How well I remember the coronation of Princess Elizabeth II on June 2, 1953. Then resident in Scotland, I was four years and seven months old and had just finished reading Das Kapital and was moving on to The Condition of the Working Class in England. I had also asked for Stories,Tales and Fables by the Marquis de Sade but faither said ‘Nae bairn should be reading that’ and offered instead ‘Noddy on the Runaway Train’….
I’m afraid to say the one-off public holiday to mourn the death of Queen Elizabeth II passed me by. This was partly because we are both in isolation after testing positive to Covid. Also, the concept of a public holiday, when you get paid for not going to work, ceased to be relevant to me about 2005 when I quit my full-time job. As happens in the media and many other organisations, some people are…
Born two weeks or so before King Charles III, Bob reflects on the only monarch we have known in our lifetime and the phenomenon of ‘recreational grieving.’