When someone dies, every decade of his or her life become’s contemporary. Here the future Queen Elizabeth II in a 1933 portrait by Philip de Lázló.

Queen of the world -- Elizabeth II (1926-2022)

September 9, 2022

One of the advantages of longevity is that you eventually outrun everything and everyone else – friends, family, critics, even history. And so it is with Queen Elizabeth II, who began her reign as a 25 year old in the blush of postwar promise and ended it as the world’s sovereign and matriarch with her passing Sept. 8 at Balmoral Castle in Scotland at age 96. The death of England’s longest reigning monarch (70 years) begins a period of mourning in Great Britain that will be crowned by her funeral, led by her eldest son and heir, now King Charles III.

Queen Elizabeth II greets employees on her walk from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center mission control to a reception in the center’s main auditorium in Greenbelt, Maryland, 2007. Photograph by Bill Ingalls/NASA.

Her Majesty's senior service

May 31, 2022

I promised you a post about Queen Elizabeth II and seniors in the workplace, and I always try to keep my promises. So here it is and a much needed change of pace from the world’s ills it offers — but only to a certain extent.

The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee takes place June 2 through 5, celebrating her 70 years on the British throne. When she turned 21 in 1947, then Princess Elizabeth pledged her life, “whether it be long or short,” to the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth Five years later, her beloved father, George VI, would be dead and she would be queen.

God directs Abram, renamed Abraham, to count all the stars for that is how numerous his descendants shall be. From a Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld woodcut for a “Bible in Pictures” (1860).

What's in a royal name? Plenty

June 17, 2021

It’s one of the few things you carry throughout your life that you don’t actually choose. I’m talking about a name, of course — although that may come as a surprise to Lady Gaga and other celebrities who are often better known by their stage names than their given ones.

It might certainly come as a surprise to the former Meghan Markle, whose actual name is Rachel Meghan Markle but who calls herself Meghan. There are two schools of thought about people who rename themselves: They are wildly independent. They are wildly insecure. I myself don’t care for my first or middle names, but I was named for my grandmothers, whose memories I care greatly about honoring. So I wear their names with pride. And when time came for my Confirmation, I chose another name that I liked better and have since added a fourth that is my favorite. You can understand why the Department of Motor Vehicles has a problem with me.

But back to Meghan, Duchess of Sussex — yet another name. She and her husband, Prince Harry, have chosen to name their newborn daughter after his grandmother and mother, Queen Elizabeth II and the late Diana, Princess of Wales. Fair enough. Lots of girls, especially first-born daughters, are named as I was after grandmothers or great-grandmothers. It was, however, how they chose to honor Prince Harry’s grandmother that has become the sticking point. Instead of naming their daughter Elizabeth Diana, they named her Lillbet Diana, after the queen’s childhood nickname.

As the story goes, the nickname was based on her own mispronunciation of her name when she was very young. It was then championed by her grandparents, King George V and Queen Mary,; her parents, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, known as Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother; her sister, Princess Margaret; and her husband, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. Perhaps some of her contemporary cousins use it as well. Perhaps not. Needless to say, the principle people who called the queen “Lilibet” are, sadly, all gone.

So the question becomes why would you name your child after someone’s intimate nickname that has nothing to do with you?

Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (left), examines building models at the University of Salford in 1967. During a 70-year career as a working royal, he carried out more than 22,000 solo engagements in addition to being what Queen Elizabeth II called … — Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (left), examines building models at the University of Salford in 1967. During a 70-year career as a working royal, he carried out more than 22,000 solo engagements in addition to being what Queen Elizabeth II called her “strength and stay.” Courtesy the University of Salford Press Office.

Prince Philip -- the Queen's man

April 11, 2021

Among the photographs The New York Times used to commemorate Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh — who died on Friday, April 9, at Windsor Castle two months short of his 100th birthday and will be buried from there Saturday, April 17 — was a 2017 photo in which the natty duke faces the camera smiling amid a sea of red-garbed Canadian soldiers, who are virtually all facing right. It encapsulates Prince Philip, a part of and yet apart from the British monarchy, “the strength and stay” of Queen Elizabeth II (her words) through 73 years of marriage, the longest in British royal history, who served crown and country with a confounding mix of devotion, action, humility, crotchety humor and a patronizing snobbery that critics have called impolitic at best and prejudiced at worst.

‘Darkest Hour’: a timely tale of courage

December 31, 2017

Hindsight, they say, is 20/20. If it is, it must be with prescriptive rose-colored glasses. Because the past has been completed – successfully or otherwise – we tend to think of it as having been lived with a foregone conclusion. We forget that at the time, the past was the present, the outcome never assured.

“Darkest Hour” – an inspirational new film directed with subtle tension by Joe Wright (“Pride & Prejudice”) – recounts several weeks in May 1940 when England stood alone in a world on the brink of totalitarianism. It stars a soaring Gary Oldman, virtually unrecognizable ...

‘Uneasy lies the head…”: Leadership and ‘The Crown”

December 26, 2016

Netflix’s “The Crown” – the Brits’ most addictive-as-potato-chips offering since “Downton Abbey” – tells the story of Queen Elizabeth II (Claire Foy) from her days as a happy wife of a dashing naval lieutenant on the isle of Malta through her ascendance to the British throne on the death of her father, George VI.

Like many good narratives, its absorbing juiciness derives from familial tensions – between husbands and wives, mothers and daughters and, especially, siblings. But its real subject is one that plagues the contemporary world and whose misunderstanding, I fear, will cost the world dearly as it veers toward demagoguery – the nature of leadership. ...