How Queen Margrethe made the Danish monarchy popular

Danish New Year’s Eves are to be savoured partly for their predictability. First, on the main Danish State TV channel, the vintage British TV comedy Dinner for One, with Freddie Frinton and May Warden, is broadcast. Then there is the countdown to midnight on the face of Copenhagen’s city hall clock, followed by desultory fireworks let off by individuals in the square below (on a shoestring budget compared to the millions of pounds Sadiq Khan spends annually to promote himself in London). Cut to exultant choirs singing in the new year at a Danish Lutheran church. And, of course, earlier in the evening, the monarch’s address, given since 1972 by our brilliant Queen Margrethe II.

Yet 31 December 2023 was not the New Year’s Eve Danes were expecting. Festivities across the land came to a sudden halt as Queen Margrethe ended her address by announcing that she would abdicate on 14 January. I was at a New Year’s Eve drinks and in conversation with a British journalist (not of this parish) at the time.