Honouring the memory of our late Queen, four years after her passing
For 70 years, Queen Elizabeth II was a constant presence in our lives, through thick and thin
We all remember where we were when we heard the sad news that Queen Elizabeth had died, don’t we? As it happens, I was on Oxford Street when I took a call from a colleague. Even though she was 96 and evidently very ill, it still seemed a surreal moment.
The death of Queen Elizabeth on 8 September 2022 was a landmark moment in all our lives. For 70 years, she had been “our Queen,” a world-class public servant who had been a constant presence in our lives through thick and thin. Famous and respected all over the world, she was a focus for national stability and cohesion, and a global icon. She was always there, a maternal figure for the nation, and suddenly she was gone.
This Tuesday marks the fourth anniversary of her death (her “Yahrzeit”), which provides an opportunity to reflect again and to marvel at her record-breaking reign. She was the longest-reigning monarch in British history, and the only one to reach a Platinum Jubilee of 70 years.
As someone privileged to work in her communications team, I was able to witness first-hand her incredible sense of duty and service. While working at the Palace, I was part of the delegation accompanying her on visits all over the country, whether to schools, hospitals, community centres, museums, galleries or other places of interest. She once famously said, “I have to be seen to be believed,” and the Royal walkabout became a common occurrence from 1970 onwards.
Daily engagements are the bread and butter of the monarchy, enabling Royals to meet a cross-section of people. During my time at the Palace, I noticed a gap: there was no central database of Royal engagements. So after leaving, I set about creating a digital database from 2013 onwards as an independent project, enlisting the support of eight schools, including JCoSS. Each volunteered a group of students to take the data from the Court Circular online and log it systematically. I am delighted that, some years later, this project was integrated into the official commemorations as the Queen Elizabeth Digital Memorial.
The site launched on 21 April this year, the exact centenary of the Queen’s birth. We are looking for people to submit their own short written memories, whether they actually met her or simply followed her over the years on TV.
We all have our own special memories of the Queen. She fulfilled a number of engagements in the Jewish community — for example, attending the centenary of the United Synagogue in 1970, a reception marking 350 years since the Jewish resettlement of England in 2006, and a visit to Ravenswood Village for Norwood in 2008. Of the many engagements I supported the Queen on, probably my favourite was an inter-faith event at Lambeth Palace in March 2012 for the Diamond Jubilee.
Earlier in my career, I was also privileged to work for Chief Rabbi Sacks. He wrote beautifully about the difference between history and memory: “History is an answer to the question, ‘What happened?’ Memory is an answer to the question, ‘Who am I?’ History is about facts, memory is about identity. History is about something that happened to someone else, not me. Memory is my story, the past that made me who I am, of whose legacy I am the guardian for the sake of generations yet to come. Without memory, there is no identity, and without identity, we are mere dust on the surface of infinity.”
As British Jews, Queen Elizabeth’s reign is both our history and our memory. As we mark four years since her passing, if you have a memory of her, please share it on the digital memorial: https://www.queenelizabeth.com
Zaki Cooper was a press secretary to Queen Elizabeth II, and serves on the Queen Elizabeth Digital Memorial committee.