The Queen deserved a grand eulogy. Alas, there was no Churchill around to provide it
National Post, 25 September 2022
The obsequies of Queen Elizabeth II were executed with near-perfection, but they did lack one thing
“Famous have been the reigns of our queens,” said then-British prime minister Winston Churchill 70 years ago in his eulogy for King George VI. “Some of the greatest periods in our history have unfolded under their sceptre.”
The obsequies of Queen Elizabeth II were executed with near-perfection, but they did lack one thing — a grand eulogy. That was unavoidable: British Prime Minister Liz Truss began her premiership just two days before the Queen died. Even if she had been a seasoned first minister, there is only one Churchill.
While Churchill lauded the late King, his peroration mentioned both Queen Elizabeth I and Queen Victoria before introducing the new Sovereign, “invoking once more the prayer and the anthem, ‘God save the Queen!’ ”
The shift this past fortnight from “God save the Queen” to “God save the King” underscored the accession more dramatically than would be the case when one king succeeds another and the “prayer and anthem” do not change.
Churchill, who knew the history of the English-speaking peoples better than anyone else, intuited that there is a qualitative difference in having a queen rather than a king, even if their constitutional status is exactly the same.
Both kings and queens embody the Crown and are the personification of the state. Yet queens manifest the feminine principle in a way that kings cannot. Kings can lead a nation, but queens evoke the nation, as well. Mother earth, mother church, mother nature, the motherland — that feminine dimension of our common home is reflected in the way we commonly speak. Queens, even when burdened with the great offices of state, express the maternal dimension that lies at the heart of every family. A nation is not a family, but it is analogous.
Churchill’s eulogy, broadcast on the BBC the day after King George’s death, was a masterful tribute from the wartime prime minister to the monarch who led the Commonwealth through the war. Recall that only months before the Second World War began, George VI and Queen Elizabeth made their month-long visit to Canada, crossing the vast Dominion twice by train.
“Canada made us,” the future Queen Mother would later say. Canada would make the new Queen, too.
“Already we know her well, and we understand why her gifts, and those of her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, have stirred the only part of the Commonwealth she has yet been able to visit,” Churchill noted in his broadcast of Feb. 7, 1952. “She has already been acclaimed as Queen of Canada.”
Elizabeth II was acclaimed Queen of Canada even before the official ceremony in London. That was motivated by her presence in Canada just three months before her accession.
The events of late 1951 and early 1952 would be seen as clearly providential afterwards. Princess Elizabeth’s first great royal tour was planned for Canada in the fall of 1951, 33 days from coast to coast. It was delayed by a week when King George VI had surgery to remove a lung in September 1951. (The delay meant that Elizabeth and Philip flew to Canada instead of coming by ship, the first royal visit by air.)
Whilst in Canada, the 1951 general election returned Churchill to power. He defeated Labour Leader Clement Attlee, even though Atlee won the popular vote. (Churchill never won the popular vote in any of the three elections he contested as leader: 1945, 1950 and 1951.)
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