Description: A blog about books, music, films, religion, philosophy and anything else that occurs to me.
You may have noted that I was due to come back to the newsletter last week, and I didn't. For that, apologies, it's been a very busy time, not least with the arrangements for me to leave the Civil Service and start in the private sector in November. I have spent the best part of 20 years in the Civil Service so it's a big change for me, and it's in light of this personal change that I thought I'd share some of my thoughts on the Queen, the public and grief.
Many obituaries have said that most of us knew little about the Queen. Although she's met hundreds of thousands of people in Britain and around the world, few had experienced more than a couple of polite words. She was a not a woman who expressed political opinions in public, something that the Civil Service code has given me experience of since we too are not allowed to express political opinions in public. For us, it's so we can serve the government of our time. For her, it's so those political views do n
This lack of personal knowledge of the Queen has allowed us to have a certain relationship with her, not dissimilar from the relationship one has to a therapist. In the therapy room, a therapist shares little to nothing of their life. This allows the subject to project feelings and emotions onto the therapist, and explore those emotions in a safe space. Something similar has happened with the Queen and people have projected a lot of their own personal feelings onto the Queen herself and her family.