The Queen turned 80 on 21 April this year, and while she may finally have been prevailed upon to scale back on her public duties, she remains — as anyone who saw her during her visit to the Baltic States last week knows — in robust good health.
Alex Galloway, the Clerk of the Privy Council, has however deemed this a prudent juncture to dispatch a circular letter to all the 500 or so members of Her Majesty’s Privy Council to ensure that he has up-to-date land and mobile telephone numbers and email addresses for each of them should he ever need to relay urgent information. The phraseology that the career civil servant employs in his letter is studiously matter-of-fact, but his purpose is abundantly clear: he has in mind the arrangements that will need to be put in place when the sovereign dies. And, as he well knows, time will be of the essence: it is a requirement that an Accession Council — comprising all the members of the Privy Council — be convened within 24 hours of the Queen’s death to agree and sign the Proclamation of Accession.
Her Majesty, taking her example from her late mother, is not merely aware that such matters are now being considered by her most senior courtiers, but is making her own wishes painstakingly clear. It is not that she is a morbid woman, any more than Queen Elizabeth was before her, but that she knows it is vital for the wellbeing — if not the future — of the monarchy that this occasion be handled correctly and, what’s more, handled in a way that reflects the mood of the times.
And it is, of course, not merely a funeral that is exercising the minds of HMQ and her senior courtiers, but also a coronation, which is why the Prince of Wales and his advisers across the Mall at Clarence House are taking a close interest in the discussions.
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