Grief and the green Queen: reflections from the Elizabethan era
The first, formative, two decades of my memorable life will always be, for me, ‘the Elizabethan era’. It was during history A level that I studied “the spacious times of great Elizabeth” [the first] as Tennyson wrote of them. Elizabeth I was compared to the sun in the introduction to the King James version of the Bible. On Thursday 8th September, as the news rippled around the world, two rainbows, a double rainbow, shone upon the grey English sky.
‘Good mourning’
In August I started working in the National Health Service, as part of the patient support team in a health centre. I was on the phone with a patient when I found out. It was 6.30pm and we were about to finish the call. Then they told me ‘oh God, the Queen’s just died’. I am told all kinds of things on the phone line. I take it all in my stride, and thought that nothing would surprise me. That sad news, however, did. I was completely thrown off. The next morning at work, the atmosphere was shocked, changed, yet not overly downcast. We kept calm and carried on.
Bereavement becomes a universal experience, past a certain age, perhaps. The legendary queue is a symptom of the seeking for closure, but more a desire to be present in future history and form part of a collective event. Many of us know that grief is a personal tunnel, altogether different from public mourning.
In the days since the Queen’s passing, I found myself moved at unexpected moments, reminded of the beloved memory of my grandmothers. During the national memorial service the day after, as the lone piper processed up the aisle of St Paul’s Cathedral, I shed a tear from all the associations and the magnificence of the occasion.
Circumstance and the UK constitution asked a huge amount of the Queen. She more than proved her character, becoming a beacon of wisdom and continuity. As playwright Alan Bennett is said to have remarked, I don’t often think of the Queen, but it’s nice to think she is there. Think of the meetings she had, to which she brought her graciousness and attentiveness: too numerous for anyone to remember them all, but etched into the memories of each and every person to have had that privilege.
Listening to the Queen’s Christmas speeches was a seasonal tradition and a comfort. In the first Covid-19 lockdown, her speech on 5th April was the fifth time she addressed the nation outside of her traditional Christmas message. That our head of state is above politics, in its conventional, controversial sense, is a strength. Yet in the dusk of the Elizabethan era, there are profound fractures in our national identity. There are anxieties about what this country provides to its most vulnerable people, and its place in the world.
The green Queen
As the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee started, she appeared on the balcony, a spec of bright purple in the distance, greeting the crowds. The weather and atmosphere were glorious. It was a good start to a memorable summer. The royal standard flew high in the wind, complete with the spectacle in the sky of the red arrows and helicopters in a formation of the number 70. Later that day, the London Symphony Orchestra opened their wonderful, Italian-themed concert with a great orchestral arrangement of the national anthem.
Queen Elizabeth II was a notably green queen, with a vocal concern for the environment. Shortly before the 26th UN Climate Change Conference in 2021, she was overheard expressing how ‘irritating’ it is when leaders only talk but don’t do. Then, addressing the conference, she said that “the benefits of such actions will not be there to enjoy for all of us here today: we none of us will live forever. But we are doing this not for ourselves but for our children and our children’s children, and those who will follow in their footsteps.”
Global warming is a bit like body temperature in that, more than one degree centigrade away the natural range, it’s time to be alarmed and take appropriate action. The crucial ‘how?’ question is one I’ll turn to at a later stage, but soon.
Caroline Lucas MP read out the words of Philip Larkin in the House of Commons, written on the occasion of her Silver Jubilee in 1977,
“In times when nothing stood, but worsened or grew strange, there was one constant good, she did not change.”
May the memory of Elizabeth, and her eponymous epoch, be a blessing for all of us who lived in her time. She served for seventy years, a common constant in our various lives. The nation is filled with admiration. Elizabethans will remember their Queen, ingrained for eternity in the national tapestry.
