A Life of Service

Observing Queen Elizabeth from fairly close up on one occasion gave me a little insight into her extraordinary life of service and sacrifice.

It was the summer of 1998 and thanks to L'Arche Kent having had a little part in the Lambeth Conference of that year, a group of us were invited to a garden party at Buckingham Palace. We were all ready for a cup of tea after the journey and made a beeline for the tables laden with exquisitely prepared cucumber sandwiches and cakes. On the way we passed a long queue of people snaking across the lawn. At the head of the line was the diminutive figure of the Queen, greeting each of the dignitaries with evident warmth and graciousness. I remember thinking, 'When does she get her cup of tea?' And that was just one such event of several taking place that summer.

We once had at L'Arche an assistant who had worked as a footman at the palace, and one of his duties was to bring breakfast to the Queen in her bedroom. He told me how she was always kind and courteous and how she would always say, "Thank you Ian."

Such warmth and friendliness seems to have been extended equally to world leaders, judging from the tributes that flooded in from around the globe. One commentator told of how Kenneth Kaunda, the inaugural president of an independent Zambia, had spoken of the nervousness he felt before his first meeting with the Queen, due in part to the various tricky issues which he intended to address with her. He said she put him thoroughly at ease and also turned out to be impressively aware already of all of those issues.

Closer to home, the visit to Ireland in 2011 was of particular importance. Micheál Martin spoke in his tribute how "That visit was a great success, largely because of the many gracious gestures and warm remarks made by the Queen during her time in Ireland." The state visit, the first ever by a British monarch to the Republic of Ireland, was originally due to be over two days but at the insistence of Elizabeth it became four days. On the first day, she laid a wreath at the Garden of Remembrance in Dublin, which is dedicated to 'all those who gave their lives in the cause of Irish Freedom'. She was alongside President Mary McAleese, whose courage and vision had led to the issuing of the invitation for the visit. Mary was also at the Queen's side when they visited Croke Park, home of the GAA, the Gaelic Athletic Association, but also symbolising far more than that. They emerged onto the pitch from the tunnel under the Hogan Stand, which is named after one of the fourteen people who were shot dead in the stadium during a Gaelic football match on the Bloody Sunday of 1920.

And then there was the speech in Dublin castle, which began with the words 'A Uachtaráin…agus a chairde', 'President and friends'. Thanks in part to a Newry man, Francis Campbell, the Queen had spoken in perfectly pronounced Ulster Irish! It drew an audible 'wow' from President McAleese who was in the next seat. This and all of those other gracious gestures and warm remarks were highly significant and did an immense amount of good for Anglo-Irish relations. That visit also helped to pave the way in the coming years to other key moments of reconciliation that would have been equally unthinkable a couple of decades previously.

The Queen certainly lived up to her words to the Commonwealth on her twenty-first birthday, when she said that her "whole life whether it be long or short shall be dedicated to your service." It turned out to be an extremely long life of service and in the course of her seventy-year reign she welcomed no fewer than fifteen Prime Ministers. If there were some of them for whom the weekly audience was more of ordeal than with others she would have been far too diplomatic to show it. By all accounts she got on especially well with Harold Wilson, with whom she would share racing tips!

I imagine that being Queen could be a lonely role at times. I'm struck by the words of Queen Victoria when her beloved Albert died: "Who is there now to call me Victoria?" When Prince Philip died I imagined Elizabeth saying to herself, "Who is there now to call me Lilibet?"

Queen Elizabeth II lived a life of remarkable service. May she now rest in peace with her beloved Philip.