Solyanka and Prince Philip
17 April 2021 03:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeBusy preparing a solyanka (the soup version this time) while listening to the radio coverage of the Duke of Edinburgh's funeral.
When someone dies of extreme old age in the bosom of his family after a long and successful marriage, I feel that one is entirely entitled to look upon it as a source of public ceremonial entertainment rather than in any way a tragedy -- it's a pity he couldn't make it to a hundred just as a milestone, but the only person to whom it can be devastating is the Queen herself, to whom it must be both entirely inevitable (to have lived this long together is already amazing) and come as something akin to an amputation. I liked the touch that members of the Duke's personal staff were among the very-select 30 persons permitted to attend the funeral, to the exclusion of all the international bigwigs who might otherwise have been fitted in.
(I found myself also unavoidably reminded of Hornblower trying to organise Lord Nelson's state funeral in "Hornblower and the Atropos"; the responsibility and urgent paddling beneath the surface that must have been uppermost in practice in the minds of the officers responsible for transferring the coffin, etc.!)
I've been reminded how very little I actually ever knew about Prince Philip, who has existed in the background for my entire lifetime -- probably less mentioned in public than any of his children, let alone the Queen. I never did my 'DoE award', which my school didn't offer, and never really associated that with the actual human Duke of Edinburgh in the first place. I certainly had no idea that he, as opposed to Prince Charles, who has been famous for it since it was the preserve of cranks and eccentrics, had taken a pioneering interest in nature conservation. It has been strange to hear all the media coverage about him as a young man, which is an era I simply didn't know anything about -- beyond the familiar story about the Queen learning of her father's death while on safari in Kenya.
When someone dies of extreme old age in the bosom of his family after a long and successful marriage, I feel that one is entirely entitled to look upon it as a source of public ceremonial entertainment rather than in any way a tragedy -- it's a pity he couldn't make it to a hundred just as a milestone, but the only person to whom it can be devastating is the Queen herself, to whom it must be both entirely inevitable (to have lived this long together is already amazing) and come as something akin to an amputation. I liked the touch that members of the Duke's personal staff were among the very-select 30 persons permitted to attend the funeral, to the exclusion of all the international bigwigs who might otherwise have been fitted in.
(I found myself also unavoidably reminded of Hornblower trying to organise Lord Nelson's state funeral in "Hornblower and the Atropos"; the responsibility and urgent paddling beneath the surface that must have been uppermost in practice in the minds of the officers responsible for transferring the coffin, etc.!)
I've been reminded how very little I actually ever knew about Prince Philip, who has existed in the background for my entire lifetime -- probably less mentioned in public than any of his children, let alone the Queen. I never did my 'DoE award', which my school didn't offer, and never really associated that with the actual human Duke of Edinburgh in the first place. I certainly had no idea that he, as opposed to Prince Charles, who has been famous for it since it was the preserve of cranks and eccentrics, had taken a pioneering interest in nature conservation. It has been strange to hear all the media coverage about him as a young man, which is an era I simply didn't know anything about -- beyond the familiar story about the Queen learning of her father's death while on safari in Kenya.
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Date: 2021-04-17 04:21 pm (UTC)