NO, THE QUEEN WASN'T 'EVERYONE'S GRANNY'
The Monarch's death has unleashed a flood of mawkish tributes. Why is Britain so infantile when it comes to grief?
Many times this strange week, a reporter has intoned, ‘Of course, she was above all, a mother and a grandmother…’ as though we must understand that these roles were far more important to the Queen than the fact of her being Queen Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God Queen of this Realm and of Her other Realms and Territories, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith.
Never mind all the formal stuff, they imply, she was really just a lovely old lady, pootling round the Balmoral estate with her ‘beloved corgis’ (because you can’t say corgi without the prefix ‘beloved’ now, that’s the law. Makes it harder for boiler-men, but them’s the breaks). She was such a ‘doting granny’, and a ‘loving mother’ her family could always confide in, as well, of course, as being a national fount of adorability, with her James Bond stunts and her lovely sketch with Paddington…
‘Robes, a crown, and a VERY intimate anointing!’
This is all, of course, wishful nonsense. When Her Majesty made her solemn vow to dedicate herself to the country and Commonwealth for ‘my whole life, whether it be long or short’ (spoiler: it was long), she truly believed that, like her royal ancestors, she had been chosen by God. During the private part of the Coronation (which would now be on the front of Mail Online - ‘Robes, a crown, and a VERY intimate anointing!’) when the precious oil was dabbed onto her head, it represented - to her, at least - the profound transition from relatively ordinary woman to an exalted vessel of God, her nation and her people.
She was never ordinary again. For the Queen, love for her family came somewhere far below duty, because there was no choice. Modern ideas (eg Meghan’s) about ‘showing up’ and ‘being present’ for ‘loved ones’ would have made her shake her head in weary irritation. Her presence was always for the nation, not for school plays and bumped knees.
I say none of this to censure the Queen. I think she was the perfect monarch - and if we must have one, I wish she could have been cloned. Peevish, melancholy Charles may have been born to the position, but she was born to the role.
A carry-on like a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta
What jars, however, is the way we appear to be mourning her death. While all the hushed royal formality may be weirdly Tudor, full of gold embroidery, clinking horses, bugles and marching, it is at least predictable. She was the Queen for 70 years, and this is how we traditionally say farewell to our admired monarchs - with a carry-on like a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta directed by Elton John on a limitless budget. TV’s Dimbleby stans whispering about flowers ‘cut from the Balmoral estate’, as if each dahlia is imbued with spiritual majesty, septuagenarians camping out for three days and risking hypothermia so they can bow to the coffin, Witchell murmuring like an exorcist with laryngitis - this is what we expect.
When Prince Philip died, the lockdown formalities gave funeral proceedings an added chill of austerity which suited his military bearing. Nobody sobbed or threw flowers or even fishing flies at the coffin, no excessive vocalising of grief took place. He was laid to rest via a Land Rover he’d built himself, and everyone filed back sensibly for sandwiches. I feel sure the Queen, too, would have expected the formal services, the crystalline choirs, the rumbling sermons and respectful crowds queuing to see her lying in state.
What she might not have anticipated, however, is the mangling of her meaning and memory into ‘cute mascot’. Yet across social media, her image is now inextricably tied to a cartoon bear; her legacy of service is glorified not by quietly expressed sadness or - as she might have preferred - prayer, but by poetry so execrably awful, Private Eye’s E.J. Thribb (17) might shudder to post it.
‘You’ll never guess where I’ve been, Mrs Brown!’
The day she died, a little pencil sketch began to appear on people’s Facebook and Instagram accounts, showing the Queen’s back view holding hands with Paddington as bunting trailed behind her. The surreal implication was that the ‘much loved bear’ (copyright all commentators) was performing the role of Chiron, boatman of the dead, leading her gently across the Styx to the Lands Beyond. There was no information on whether Paddington would somehow remain alive through this process, and return to Notting Hill gasping, ‘You’ll never guess where I’ve been today, Mrs Brown!’ but nobody questioned it as a fitting tribute.
By Monday this week, the image was being sold on T— shirts and its creator had posted a long and anguished statement concerning legal copyright.
There was also a Raymond Briggs-inspired image (again, from the back view) of a cosy old couple embracing on a picnic rug with a corgi snuggled alongside. The caption, in childlike writing, reads, ‘hello again, Lilibet’.
Then there’s the naive watercolour of another weeping corgi, crying into a crown with a tennis ball balanced on it.
Yet mawkishness was never in the Queen’s wheelhouse. The only time she publicly shed a tear was when royal yacht Britannia was decommissioned, and perhaps a little eye-mist developed as Philip (‘her beloved helpmeet… her strength and stay...’) was laid to rest. She did not do sentiment. The hysteria over Diana’s death horrified her, and her return to London to examine helium balloons left bobbing on railings for ‘The People’s Princess’ was so obviously made under duress she might as well have been on a lead pulled by the tabloids. (‘Your people are suffering, Ma’am!’ read one violently overwrought headline at the time.) Sensibly, she had preferred to stay at Balmoral, with the suddenly-bereaved young princes, but the newspapers wanted their Monarch visibly weeping to satisfy the new, Diana-driven emotional agenda.
The Poet Laureate should know better
This knowledge, however, has not stopped a turgid gush of absolutely terrible poetry alongside the disingenuous drawings of balloons and bears. Not only is it being written, it’s also being shared.
‘…A warmth in your smile and your manner/It felt we were one massive family/you really were everyone’s grandma’, writes Octavia Lonergan in ‘Everyone’s Grandma’. (3000 likes).
Meanwhile ‘English poet’ (dress for the job you want), Joanne Boyle inhabits the persona of the Queen in heaven and writes, ‘I gently touched each shoulder, with Philip by my side. Then I turned away and walked/with my Angel guide.’
Perhaps it’s unfair to criticise genuinely heartfelt poetry for being mawkish doggerel. But Poet Laureate Simon Armitage should know better. When Prince Philip died, his poem, The Patriarchs, was superb - fitting, melancholy and exact. For the Queen, however, he’s reached vaguely for flower metaphors. Our stern, dutiful monarch is rendered in the generic words of Victorian sentiment - ‘I have conjured a lily to light these hours, a token of thanks…. a promise made and kept for life… that was your gift..’ he meanders.
Worse still, President of The Poetry Society Roger McGough rushed his out before Harry left Balmoral, insisting that ‘stars untwinkle, one by one…’ and ‘she who kept us close is gone,’ to which you can only think, ‘will this do?’
Perhaps it’s unfair, though, to blame her many grieving subjects for leaving stuffed Paddington toys at the Palaces and cling-filmed marmalade sandwiches to go mouldy in Green Park. Yes, it’s mawkish, inappropriate and unnecessary - she did one sketch with Paddington, and one with James Bond but you don’t see people leaving guns and parachutes all over Horseguards’ Parade. But since the great national catharsis of Diana’s death, which triggered abject hysteria rather than sorrow in everyone from Prime Ministers to pop stars, we have lacked a blueprint for how to grieve someone we’ve never known.
We have borrowed the simplistic tropes of populist therapy
Infected by the relentless emoting of America, which tends to respond to the death of public figures like an ancient suttee widow hurling herself onto a pyre, (while ignoring the deaths in custody of Black people because they ‘reached for their pocket’ or ‘looked insolent’) we are caught between the traditional British stiff upper lip and the all-out Californian bawl. We have borrowed the simplistic tropes of populist therapy - ‘cry it out’, ‘you need a big hug’ - and pasted them onto ancient, formal tradition.
The result is a queasy, uncertain sentimentality, whereby, rather than display real emotion, we let a rhyming couplet do the job, and instead of discussing what a public figure meant to us, we post an image of her ascending to heaven with a hat-wearing bear.
It’s infantilising, and it tells us nothing about what the Queen truly meant to Britain and what’s left now she’s gone. Instead of a conversation, we have a murmured ‘awww’ and instead of a clear-eyed view of the protocol-obsessed, sometimes unforgiving figurehead on our money, stamps, and news reports, we have conjured a hazy ideal of the Platonic grandma.
Does it matter, if it brings us comfort? I would say yes. Regardless of whether one (as she would say) is a monarchist or a republican, we owe it to the country to understand what a monarch is - a leader, a representative, someone who lives an unimaginably privileged life, yet whose role is in permanent, formal service to the nation. Not a cosy old dear, gathering us for story time with the corgis.
She was not our granny, or our mum, or a sweet elderly lady. Paddington had very little to do with it. She was the Monarch - and she ruled.
KEEP READING…
LOCHED UP: My Life in Rural Scotland
Take my dog…
Two happy dogs in a country cottage - what could be more idyllic? Says everyone who has never met Larkin…
Anyone who follows me on social media will be familiar with my deep love of spaniels, particularly our own: Ellroy, a noble, golden working cocker, and Larkin, Lord of Misrule, his troubled only son. Much like a medieval epic poem, most of Larkin’s life (although he is only two) has been devoted to dethroning and usurping his majestic father. From a psychotherapeutic point of view, I believe that this is all because Larkin was the smallest, weakest puppy in a box of enormous seal-cub cockers, all chunky, confident girls destined for pheasant shoots and moth-eaten country house hearthrugs, who climbed over him and squashed him whenever food was in the offing.
As a result, he now treats dinner as a one-time only deal, hoovering up his bowl of kibble like Al Pacino at the end of Scarface, while Ellroy nibbles as delicately as a broadsheet food critic, assessing the balance of meat to grain, plotting out his elegant opening paragraph. By the time he’s finished, Larkin is balanced on a wobbling stack of boxes, trying to climb into the bag for more.
He’s like a Brit in Benidorm, spreading out his Union Jack towel
Larkin also has what dog behaviourists call ‘possession aggression’. With him, this extends to treats, toys, people, and the entirety of the couch from 8pm every evening, when we start watching TV. He’s like a Brit in Benidorm, spreading out his Union Jack towel and planting his beach umbrella. If Ellroy tries to get on the couch, Larkin erupts with growling, like a B movie sound effect for ‘indeterminate monster’, followed by furious bottom-sniffing and outraged barking. “How dare you, my own father, whose bottom smells of the outdoors where you have hunted this night and Winalot Shapes, presume to breech my own allotted couch of rest?” he barks. I assume.
To resolve, it requires a complex, shuffling dance, where we stand up, walk round the room with Larkin, allow Ellroy to jump up there, then quickly sit back down and rearrange everyone before Larkin notices he’s no longer king of the couch.
When we go out for a walk with Ball or Frisbee, Ellroy sprints after it, returns and drops it neatly at our feet for another go. When Larkin catches it, he belts in the opposite direction until he finds a dense shrubbery or perilous cliff-face, then he burrows in and hides with his captured treasure. He doesn’t understand how games work on any level, and thinks he’s lost humiliatingly if anyone manages to scramble down and prise it out of his clamped jaws. (The only way to do this is by standing on the frisbee and slowly shuffling forward, which is tricky on a ledge halfway down a ravine.)
At the vet’s, he works himself into such a wild state of panicking fury that they can’t even get a muzzle on him, so last time, they had to keep his head on one side of a half-closed door and his body on the other side, while two experienced vets held each end.
I am Vera Duckworth to his wayward Terry
You might imagine we’d want to send him back for being faulty. Perhaps subject him to a serious residential training programme, run by stern women in tweed. Unfortunately though, I am Vera Duckworth to his wayward Terry. I adore him. I have a special song to the tune of Daisy, Daisy for him, which ends, ‘But you look sweet when you’re asleep, and I s’pose that’ll have to do.’
This is because after trial and error, we’ve identified that he only likes the sentimental songs of World War One. So in the car, to stop him howling or shouldering his way into the front seat (because he’s somehow worked out how to unclip his foolproof seatbelt), we sing It’s a Long Way to Tipperary, and he subsides and lies down, sulky but soothed.
He also has a habit of stealing one shoe from a pair and hiding it by the stream outside in a clump of ferns. Most mornings are marked by someone hobbling and yelling when they discover the sudden loss. Larkin also can’t go near a tin of paint without coating himself in it like Shirley Eaton in Goldfinger, and once ate an entire box of eggs, then the cardboard pack, while we were putting shopping away.
When he’s happy, he’s an endless delight. A tufty sandbag lying heavily across our knees. A bouncing puppy, racing round the garden with his toy spider. A hopeful lunatic, paddling out into the freezing loch after a duck that flew away five minutes ago. An unemployed sheepdog, who runs after a clump of hurtling ovines for a bit then realises he has no idea what to do with them and comes back embarrassed, after ten minutes of screaming and frantic whistling.
He likes cows, swimming, food, (all types), his crate, Spider, and lying on the couch when the rage has subsided. He’s incredibly loud, difficult and disobedient. But - life lesson incoming - a dog doesn’t have to be good to be loved. I’m besotted by his furious optimism, and his endless determination to do things his own way in the face of training, admonishment and bribery. I love his absolute, idiotic uniqueness. Andy said yesterday, as Larkin cavorted about, barking at nothing, “He hasn’t exactly fitted in seamlessly, has he?” I said, “No, we’ve fitted round him.”
And like anyone difficult but lovable, when you just let them be themselves, the rewards are vast. Though I would like a few of my missing shoes back, if I’m honest.
KEEP READING….
RECIPE OF THE WEEK: BLACKBERRY CLAFOUTIS
The best recipe for this very French pudding is Julia Child’s, from Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Faffing about with her perfect version is foolish, like sketching an extra bit onto Adam’s finger in the Sistine Chapel. (I saw one Tesco recipe that featured ground almonds and double cream. Absolutely not.) Traditionally, though, clafoutis is made with cherries and this one is made with blackberries - the very ones I ripped my forearms to shreds to pick this week.
There’s a battered, ripped old poly-tunnel near us and it’s full of fairytale-castle brambles. I took a long pair of tongs (top blackberry picking tip) but I still got scratched to bits. Given my ‘attacked by a rabid lynx’ level injuries, a boring crumble wasn’t enough reward (plus Andy doesn’t like crumble. I don’t know why, it might be a resentful Scottish thing).
I must warn you, clafoutis can go wrong - but even if it does, it will still taste nice with cream or creme frâiche. And if it doesn’t, it’s a thing of beauty.
Serves 6-8
ingredients
240ml milk
120g granulated sugar
3 eggs
1/2 tbsp vanilla essence
140g plain flour
300g blackberries
butter for the dish
icing sugar to sift over
method
1 Set the oven to 180°C (160 fan) and butter an ovenproof dish.
2 Using a blender or electric whisk, blend the milk, eggs, vanilla essence, flour and 40g of the sugar together for a full minute or so, until the liquid foams.
3 Pour about 2cm of the batter into the dish and set it on the hob over a very low heat, until the liquid begins to set. (This happens fast, so don’t wander off.)
4 Take it off the heat, spread the blackberries onto the semi-set batter, and shake the rest of the sugar over them.
5 Pour the rest of the batter over, and pop any big air bubbles.
6 Bake for about 50 mins, or until a skewer comes out clean. Leave to cool slightly, sieve over the icing sugar and ideally, serve warm with cream. It’s also great cold, however, so win-win.
It will keep for a couple of days in the fridge.
Tip: If your oven runs hot, turn it down a bit, or you’ll get sweet, fruity scrambled eggs.
So pleased I stumbled across your Substack - looking forward to more!
Spot on Flic - you’ve articulated brilliantly what my brain has been trying to fathom….