Britain’s last grown-up
By Sebastian Milbank, Artillery Row:
One year ago the country witnessed the passing of its queen. I felt then, an overwhelming sense of some shield or talisman withdrawn; Britain would not now be the same, and things would go badly. Beneath all our rationalisations, technological might and imperious calculations, modern society is comprised not of modern men, but of humans of the same essential substance as dwelt in Medieval Florence or Ancient Babylon. Once in a while an event falls upon contemporary society that shatters our pretensions, and throws us back on more basic and natural modes of thinking. The death of a monarch is such a moment, an occurrence that, in myth and folklore, is a kind of cosmic shift, the turning of time and history into a new path. Britain, for all that its masters wish it to be shorn of such ideas, always, it seems, returns to this primordial poetics — “let us sit upon the ground/And tell sad stories of the death of kings”.
The coronation earlier this year was a strange moment. On the one hand it was triumphantly successful. A tradition now so alien to modern political thought, it has become timeless and eternal, unthinkable to invent, but, extraordinarily, everything still works. Britain could still produce that scene of baroque splendour, the upraised voices lifted in praise of God, the King, kneeling like a knight of old, before the altar, the great clashing procession of martial might. Pride in our traditions and history was still alive, the nation could still hush its voice in the presence of sanctity. And could forever more, if it only chose to.
The tragedy of change is not always its inevitability, but lies, sometimes, precisely in its contingency. Traditions that have lasted a thousand years could quite happily last another thousand, there is no inevitability to most of the blows of history — they are delivered by human hands. We would not desire that every facet of our nation and culture, even those possessed of great glamour or dignity, should be frozen in place forever, forestalling all freshness and new life. But some golden thread of continuity, an unbroken chain of thought, feeling and symbol, is precisely what sustains a civilisation, making it capable of collective struggle and endeavour, of innovation and dynamism, creativity and expression.
[…] It was easy to take comfort in the Queen, and what she represented — the idea of some higher heaven, some world of adults such as one would never be oneself, of cool archons who secure the foundations of our existence. It’s much harder to realise that we, confused, bumbling, soft-hearted mortals, silly post-modern Brits, are those who must now embrace the despised and chilly virtues of duty, honour, and Chrisitan self-sacrifice. But embrace them we must — or lose everything we know and love.
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