The United States hasn’t always reacted rather snidely to the death of the British monarch. Below is The Spectator’s lead piece following the funeral of Queen Victoria in 1901, available on our fully-digitised archive. Nothing has been more striking, nothing more moving to the British as a nation, than the way in which the Queen
Today, the world says farewell to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. World leaders, including US president Joe Biden, French president Emmanuel Macron, and royals from across the globe have gathered in London for the country’s first state funeral in decades. Here is how the day will unfold: 10.35 a.m. The coffin bearers from the Queen’s Company, the
The reason the British people love the Queen, and are willing to die for her, is that they can understand what she is about, in a way that they cannot understand what the constitution, cabinet and parliament are about, or the Courts of Justice or the Bank of England, or any of the other abstractions
Sovereign’s states When she died, Elizabeth II was Queen of 14 nations other than the UK: Antigua and Barbuda; Australia; the Bahamas; Belize; Canada; Grenada; Jamaica; New Zealand; Papua New Guinea; St Kitts and Nevis; St Lucia; St Vincent and the Grenadines; the Solomon Islands; Tuvalu. – There are a further 18 countries of which
Majestic memories Sir: The sad news of the death of Queen Elizabeth II took me back 70 years to my earliest memory. I was three years old; the location was the Fleet Review at Spithead and the date was 15 June 1953, 13 days after the coronation. Some 325 ships of the Royal and Merchant
Home The body of Queen Elizabeth lay in state at Westminster Hall, in a coffin draped in the royal standard on which were placed the orb and sceptre, before her funeral in Westminster Abbey on 19 September, declared a bank holiday. She had died at Balmoral on the afternoon of 8 September, two days after
In death, as in life, Elizabeth II has been a unifying force for her country. For all the political rancour of recent years, this week has revealed a country at ease with itself. People of all political persuasions have come together to show their respect – in Scotland just as much as in England. It
Arthur C. Clarke (31/45) said that Ernest Hemingway (35/12) won a bet from fellow writers for the shortest story: FOR SALE. BABY SHOES. NEVER WORN. (30/14/15). First prize Nicholas Grandage, London W11 Runners-up Magdalena Deptula, Eton, Berkshire; R.P. Wright, Loughton, Essex
It’s hard to think of any Prime Minister who has entered office surrounded by such low expectations. Liz Truss was backed by just over half of Conservative party members and secured barely an eighth of MPs in the first ballot. Her critics dismiss her as a lightweight, wholly unsuited to tackling the problems now facing
In they come, out they go Liz Truss is the 15th prime minister to have served under Queen Elizabeth II, and her appointment was the 15th time the Queen has overseen a change of prime minister during her reign (Winston Churchill was already PM when she became Queen but Harold Wilson served twice). It would
Why we allowed it Sir: In her article ‘Why didn’t more people resist lockdown?’ (3 September), Lionel Shriver partially answers her own question. Priti Patel told us it was our public duty to shop our neighbours if they had three friends to tea, and our previously invisible police force started to patrol parks and beaches
Home Liz Truss, the new Prime Minister, said in a speech outside 10 Downing Street: ‘Boris Johnson delivered Brexit, the Covid vaccine and stood up to Russian aggression. History will see him as a hugely consequential prime minister.’ For her part: ‘I am confident that together we can ride out the storm.’ Earlier, on being
The quotation was ‘I WAS BORN TO SPEAK ALL MIRTH AND NO MATTER’ from Much Ado About Nothing (II.i.321) by WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. BEAT/RICE (23D/17) is the speaker and BENE/DICK (12/31) the sparring partner. Title: Much Ado About Nothing in cryptic form. First prize R.R. Alford, Oundle, Peterborough Runners-up Gordon Hobbs, Woodford Green, Essex; Fergus Jamieson,
Well, this is it folks. Thanks to all of you for coming out so early this morning. In only a couple of hours from now I will be in Balmoral to see Her Majesty the Queen and the torch will finally be passed to a new Conservative leader. The baton will be handed over in what
Trinity School, Croydon Headmaster Alasdair Kennedy says he wants students to leave the school ‘without any sense of entitlement, but with a humility that acknowledges the fact there is always more to learn and others to learn from’. The former grammar school, which accepts boys from the age of ten, now offers a co-educational Sixth
Matthew Parris My father was an engineer. As a child I enjoyed ‘creative’ writing: stories, poems and so on. Dad said: ‘Try writing something useful. You know how to mend a bicycle puncture. Write for me, on one page, instructions for mending a puncture, to be read by someone who knows what a bike is,
Oxford and Cambridge have released figures showing how many offers they gave to pupils from schools in the 2021 Ucas application cycle. We have combined the figures in this table. It shows how well state grammars and sixth-form colleges compete with independent schools. Over the years, both universities have increased the proportion of acceptances from
Lockdown saved lives Sir: Rishi Sunak presents an alarming picture of what happened during lockdown (‘The lockdown files’, 27 August) – and one echoed by lockdown sceptics who claim that Covid policy was a disaster, stoked by fear and based on questionable scientific advice. Worst of all, they cry, the trade-offs were not even discussed.
Home Liz Truss, the contender for the Conservative party leadership who is expected to become prime minister next Tuesday, resisted temptations to say what she would do about the national energy price crisis. But she was said to have in her pocket licences for new drilling in the North Sea. Nadhim Zahawi, the Chancellor of
Of mice and Moon What did Nasa achieve last time it visited the Moon? Apollo 17, in December 1972, involved putting two astronauts, Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt, there for 75 hours. They used a lunar roving vehicle to collect 254lb of rock and dust samples from areas up to 4.7 miles from the landing