Dear Editor,

As jubilee flags and bunting flutter in the summer sunshine as they did in previous jubilees, we should reflect on a life dedicated to our service.

The period leading up to this one has not been easy for The Queen. Her husband died and she was forced to sit alone at his funeral on a day when government officials partied; Barbados rejected her as its queen; her grandson left the firm and appeared with Oprah Winfrey in an infamous TV interview; she became ill with COVID-19; and two royal visits to the Caribbean were marred by republican demonstrations and demands for apologies and reparation for slavery.

The Queen has made plain that the countries of the Caribbean hold a special place in her heart, visiting personally in 1953, 1966, 1975, 1977, 1983, 1985, 1994, 2002, and 2009. She takes her responsibilities as queen of overseas realms and as head of the Commonwealth very seriously.

The world is very different from 1952, though. But, despite the advances, it is still divided, the solving of which has been constant themes of Queen Elizabeth’s speeches from her accession onwards. These expressions of her core beliefs, based on deep faith, include the unity of people through family, peace, freedom, justice, common purpose, and an emphasis on youth and building for the future.

These days, however, duty has been replaced by accountability, an inculcation of honour with an assumption of amorality, and a culture of modern blame confused with an assumed legacy of ancient guilt.

She has not only worked hard, but has put duty to her people and the Commonwealth above any personal consideration.

In 1961, after being cautioned not to visit to Ghana where there was civil unrest, she said: “How silly I should look if I was scared to visit Ghana and then [Soviet Leader Nikita] Khrushchev went and had a good reception.”

The Queen also told her prime minister: “I am not a film star. I am the head of the Commonwealth and I am paid to face any risks that may be involved, nor do I say this lightly. Do not forget that I have three children.”

Her Christmas speech of 1975 is particularly relevant today. She referred to great impersonal forces beyond our control, of brutal and senseless violence, and, above all, “the whole fabric of our lives” threatened by inflation, the “frightening sickness” of the world today as then.

For some, The Queen is a remote figure of wealth and privilege, for others, a lady who would have simply raised horses on a quiet farm, a long way from celebrity and power. For others, she is the cornerstone of constitutions and defender of our democracy and freedom. She is, for certain, someone who has given her life for her people around the world and for those high principles to which the rest of us refer from a distance.

She is the living embodiment of the best of us, and if we do not recognise that and cherish her service, perhaps we never deserved it.

Dr Frank Millard

Historian and journalist

frank.millard@gmail.com