It’s strange how often I think of the Queen, even though it’s been a year now since she died. It’s not that our late monarch has proved irreplaceable. On the contrary, the new king is doing an excellent job.
After his epic apprenticeship he proves – as our national poet puts it – very regal. And yet I find that almost every day my thoughts return to the conversations I was fortunate enough to have with Elizabeth II.
It happens when I’m in the garden, or staring absently out the window – and a flash of something white and black catches my eye. Every time I see a magpie I think of the queen; and I remember her magpie advice.
While I’m only mildly neurotic about this question, I’m passing on her solution today, hoping it will be helpful.
The Queen kindly allowed me to exercise in the gardens of Buckingham Palace, to recover my breath after my illness. So I told her how beautiful it all looked – the lake, the ducks, the roses, and for some reason I spoke of my paranoia about these lone multicolored corvids.
It’s strange how often I think of the Queen, even though it’s been a year since she died, writes BORIS JOHNSON. It’s not that our late monarch has proved irreplaceable. On the contrary, the new king is doing an excellent job. Above: Mr Johnson is welcomed by the Queen at an audience in 2019
“Ah,” she said. Now I’m sure all her Prime Ministers would say that one of Queen’s greatest gifts was that she could make you feel – whatever you told her – that you were really special and interesting; and then to show that beautiful smile. That’s what she did now.
When you were with her, you understood why the elderly Churchill was so in love with her. You understood why Barack Obama was so enraptured that he kept drinking with her so late, they say, that the lackeys had to come and cough to signal that the evening was over.
You had the feeling that although she had seen everything and knew everything, she also enjoyed and appreciated politics in all its complexity and absurdity.
Of course, I still can’t say anything, for reasons that everyone understands, about her own views – spicy as they were at times. But I can say that her advice was based on deep knowledge. One day we were wrestling with the subject of Zambia, and I was trying to remember the name of the late president. “Kenneth Kaunda,” she said immediately.
Another time we talked about the last English monarch leading his troops into battle. I could remember the king – George II – but I couldn’t remember the battle.
“Dettingen,” she said like a pub quiz winner.
One night I was embarrassed to learn that one of our exorbitantly expensive F-35 fighters had blown a gasket on the deck of an aircraft carrier (because someone had left a plastic wrap over the air intake) and crashed into the Mediterranean Sea.
Who told me? Not the MOD. Not my excellent former Secretary of Defense, Ben Wallace. It was Her Majesty who gave me the bad news – and if she was surprised by my ignorance, she didn’t show it. She was never less than supportive and always encouraging, always thinking about how others might feel.
When you were with her, you understood why the elderly Churchill was so in love with her. Above: Mr Johnson meets Her Majesty at a reception for the 2008 Great Britain Olympic team
Boris Johnson paid his acclaimed tribute to the Queen in the House of Commons last September
All of her prime ministers have had the surreal experience of going to Balmoral and watching Britain’s longest-serving monarch as she prepares her special vinaigrette. We took from her hand the sausages that the Duke of Edinburgh had barbecued, and tried to help her pack everything in her special Tupperware boxes. I expect every PM has been quite nervous upon arrival.
The first night we found a note in bed for Carrie. “Ma’am,” he said helpfully, “Her Majesty will be wearing an ice blue cocktail dress to dinner tonight.” I don’t think Carrie packed anything like an ice blue cocktail dress, but it was a useful piece of information.
Later that night, we were all gathered in the parlor when our two-year-old burst into the room, her hair pretty manic. There was a little Batemanesque* pause before the Queen took him off to find a fine old red trolley – which no doubt had carried all sorts of royal toddlers – and peace returned.
It was because of her humanity and sympathy that as Prime Minister you felt you could really open up to her, tell her absolutely anything, so that the audience was a mixture between a tutorial and a confessional, with a bit of unpaid psychotherapy thrown in. in. I once told her I had a nightmare that I had been late for her and the duke.
‘Oh yes,’ she beamed, and I could tell she’d heard this one before, probably from other Prime Ministers. “Were you naked?” she asked, as it turns out this is a common feature of such dreams.
If I had to summarize the thrust of her advice, it is that no disaster is ever truly irreparable (just as no triumph is ever final) and that the British people in their natural resilience and brilliance would endure anything, provided – and this was the main point: there was the right spirit of duty, service, and effort, virtues of which she exemplified all her life.
Our last conversation, the day I left Prime Minister, took place just a few days before her death; and I was told there may have been a reason for that. She knew that summer of last year that her health was now deteriorating, but she was determined to do her job as monarch, to hold out until she had fulfilled the crucial function of bidding farewell to her fourteenth British Prime Minister (me), and making it from I was confident there would be a peaceful and orderly transition to the 15th.
She succeeded in this, as in so many other things, because she believed that through willpower and energy we can shape our goals and transform our fortunes: a lesson this country may need to remember today.
If I had to summarize the thrust of her advice, it is that no disaster is ever truly irreparable (just as no triumph is ever final) and that the British people in their natural resilience and brilliance would endure anything, provided – and this was the main point: there was the right spirit of duty, service, and effort, virtues of which she exemplified all her life. Above: The Queen greets Mr Johnson at an audience in June 2021
As for my trivial superstitions about magpies, she sympathized with them. She had it herself, she said. So encouraged, I relieved myself further.
It’s that great rhyme – one for sadness, two for joy, three for a girl, four for a boy, etc. If I see one magpie I think it’s bad luck, I said, and I start scanning the sky as a predictor. *for that crucial second magpie.
Is there, or is it a crow? Does it count? And which way do they fly? Am I facing an uprising from the right or left of politics? It’s all starting to get quite time consuming.
“It’s easy,” said the Queen. “What you do is say, ‘Good morning, Mr. Ekster, today is…’ and then you specify the correct day and date. That is enough.’
It works – because it is sometimes difficult to remember what day and date it is in the morning fog. Once you have done that, you are responsible for the agenda.
Your mind moves on. The lonely magpie is forgotten. So if you’re spooked by a magpie today, tell it it’s Saturday, September 2, 2023, and get on with your day, bolstered by some practical advice from Elizabeth, our late Great Queen, who passed away a year ago next week.