Before the children separated for half a semester, I gave a meeting for the queen at my eight-year-old daughter’s school.
As a sea of young people looked at me, sharing everything they had learned about our 96-year-old monarch and the platinum anniversary celebrations this weekend, I must admit that I became a little emotional.
The realization that my youngest child, born at the end of Generation Z, may be the last of the “young people today” to remember the Queen of the Flesh made me feel quite uneasy.
Then I watched The Unseen Queen, Monday’s truly remarkable collage of home videos and personal photos of Her Majesty, and tears filled my eyes again.
It may just be that the week has been long – and the anniversary is certainly not the time to feel melancholy – but if we have learned anything from the memories, the queen is certainly one of a kind.
One of the first times I was on ITV’s This Morning 15 years ago was with the late great James Whitaker, the former royal editor of the Daily Mirror.
We discussed the queen, and in a typically violent way, James insisted that her time on the throne was quite “unremarkable” compared to figures such as Henry VIII and Elizabeth I.
I remember being a little surprised by his comments at the time. But as I thought about it now, I began to understand what he might mean. The consolation that so many millions of people receive from Her Majesty comes precisely from the fact that she has quietly and diligently performed her duties and devoted her service to her subjects, without at all striving to be “remarkable.”
Although the world may have changed beyond recognition since 1952, the only constant that has remained the same all along is our sovereign.
And by that, I don’t mean the Queen’s ever-present set of pearls, her curls, the corgi at her feet, or Launer’s bag, which she’s spent the last 70 years hanging from the curve of her arm.
I mean the unwavering way in which she fulfilled the coronation oath she gave to God on June 2, 1953, to “rule” her peoples “according to their respective laws and customs.”
And the way she sticks, like Loctite, to the declaration she made on her 21st birthday, promising to serve her subjects “my whole life, whether long or short.” It is the glue that has held the country together for more than half a century.
In every other aspect of public life, promises are broken so easily – from NHS waiting lists to party manifestos, even the idea that charities will always spend your donations wisely.
And yet the queen has always kept her word. This certainly carries more weight than some of the more political and even military exploits of its predecessors.
Because, let’s face it, unlike some of those who wore the crown before her, it was never the queen to impose her own will on her people, but rather to support the decisions they made, even when it was in private she may not agree with them.
As she herself said in her 1957 Christmas show: “I can’t lead you into battle. I do not give you laws and I do not administer justice. But I can do something else. I can give you my heart and my devotion to these old islands and to all the peoples of our brotherhood of nations. ”
What better life can a person live in a position with such a privilege than be devoted to serving others?
The Queen’s unwavering devotion to debt is almost like a religion in our otherwise increasingly secularized society.
Still looking at her red boxes far beyond retirement age, her work ethic is an example to all, no matter who they are, where they come from or what they believe in.
And this is largely due to her firm impartiality. If you never take sides, then everyone can be yours. “Everyone is our neighbor, no matter what race, religion or skin color,” she once said.
“Whatever life brings us, our individual reactions will be even stronger for working together and sharing the burden.”
Much of the Queen’s enduring popularity is precisely because she remains such a consistent figure in such controversial times. Who else can we turn to when we want someone to say it the way it is, without any twisting? There is no one.
In an age when unwanted opinions were given too freely, Her Majesty’s resolute non-partisanship was not boring. On the contrary, it proved to be an absolute blessing.
How rare it is to have such a prominent figure in public life who does not feel the need to express his views on everything from Brexit to whether women are born with penises or not.
In a world that has ended up with kid celebrities who express opinions on topics they know little about (even Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, can’t stop telling us about every waking thought, about God), what it is a joy to have someone who keeps his opinion to himself.
Someone who doesn’t talk about it, but when he decides he wants to do it, he ensures that every word is carefully chosen.
This was one of the unique attractions of the BBC documentary The Unseen Queen. Not only did we manage to enjoy the old, never-before-seen film footage of the royals behind the palace walls, but they also came with an informed and thoughtful voice-over, so far from Twitterati’s shameless self-assured impudence. Only Sir David Attenborough is close to that result.
That the most photographed and famous woman on earth is probably an introvert who would rather ride through the Heather of the Highlands or walk the dogs through Frogmore than draw attention to herself is an irony that should not be lost on today’s selfie generation.
If, God forbid, the Queen was the guy who took a picture of her food and posted it on social media, we could be sure that away from applying filters and crazy labels, she would probably still be in the Tupperware box .
Not self-conscious, selfless and shamelessly selfless, the Queen is the perfect antidote to our narcissistic, self-obsessed age.
She took her job seriously, but not herself, famously commenting on her 1991 Christmas show: “None of us has a monopoly on wisdom.”
When Her Majesty made mistakes, she listened and changed her behavior accordingly, such as when she gave the televised address “as your queen and as a grandmother” after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997. If only our elected representatives had the same humility.
Yes, there were occasional interventions, such as her advice to the Scots to “think very carefully” before voting in the 2014 independence referendum.
But we don’t really know what she thinks of anything – and she will never do it unless she agrees to posthumously publish the diary she wrote with a pen, every night, for sure.
In The Invisible Queen, Her Majesty talks about how “great events” such as the coronation give us a “glimpse into the healthy and enduring foundations of our existence.”
The same can be said of the remarkable woman who has served the country and the British Commonwealth for seven decades.
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