My parents loved their King like we loved our Queen – but love has to be earned
MY parents never looked happier than in the photograph of them standing outside the Buckingham Palace gates about to meet King George VI.
My dad was about to receive a Distinguished Service Medal for the last action he saw in the Second World War — a Royal Naval Commando raid on the Nazi-occupied, heavily fortified island of Elba.
The Royal Naval Commandos lost many men on that raid.
It left my father with a torso that was a mass of scar tissue, and shrapnel in his legs that would be there for ever.
But did anyone ever look happier than this pair of working class kids off to see the King?
Dad is only 20. My mum is a year younger — so not even out of her teens.
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And more than a lifetime after that picture was taken, their excitement is obvious.
They grin from ear to ear, bursting with pride and excitement.
And the strange thing about that photograph is that neither my mum or dad would have described themselves as monarchists, or royalists, or devoted fans of the crown.
My mum was a passionate Labour supporter, a militant dinner lady, always delighted to go on strike.
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My dad dragged me out stuffing leaflets through doors for the Liberals, but only because he heartily loathed both Labour — in thrall to big trade unions, Dad believed, and also the Tories — slaves to big business, he thought.
And yet, and yet . . . they loved their king. They loved that shy, kind, brave monarch who led them through the darkest days of the Second World War when, like the Queen, my parents were children at the start and young adults by its end.
SURVIVED AND THRIVED
They loved King George VI because he had earned their love.
Although he was to die tragically young, King George VI was a great king because he shared the sorrows of his people in their darkest hours.
The bombs that fell on the homes of my folks in the East End of London also fell on Buckingham Palace.
While his flighty brother King Edward VIII abdicated so that he could marry Mrs Wallis Simpson, George embraced a role that he was not born for, and in some ways painfully unsuited for, with a stutter that made public speaking an agony.
And yet half a century after that photograph was taken outside the gates of Buckingham Palace, my dad could recall the banter he shared with the King.
“You’ve done very well, Parsons,” King George VI told my father just before he presented his DSM.
My old man indicated the rows of medals on the King’s chest.
“You haven’t done so bad yourself,” said my dad, and the pair of them had a laugh about that.
And when I think of how much my parents loved King George VI, I understand the great outpouring of emotion that we are witnessing today.
For who can doubt or deny that Queen Elizabeth II has earned our love?
The monarchy has survived — and thrived — because of our late Queen.
The length of her reign will blow the minds of future generations.
It seems scarcely credible to us who have lived through it. And what is most incredible about that 70-year reign is that Queen Elizabeth II became more important to our people as time went by.
She was Queen for literally all my life.
But what I will remember most is the role that she played — in her mid-nineties! — in the greatest health emergency that the world had seen for one hundred years.
When it felt like the old world we knew had vanished for ever, when we were isolated, alone and scared, she gave us hope, and she made us understand that here was another war we would win in the end.
“Our streets are not empty,” she said. “They are full of love.”
And the love for Her Majesty is what we are witnessing today.
It is a strange and heady cocktail of grief, gratitude and the sweet sadness of farewell. But it is not complicated.
All this, because our Queen was loved.
She was loved the way her father was loved. And it was not a love given in servile, mindless deference.
It was a love that was earned. And we understand now that our monarchy endures in the modern world because Queen Elizabeth II, like her father King George VI, earned the love of her people.
This is why we are not a republic. This is why we do not dump our royals like almost every other nation in the world.
This is why a hereditary constitutional monarchy has worked brilliantly for the British since the abdication of 1936.
ENERGY OF YOUTH
Because the monarch earns the love of the nation. And now it falls to King Charles III to win the love of his people.
We can see that a 73-year-old king faces challenges that the 25-year-old Elizabeth did not face when she acceded to the throne in February 1952.
Our late Queen came to the throne with the energy of youth.
King Charles III comes to the throne at an age when he must want to slow down and speak to the roses.
The last week has clearly exhausted the King.
He has already snapped twice at flunkies after unfortunate pen incidents, awkward little moments that social media captures and amplifies.
This nation is happy to cut him some slack.
Although I can’t recall my late Queen barking at a flunkie in 70 years. Charles has done it twice in seven days.
But God save the King!
Charles has our sympathy. How heartbreaking it is to mourn your mother.
And how hard it must feel to follow the greatest head of state who ever lived.
Our new King has our good will. The nation wants him to succeed.
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So of course King Charles III has our respect, best wishes and prayers.
But the love takes time.
Because always and for ever, Your Majesty, the love of the people must be earned.