had just met the Queen during her tour of a science exhibition in 2010. ‘I’d never given her much thought but it was a lovely opportunity to meet her,’ he said afterwards. ‘Then a few of us went for a drink and I realised I was shaking. My heart was pounding. And it dawned on me that I’d just done something extraordinary.’ Despite being an extremely bright, articulate young man in the front line of medical scientific research, he could not recollect a word of what he had said during the encounter, nor could he offer any rational explanation for his state of benign shock. It was most unlike him, he said, but he was not bothered. Because he had just met the Queen.
Most organisations or businesses run by the same person for nearly sixty years become static, if not ossified. So why has this one been gathering momentum in the other direction ever since the Queen reached what most people would regard as retirement age? It’s not only the result of what some call the ‘Diana effect’, although officials readily concede that one important legacy of the Princess was a greater informality and a recognition of the need for ‘emotional change’. It’s also down to a more general loosening of the royal collar.
‘She doesn’t want to do the same old thing any more,’ says a former Private Secretary. ‘She likes shorter greeting lines and fewer of them, more young people.’
She is smiling more these days, indulging her own interests a little more. If an awayday to the regions errs more towards horses and children than trade promotion, so be it. There is less of a beady eye on the clock – a far cry from the super-punctual Princess Elizabeth who took to prodding her mother’s Achilles tendon with an umbrella during the 1947 South African tour to keep the royal show on schedule. ‘She’s quite often late for things now, not that anyone’s complaining,’ says one veteran royal correspondent. Of course they’re not. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the aura has changed. The Queen has now acquired the status of national treasure. There is nothing contrived about this metamorphosis whatsoever. It simply began in early 2002 following the death of Princess Margaret, followed swiftly by that of the Queen Mother.
‘Finally,’ says a family friend, ‘she is seen as a grandmother.’ Sir John Major echoes a popular Household view: ‘At about the time the Queen Mother died, the Queen effectively became the “Mother of the Nation”.’ While the Queen Mother was alive, the Queen had been caught between the royal generations, the sensible, serious one trying to keep the younger members of the family under control while keeping a protective eye on the free-spirited mother. A delightful and good-natured sense of filial exasperation emerges from the latter stages of William Shawcross’s official biography of the Queen Mother. When the Queen installed a stairlift to assist her mother with the steps at home, she received no thanks. Instead, the Queen Mother would make a point of travelling downstairs on the contraption and walking back up. Attempts to cajole her into a golf buggy for walkabouts only worked after someone had the bright idea of painting the thing in her racing colours. Nor was there any respite from her spending. A particularly eye-watering bill from a racing trainer arrived on the Monarch’s desk with a little handwritten postscript: ‘Oh dear’.
In the eyes of the public and the media, the Queen Mother was the living embodiment of the ‘Blitz spirit’ and she could do no wrong. Yet the same sentiments did not extend to the Queen. She was respected and admired almost universally, of course, but there was not that same sense of indulgence. The Monarch was not a twinkly-eyed old granny. She was a world leader.
In the last few years, though, there has been an unconscious reassessment. We don’t necessarily think of the Queen as being very much older, just increasingly exceptional. ‘She doesn’t
Most organisations or businesses run by the same person for nearly sixty years become static, if not ossified. So why has this one been gathering momentum in the other direction ever since the Queen reached what most people would regard as retirement age? It’s not only the result of what some call the ‘Diana effect’, although officials readily concede that one important legacy of the Princess was a greater informality and a recognition of the need for ‘emotional change’. It’s also down to a more general loosening of the royal collar.
‘She doesn’t want to do the same old thing any more,’ says a former Private Secretary. ‘She likes shorter greeting lines and fewer of them, more young people.’
She is smiling more these days, indulging her own interests a little more. If an awayday to the regions errs more towards horses and children than trade promotion, so be it. There is less of a beady eye on the clock – a far cry from the super-punctual Princess Elizabeth who took to prodding her mother’s Achilles tendon with an umbrella during the 1947 South African tour to keep the royal show on schedule. ‘She’s quite often late for things now, not that anyone’s complaining,’ says one veteran royal correspondent. Of course they’re not. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the aura has changed. The Queen has now acquired the status of national treasure. There is nothing contrived about this metamorphosis whatsoever. It simply began in early 2002 following the death of Princess Margaret, followed swiftly by that of the Queen Mother.
‘Finally,’ says a family friend, ‘she is seen as a grandmother.’ Sir John Major echoes a popular Household view: ‘At about the time the Queen Mother died, the Queen effectively became the “Mother of the Nation”.’ While the Queen Mother was alive, the Queen had been caught between the royal generations, the sensible, serious one trying to keep the younger members of the family under control while keeping a protective eye on the free-spirited mother. A delightful and good-natured sense of filial exasperation emerges from the latter stages of William Shawcross’s official biography of the Queen Mother. When the Queen installed a stairlift to assist her mother with the steps at home, she received no thanks. Instead, the Queen Mother would make a point of travelling downstairs on the contraption and walking back up. Attempts to cajole her into a golf buggy for walkabouts only worked after someone had the bright idea of painting the thing in her racing colours. Nor was there any respite from her spending. A particularly eye-watering bill from a racing trainer arrived on the Monarch’s desk with a little handwritten postscript: ‘Oh dear’.
In the eyes of the public and the media, the Queen Mother was the living embodiment of the ‘Blitz spirit’ and she could do no wrong. Yet the same sentiments did not extend to the Queen. She was respected and admired almost universally, of course, but there was not that same sense of indulgence. The Monarch was not a twinkly-eyed old granny. She was a world leader.
In the last few years, though, there has been an unconscious reassessment. We don’t necessarily think of the Queen as being very much older, just increasingly exceptional. ‘She doesn’t
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