September 10th 2022
Years 3 to 8 and the teaching staff gathered together in the Sports Hall this morning for a moving assembly to remember Her Majesty, the Queen. The assembly focussed on the sense of continuity the Queen has provided; the respect that she had from so many diverse people and groups; her devotion to service; and her sense of humour. The Pre-Prep held their own assembly, and you can hear more about it in Mrs McMann’s vlog in the link below.
The two Prime Ministers who bookmark Elizabeth II’s reign, Winston Churchill and Liz Truss, were born in 1874 and 1975 respectively, and this fact alone illustrates the extraordinary length of service she gave, and helps us to understand why the nation feels such a great loss at this break in continuity. Of the roughly 350 people in the assembly hall, no-one had known life under another monarch, other than our own Queen.
We talked about how the Queen was admired and respected across many divides and ‘fault’ lines: by politicians, and religious leaders of all creeds, amongst both royalists and republicans, around the world, and by those who are both rich or poor. I pointed out that this respect was not won simply by her age or the length of her reign, but by the way she conducted herself over seventy years and beyond.
Towards the end of the assembly, I projected a letter written in February 2022 by the Queen to the nation to mark her Platinum Jubilee. One of the keys to understanding the Queen lay in her sign-off to this letter. Rather than ‘Yours faithfully’, or something similar, in her own handwriting she had signed ‘Your Servant, Elizabeth R’. Leadership has many different styles, and the Queen was the model of a ‘servant leader’. We then discussed the unwavering service that the Queen has given throughout her reign, and that this continued right up to her death with the appointment of Liz Truss on Tuesday. A truly remarkable example, and an inspiration to us all.
The assembly concluded on a lighter note, with a reminder that the Queen had an excellent sense of humour. Wonderful examples of this were her double-act with Daniel Craig at the London Olympics, and most recently the highly entertaining tea party she hosted for Paddington Bear, which we then watched on the big screen. I strongly suspect that this is how many of your boys and the younger generation will remember the Queen. What an extraordinary legacy she leaves.
