THE sovereign who safeguarded the dignity of the Crown through a period of unprecedented social change, including the iconoclasm of the 1960s and the trivialising invasiveness of the celebrity culture that dominated the second half of her reign, Elizabeth II will be remembered for her unwavering fidelity to timeless concepts of royalty absorbed during her childhood from her parents and grandparents, for unflagging devotion to duty and for the constancy that earned her the title 'Elizabeth the Steadfast'.
'She looks a Queen and obviously believes in her right to be one. Her bearing is both simple and majestic-no actress could possibly match it,' wrote the politician and historian John Grigg at the time of the Silver Jubilee. In a cynical age, Elizabeth II preserved aspects of sovereignty's ancient mystique-the likeable, often glittering embodiment of monarchy-albeit acknowledging popular pressure for greater accessibility. We do not want the Queen to be one of us,' wrote the women's editor of the Reading Evening Post in February 1991, 'but we do want her to be with us.' Over time, Elizabeth II developed an instinctive understanding of this precarious distinction. Through more than seven decades on the throne, she balanced the requirement of accessibility with distance, the white-gloved hand smilingly extended in greeting, and skilfully she balanced her formal role as head of state with that of head of the nation, encouraging, applauding and inspiring wide-ranging initiatives that, above all, promoted community wellbeing, pride in the nation and the continuing evolution of a tolerant, compassionate, unified society. From the landmark 1969 fly-on-the-wall documentary film Royal Family, she emerged, in the words of one television critic, as a warm, friendly person, with a thoroughly engaging sense of humour'.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der September 14, 2022-Ausgabe von Country Life UK.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der September 14, 2022-Ausgabe von Country Life UK.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
