The Spectator’s Notes | 4 February 2012

The present Queen succeeded to the throne 60 years ago this coming Tuesday. Her father, King George VI, had died at Sandringham in the night. Pursuing a ‘Where were you when…?’ line of inquiry, I asked my father what he remembered. An undergraduate at Trinity, he was walking down Sydney Street, Cambridge, when he saw the news hoarding ‘the king is dead’. Oddly enough, he told me, his own father (also at Trinity) walked down Sydney Street on 23 January 1901, and into the Cambridge Union. There he found that a telegram — then the fastest means of news — had just been posted, announcing the death of Queen Victoria the previous evening. As he emerged from the Union, he found a silent crowd of townspeople gathered, waiting for news. They looked at him interrogatively, and he gave them a nod to indicate that the Queen was dead.

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My father also recalled passages of Churchill’s broadcast to the nation on the night of the death of George VI, including the phrase that the King had died ‘after a day of sunshine and sport’.