Queen Elizabeth II famously heard of her father’s death and her accession to the throne on a royal visit to Kenya. Preparing to return to London – “only a child”, Winston Churchill was privately fretting of the new monarch – her spoken thoughts were for the retinue who had accompanied her to Kenya. She told one lady-in-waiting: “I’ve ruined everybody’s trip.” As far as her father’s death and its vast consequences for the rest of her natural life were concerned, her husband’s private secretary thought “her feelings were deep, deep inside her”. And there they, and almost all her other feelings, would stay for the next seven decades.
The British people’s feelings are another matter. The country has a complex relationship with its emotions. I always think politicians and many of our institutions are most frightened of the public having emotions. Perhaps they have a vested interest in portraying emotions as a kind of weakness, lying as they do in some uncharted realm beyond their control. The display of emotions is frequently regarded as a defeat. They are something to which we “give in”. It suits many people for us not to do so. And yet, why? Is this in our interests or theirs? Maybe we already know the answer.
