom in medicine, architecture, philosophy and the arts.

During the Victorian era, between the Queen and Prince Albert and the romantic novels of Walter Scott, a mythological aura began to rest over the country, creating the romantic atmosphere we know today, whether in the capital city of Edinburgh or in the countryside.

This was the Scotland that Elizabeth II became acquainted with, thanks to her mother Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, whose father, Lord Glamis (pron. ‘Glahms’) and the 14th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne, was Scottish.

Therefore, it is no wonder that she would want to spend her last months and hours at her beloved Balmoral knowing that Operation Unicorn would proceed in all its glory.

And what a beautifully poignant few days they were this week.

September 9

On Friday, September 9, the day after the Queen’s death was announced, Scotland closed its courts and lowered its flags for their esteemed monarch.

The Times reported that First Minister Nicola Sturgeon praised the Queen, saying:

“Millions around the world will share their grief but only they will feel the loss of a mother and grandmother,” she said.

“The Queen was unflinching in her dedication to duty, unwavering in her commitment to public service and unmatched in her devotion to the people of this country and the wider Commonwealth.

“We are all saddened by today’s news and will come together in the days ahead to mourn.

“But it is right and proper that we celebrate the unparalleled contribution she made in her 70 years as sovereign.”

The first minister added that Scotland “was special to her and she was special to Scotland” as she spoke of the Queen’s love of Balmoral, where she spent her final days.

The article goes on to say:

The Queen maintained a deep affection for Scotland throughout her life, having spent much time as a young princess with her parents at Balmoral or her maternal grandparents at Glamis Castle, Angus.

She gave her first public speech in Aberdeen in 1944, when she opened a home for the British Sailors’ Society while still a teenager.

After acceding to the throne in 1952, she maintained the royal family’s tradition of holidaying at Balmoral every summer.

Although most Scots support the monarchy, those who oppose it are hardly thin on the ground. As last weekend unfolded, I hoped that Operation Unicorn would help them understand more about the significance of the monarchy and Queen Elizabeth II in particular.

September 10

On Saturday, the Royals at Balmoral were dressed semi-formally in black. The Mail reported that they viewed the tributes at the estate and at nearby Crathie Kirk. Their photo captions read:

Lady Louise Windsor, Sophie, Countess of Wessex, Prince Andrew, Duke of York, Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex and Anne, Princess Royal wave to the public outside Balmoral Castle on Saturday

The teary-eyed Countess of Wessex, Sophie studies the floral tributes and loving messages left to her mother-in-law, the Queen, at Crathie Kirk church near Balmoral on Saturday

However, one Scottish businesswoman in the Highlands was happy when the Queen died. The Mail reported that the locals dealt with her before police arrived:

A fish and chip shop owner who celebrated the Queen‘s death with a bottle of champagne, shouting ‘Lizard Liz is dead’ has had her restaurant windows smashed in.

A photo of the vandalism was shared to Twitter on Saturday night showing the front of the shop with a shattered window and a hole in the middle. 

Angry locals also vandalised the property on Thursday evening when they pelted the store front with eggs and ketchup.

Jaki Pickett, who runs Jaki’s Fish and Chip Shop in Muir of Ord, Highlands in Scotland held up a chalkboard that read ‘London Bridge has fallen’ with a smiley face.

She posted the now-deleted clip of her happily celebrating the Queen’s death on Facebook, but it caused huge outrage with locals who blasted Ms Pickett for disrespecting the late monarch …

A Police Scotland spokesperson said: ‘Officers received a report of damage to a property in the Seaforth Road area of Muir of Ord, which is thought to have happened between 7.30pm on Friday, 9 September, and 10.30am on Saturday, 10 September, 2022.

‘Enquiries are ongoing to establish the circumstances.’

Police Scotland were also called to the shop on Thursday evening after it was targeted by angry residents in Muir of Ord who egged the windows.

Pictures showed broken eggshells on the ground and egg mess over the shop windows, while ketchup was splattered on a bench.

Videos circulating on social media show residents surrounding the restaurant on Thursday evening, where owner Ms Pickett was seen driving away from the area with a police escort while locals booed her for her shameless Facebook post.

A Police Scotland spokesperson said: ‘Shortly after 8.30pm on Thursday, 8 September officers attended at a business in the Seaforth Road area of Muir of Ord following a report of a large crowd gathered in the area.

‘Officers remained at the scene to ensure the safety of all present and the group subsequently dispersed peacefully.

‘No further police action has been required.’

Earlier, in London, at the special session of the House of Commons, an SNP MP, Joanna Cherry KC, spoke of the Queen’s Scottish lineage (emphases mine):

It is very humbling to follow so many great speeches. On my own behalf and on behalf of my Edinburgh South West constituents, I too rise to honour the memory of our late Queen. Much has been said of her dedication and her service, but I want to concentrate on her love of Scotland and the love of many Scots for her.

As the Queen died at Balmoral, and is to be taken first to the palace of Holyroodhouse and then to St Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh, Scotland will be the centre of the world’s attention over the next few days. That is breaking with tradition, but those were the Queen’s wishes, and Scotland is honoured by them. The last monarch to die in Scotland was James V, who died at Falkland in 1542. He was, of course, the father of Mary, Queen of Scots, and it was her son James VI who presided over the union of the Crowns. Mary, Queen of Scots is the ancestor of all the Stuarts and, indeed, all the Hanoverians who followed. Elizabeth Stuart, the daughter of James VI, married one of the German electors, and with the demise of the last Stuart monarch in 1714, Elizabeth’s grandson succeeded to the British throne. That is the Hanoverian line, and it can be traced directly back to Scotland’s Stuarts. Our late Queen was keenly aware of that—perhaps that is why she chose Stuart names for her first two children, Charles and Anne. And, of course, her mother was a Scot.

In 1953, after her coronation, the first place our late Queen visited was Edinburgh, and throughout her reign, she returned to Scotland for important events and, indeed, chose my country to be centre stage during state visits. In 1962, she chose Scotland for the state visit of the King of Norway; in 2010—very memorably for many people of my faith—she chose Holyrood for the state visit of Pope Benedict XVI; and, of course, she officially opened Scotland’s Parliament when it was reconvened in 1999.

Our late Queen embodied the union of the English and Scottish Crowns, which of course is quite different from the Union of the Parliaments and predates it by over 100 years. At a time of change, there are many in my country—particularly younger people—who might prefer a republic to a constitutional monarchy, but that did not in any way prevent the affection our late Queen held for Scotland from being returned in equal measure. Sadly, I never had the privilege of meeting Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, the Queen of Scots, but earlier this year I did have the privilege of meeting our new King. We spoke of Scotland, and I was left in no doubt that he shared his mother’s abiding love of my country.

As such, before I resume my seat, in honour of his late mother, I want to recite just a few words of Burns’ poetry that I believe may be a favourite of the King:

“Farewell to the mountains, high-cover’d with snow,

Farewell to the straths and green vallies below;

Farewell to the forests and wild-hanging woods,

Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods.

My heart’s in the Highlands, my heart is not here,

My heart’s in the Highlands, a-chasing the deer;

Chasing the wild-deer, and following the roe,

My heart’s in the Highlands, wherever I go.”

May she rest in peace.

Sunday, September 11

Princess Anne had the solemn duty of escorting her mother’s casket from Balmoral, near Ballater, Aberdeenshire, to Edinburgh’s Palace of Holyroodhouse, the official Royal residence in Scotland.

The cortege passed slowly through Ballater, Aberdeen, Dundee and Perth. Many Scots lined the roads in silence to bow in respect.

The Queen’s casket was covered in her standard with a wreath of white flowers, her favourites. Among them were delicate sweet peas. It was a beautiful last memory for her subjects.

Watching her on television, I do not know how the Princess Royal managed to stay so stoic. The journey began mid-morning and lasted well into the afternoon.

Meanwhile, in Edinburgh’s Old Town, where the magnificent castle is, the proclamation of Charles III was declared.

Metro reported that a young green-haired woman held up an anti-monarchy sign with an obscenity on it and was arrested:

A woman was arrested holding an anti-monarchy sign in Edinburgh today, before the Queen’s cortege arrived in the city.

She was detained outside St Giles’ Cathedral, where the monarch’s coffin is due to be held from tomorrow after spending the night at the Palace of Holyroodhouse.

Moments before the proclamation of Charles III as new king this afternoon, a demonstrator appeared in the crowd opposite the Mercat Cross …

Officers appeared behind her and took her away, prompting the crowd to applaud.

One man shouted: ‘Let her go, it’s free speech,’ while others yelled: ‘Have some respect.’

A police spokesman said a 22-year-old woman was arrested ‘in connection with a breach of the peace’.

This started an online debate about whether protest of the monarchy is freedom of speech. Surely, it is, although others say it depends on how far it goes:

I think it was the other content that was the reason for the arrest – or more specifically refusal to stop waving the sign containing the content.

— Chris Puttick (@putt1ck) September 12, 2022

That narrow thoroughfare going down the Royal Mile from the castle was teeming with people and continued to be until the late afternoon of Monday, September 12.

Metro‘s article on the protest continues but with a focus on the proclamation and all who wanted to pay their respects:

It came on the day thousands lined the streets to watch the Queen’s coffin arrive in Edinburgh, where she will stay before continuing the journey to her final resting place.

Countless tearful well-wishers turned out to pay their respects to the late monarch as her hearse made the 175-mile journey from Balmoral.

But some hecklers were heard booing among the crowds gathered in Scotland’s capital to hear the proclamation of Charles.

The Lord Lyon King of Arms gave a speech before declaring ‘God save the King’, which the crowd repeated.

A Sunday Times article discusses the complex feelings Scots have about the monarchy: ‘She adored Scotland but the Union will wobble without her’.

Reading it made me appreciate why the Queen wanted Operation Unicorn to proceed.

Excerpts follow:

“She came here to die in the Highlands,” said Elizabeth Strachan, 69, who grew up near the Balmoral Estate. “This is her homeland. It is the place she knows.”

Over the long years of the Queen’s reign, the United Kingdom’s collective identity has changed markedly. Scottish independence went from a fringe cause to the centre of the political debate.

Some believed she gave people a feeling of Britishness, which hampered the vote for separation, that her soft power pushed together a fragmenting nation. Others believed she was viewed as being above the debate and the nationalist cause moved forward regardless.

A poll this May by British Future, a think tank, found that more than 36 per cent of Scots thought the end of the Queen’s reign would be the right time to abolish the monarchy.

How will the accession of King Charles III change things? Is the political union separate, in voters’ minds, to the monarchical one? And if it is, can it remain that way?

Alex Salmond, the former first minister and leader of the SNP during the 2014 referendum, thinks the impact of her death on politics will be “on the margins”. He said: “Her presence did not stop the rise of Scottish nationalism over the last 70 years of her great reign so her passing will not change its direction either.” Salmond, who is a privy counsellor and attended yesterday’s accession council, shared the Queen’s love of horseracing and has spoken warmly of her.

Still, the smallest remarks she made about the Union generated big headlines. In 1977, before a vote on the establishment of an assembly in Edinburgh, she made a speech emphasising how she was crowned Queen of all four nations. Ahead of the 2014 referendum vote, she said to a wellwisher: “I hope people will think very carefully about the future.”

[Then-Prime Minister] David Cameron later told Michael Bloomberg, the former New York mayor, that the Queen “purred down the line” when she found out about the “no” result. Salmond was invited for breakfast at Balmoral the next morning.

“The Queen was absolutely furious, the angriest I’d ever seen her,” said Salmond. “I don’t think she was trying to stop the rise of Scottish nationalism. She wasn’t dyed in the wool for the political union but I think she was dyed in the wool for the union of the Crown. She understood well the difference.”

Cameron has admitted his comments were “a terrible mistake” …

Nicola Sturgeon, the first minister, has been firm in her support of the Queen and the monarchy. In May of this year she reiterated that the royal family would continue to rule regardless of a “yes” or a “no” vote.

Scottish nationalists do not all agree. Chris McEleny, general secretary of the Alba Party, which Salmond now leads, said in a statement: “If the people of the rest of the UK wish to have King Charles as their head of state then good luck to them, but there should be zero countenance of that absurdity in an independent Scotland” …

Sandra Fagan, 66, drove to Balmoral from Perth with her mother, daughter, and grandson — four generations spanning four monarchs.

Sandra’s father was a “red-hot” SNP supporter, shouting at the television that it was “all about England”. “But when it came to royalty and the Queen it was different. He wanted different laws for Scotland but never a different head of state. Believing in the monarchy is spiritual, it has nothing to do with separatism, which you argue about over the dinner table” …

Graham and Susan Cameron, their son, Callum, 27, and dog, “Her Royal Highness” Tia Cameron, drove 85 miles from Buckie to lay flowers at the Balmoral gates on Friday morning.

“I’m not a monarchist,” said Susan, 58, “but she was like a mother to all of us. She’s been a constant through a relentless period of change, tying us all together. It is a relief to have Charles — it means the monarchy goes on” …

It was in Scotland that Prince Philip mooted the idea of their marriage, where the couple spent their honeymoon and later, where the family found out about the death of Diana, Princess of Wales.

The royal property portfolio is sprawling, worth £261.5 million and including Charles’s Birkhall, the Queen’s beloved Craigowan Lodge, both on Balmoral, the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh, Dumfries House in Cumnock and the Castle of Mey in Caithness.

Balmoral was said to be the Queen’s favourite. She was a “neighbour”, said David Cobban, 56, the owner of a gift shop in the nearby town of Ballater, who grew up on the Balmoral Estate. The Queen spoke with residents in Doric, the northeast Scots dialect, and wore country clothes much like their own.

“Up here the relationship with the royal family is more intimate,” said Cobban. “They come here so they can be as normal as they can be.”

I will continue with another post about Scotland tomorrow. The television coverage was compelling.

The Queen’s death: Charles III’s accession ceremony televised for first time

The death and mourning period of Queen Elizabeth II is steeped in history, a time that those of us in the United Kingdom will never forget.

Within the space of a week, we had a new Prime Minister, a King and a new Prince of Wales.

The hand of God is at work.

This change takes place at a time when our Kingdom is stymied, divided with a number of Scots and Welsh hoping for independence while the Northern Irish argue about unification with the Republic of Ireland as the Northern Ireland Protocol has been a source of problems since we left the EU.

These have become political arguments and, as such, are left to the Government to resolve.

Perhaps a King will be able to break an impasse where the Government cannot.

My previous posts discuss what happened when the Queen died and on Friday, September 9, 2022.

Friday, September 9 — continued

The first rendition for 70 years of God Save the King took place at Friday evening’s remembrance service for the public at St Paul’s:

This seven-hour long video from The Telegraph shows the busy yet quiet scenes at Buckingham Palace on Friday:

The King also met with Prime Minister Liz Truss for the first time:

Meanwhile, the Royal Butler, Grant Harrold, who worked for the then-Prince Charles when William and Harry were young and now teaches etiquette, expressed his sympathy:

I am devastated to hear the news that Queen Elizabeth II has died. A lady who I was proud to know and a wonderful dancer ! #ElizabethTheGreat pic.twitter.com/lHpxuRZbjC

— The Royal Butler (@TheRoyalButler) September 8, 2022

My thoughts and prayers are with the British Royal family right now. Keep fighting for us all Your Majesty. 🙏 pic.twitter.com/iXEVtBubk0

— The Royal Butler (@TheRoyalButler) September 8, 2022

He posted his video of the activity at the Palace:

#QueenElizabeth pic.twitter.com/g5iSyk6BML

— The Royal Butler (@TheRoyalButler) September 9, 2022

He also posted this poignant press photograph of the King and the Queen Consort entering Buckingham Palace on Friday afternoon …

A truly historic and emotional view of The King and Queen going into Buckingham Palace for the first time since the death of the late Queen Elizabeth II . #Queen #KingCharles pic.twitter.com/TI7UTUK0Pq

— The Royal Butler (@TheRoyalButler) September 9, 2022

… and pledged his loyalty to his former employer:

God save the King. pic.twitter.com/EEhBXGobQ9

— The Royal Butler (@TheRoyalButler) September 8, 2022

Saturday, September 10

We witnessed a historic event on Saturday, as the Accession Ceremony was broadcast for the first time ever:

It began at 10:00 a.m. at St James Palace with the Privy Council.

The purpose of the ceremony is to have the monarch sign relevant proclamations of loyalty to the people, the Church as Defender of the Faith and to the Church of Scotland, which is Presbyterian.

Afterwards, the new monarch is proclaimed not only in London but in the following 24 hours throughout the United Kingdom.

Flags, which had been at half mast for the Queen, were elevated to full mast for that 24-hour period. Afterwards, the flags returned to half mast.

On Saturday afternoon, the King met with the Privy Council members in a private session.

There are over 700 Privy Council members. Unless they do something highly illegal, they are members for life. This is but a partial list of current members, who come from all over the United Kingdom.

I was aghast to see that so many of the members gathering at St James Palace to witness the Accession Ceremony were a true rogues gallery. Labour’s Deputy Leader Angela Rayner was present. So were Scottish National Party leaders Nicola Sturgeon and Ian Blackford, as was the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan.

A historian told GB News that only two members have ever been expelled in the last century or so. One was suspected of treason during the First World War and the second, from just several years ago, was too heavily mired in the MPs expenses scandal.

Guido Fawkes’s cartoonist Mark gives us an idea, showing a fictionalised quip of former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, whom Tony Blair appointed to succeed him, saying that he shares much in common with the Queen in having been unelected. Other former Prime Ministers in the cartoon are David Cameron, John Major, Tony Blair, Boris Johnson and Theresa May:

Rich’s Monday Morning View https://t.co/5l6EUDHccG pic.twitter.com/UrKcfkI1zy

— Guido Fawkes (@GuidoFawkes) September 12, 2022

The Telegraph has an excellent article about the Accession Ceremony and how much has changed in 70 years, including the presence of women and ethnic minorities (emphases mine):

At the personal request of the King, the historic meeting of the Accession Council – a ceremony rooted in antiquity – was filmed by two television cameras.

The first part of the Privy Council meeting was witnessed by a crowd of some 200 suited and booted parliamentarians past and present, including all six living former prime ministers.

In 1952, when the young Princess Elizabeth was proclaimed Queen, this gathering would have comprised only men in uniform or morning dress.

Saturday’s array of faces reflected a notably different society. There were a significant number of women, dressed almost entirely in formal black dresses or suits. The majority of men wore morning dress or black suits, with a white shirt and black tie. David Cameron, dressed in a navy suit, stood out in a sea of black.

Among those present were former party leaders Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband, Welsh first minister Mark Drakeford and several members of the cabinet, including James Cleverly, Anne-Marie Trevelyan and Ben Wallace.

Also present was former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey, whose leadership of the Church of England spanned the difficult time of the King’s divorce from Diana, Princess of Wales and the fallout from his affair with Camilla.

The article gives us the history of the Privy Council:

The Privy Council dates back to Anglo Saxon times. Once an advisory body for the monarch, today its role is largely symbolic.

For the King, whose first few hours as monarch have included a royal walkabout and a televised address to the nation, it was a nod to the layers of constitution and practice in which the monarchy is rooted.

This is how the ceremony unfolded at St James Palace, where the King has been working for decades. Penny Mordaunt MP, candidate for the Conservative leadership, played a prominent role:

At 10am Simon Case, the Cabinet Secretary [and top civil servant], urged those present to ensure mobile phones were switched off and an expectant silence fell over the picture gallery.

The platform party then duly filed slowly in, stepping onto the low red dais.

They included the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Archbishop of York, Penny Mordaunt, the acting Lord President of the Council, the Lord Chancellor and Liz Truss, the Prime Minister.

Behind them were the black-clad Queen Consort and the new Prince of Wales, accompanied by a small group of staff from the Royal Household …

In position, he [the King] allowed himself a brief glance around the room, taking in the moment before turning to listen to Ms Mordaunt as she announced that Queen Elizabeth II had died.

“My lords, it is my sad duty to inform you that her most gracious majesty, Queen Elizabeth the second, has passed away on Thursday, Sept 8 2022 at Balmoral Castle,” she said.

Ms Mourdant then invited the clerk of the council, Richard Tilbrook, to read the proclamation to the packed gallery.

He said: “Charles III, by the grace of god of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of his other realms and territory, King, head of the commonwealth, defender of the faith, to whom we do acknowledge all faith and obedience with humble affection, beseeching God by whom kings and queens do reign to bless his majesty with long and happy years to reign over us.”

He ended by saying “God Save the King.”

The packed room dutifully echoed in unison: “God Save the King.”

Until I saw this ceremony in full, meaning during the public proclamations later, I could never understand how people could lament a beloved monarch only to then proclaim the new one so passionately.

They do so because they are grateful that the new monarch is able to serve quickly and unhindered. In other words, the monarchy has worked once again, to everyone’s relief.

After everyone said, ‘God save the King’, Charles III had proclamations to sign:

The Prince of Wales then stepped forward to sign the declaration with his left hand. He was followed by the Queen [Consort], who slowly signed her name with care.

Other members of the platform party followed suit, including a hesitant Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, who briefly appeared unsure where to sign.

Ms Mordaunt went on to list eight orders of council, ensuring that the proclamation would be published and circulated nationwide and that guns would be fired at Hyde Park and at the Tower of London.

Formal business concluded, those assembled then filed slowly out of the room.

The second part of the Accession Council took place a few minutes later in the Throne Room. Privy Counsellors eligible to take part duly filed in below the coved ceiling embellished with block gilt plasterwork.

On the dais before them, the throne still bore the Queen’s “ER” cypher. A new one currently being designed will be read “CR”, Charles Rex.

There, they were joined by the King for the first time, who began with a personal declaration.

This is the video of his declaration:

The article summarises what he said:

The sovereign, in formal black attire with a white waistcoat, stepped forward to the lectern and unfolded his notes before declaring it his “sorrowful duty” to announce the death of his “beloved mother”.

He spoke of an “irreparable loss” as he paid tribute to the late Queen’s selfless service and acknowledged the “heavy task” before him and he strives to follow her example.

The King said: “My mother’s reign was unequalled in its duration, its dedication and its devotion. Even as we grieve, we give thanks for this most faithful life.

“I am deeply aware of this great inheritance and of the duties and heavy responsibilities of sovereignty which have now passed to me. In taking up these responsibilities, I shall strive to follow the inspiring example I have been set in upholding constitutional government and to seek the peace, harmony and prosperity of the peoples of these islands and of the Commonwealth Realms and Territories throughout the world.”

The King said he was “profoundly encouraged by the constant support of my beloved wife” who watched, alongside the Prince of Wales, from the platform.

He then held aloft a small blue bible as he took the oath to preserve the Church of Scotland, necessary due to the division between church and state in Scotland.

The King then signed two copies of a declaration confirming the oath had been taken using an ink pot that was a gift from his sons, the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Sussex.

He produced a pen from his jacket pocket to do the honours, carefully dipping it into the pot of ink before signing the first document with a flourish.

Then the King visibly grimaced at his staff members:

There was a flicker of frustration when a tray containing another pen appeared in his way and he signalled to aides to remove it.

When he stood, he appeared to clip the ink pot with his hand but it did not spill. The moment prompted a brief glance between King and Queen as he returned to his position.

The other pen was then passed back to the Prince of Wales to enable both him and the Queen to sign the documents.

Here’s the video:

The signing continued:

As Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s First Minister, added her signature, the Coldstream Guards could be heard playing outside.

The Privy Council members filed out to sign copies of the proclamation in a large corridor. The Daily Mail has the video, accompanied by this blurb:

King Charles III proclamation signing: It was the first time a monarch’s Accession has been broadcast and cameras were fixed on the MPs antics as they lined up to sign their names earlier this morning. As Mr Cameron approached the paper, he could be seen gesturing with his glasses, adding: ‘I need to put my glasses on so I can see what I’m doing’ (left). Meanwhile Mr Blackford could be seen chatting to the deputy Labour leader Mrs Rayner after he accidentally stepped on her foot in the line.

Then it was time to proclaim the new King publicly in Friary Court. St James Palace was originally a friary. Henry VIII dissolved it along with other similar Catholic institutions.

One of the Palace windows had to be removed in order for this final step to happen:

David White, Garter King of Arm, in his colourful regalia and flanked by other Officers of Arms and Sergeants at Arms, later read the proclamation of the new King from a balcony at St James’s Palace, as cheers of “God save the King” rang out.

A small group of the general public were allowed to stand on one side of Friary Court to witness this public proclamation:

The King and Queen Consort did not appear. They thanked Palace staff and officials for the ceremony and left to go to Buckingham Palace:

After the public proclamation at St James ended, two more took place. One was at the Tower of London and the other at the Royal Exchange in the City of London.

This video shows the gun salutes in Hyde Park and at the Tower:

Another Telegraph article says:

A traditional Royal Salute comprises 21 rounds. A further 20 rounds are fired in royal parks, such as Hyde Park.

At the Tower of London, a royal salute comprises the traditional 21 rounds, a further 21 rounds to show the loyalty of the City of London to the Crown, and a final 20 rounds as the tower is a royal palace and fortress …

The tradition of gun salutes routinely being fired throughout the country to mark significant national events dates back centuries.

There are historical records of salutes taking place as early as the 14th-century when guns and ammunition began to be adopted widely.

Similar gun salutes were fired to mark the death of Queen Victoria in 1901 and Winston Churchill in 1965.

Gun salutes occur on the following royal anniversaries: Accession Day, the Monarch’s birthday, Coronation Day, the Monarch’s official birthday, the State Opening of Parliament, royal births, and when a visiting Head of State meets the sovereign in London, Windsor or Edinburgh.

The City of London’s proclamation was similar to the one at St James in many ways, but the City has its own traditions which date back to the Guilds of the Middle Ages. The City is the only part of the realm where the monarch is subordinate to the Lord Mayor of London, who is elected by that district’s aldermen for a one-year term. It should be noted that the Lord Mayor of London and the Mayor of London are two different people in two different posts.

A lot of people were in the City for the proclamation.

The Telegraph article about the Royal Salute also described what happened in the City. It was written before the ceremony began, hence the use of future tense:

At midday the Proclamation will be read from the steps of the Royal Exchange by Clarenceux King of Arms. The Lord Mayor of the City of London, together with the Court of Aldermen and Members of Common Council, will be present.

The Company of Pikemen and Musketeers of The Honourable Artillery Company, The Lord Mayor’s Body Guard in the City of London, will be on duty at the Royal Exchange. They will be accompanied by The Band of the Honourable Artillery Company and eight State Trumpeters of the Household Cavalry.

It was really quite something to see. The senior attendees wore robes trimmed in fur, which is something that would have been from the days of the Guilds, which still exist but not in the way they did for commerce hundreds of years ago:

Later that day, Princes William and Harry, along with their wives, went on a walkabout at Windsor Castle. One young woman embraced Meghan enthusiastically:

The Telegraph has more. Catherine, the new Princess of Wales, did not look happy.

——————————————————————

Sunday was about Princess Anne, who had the sorrowful duty of accompanying her mother’s casket from Balmoral to Edinburgh.

She fulfilled her responsibility admirably, considering that it took hours in order for the public to grieve as the car went through several cities and towns before arriving at Holyroodhouse.

More on that tomorrow.