Queen Elizabeth II leaves the Easter Day service at St George's Chapel in 2017. Photo / Getty Images
Queen Elizabeth II leaves the Easter Day service at St George's Chapel in 2017. Photo / Getty Images
OPINION:
For the choristers at St George's Chapel, the Queen was a kindly neighbour who felt like family.
The first time I met the Queen, I asked her for a lift. I was wearing muddy shorts, a wet rugby shirt and was halfway through a cross-country run at the time.In retrospect, I'm not surprised she refused.
Back then I was eight years old and one of the choristers at St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle, a centuries-old location for royal rites of passage. She looked exactly like the off-duty version that has long existed in the popular imagination: sporting a headscarf and mackintosh, surrounded by portly corgis and with a Land Rover trailing behind. She certainly didn't look like she does on the stamps.
"Let's go and say hello," said an older friend who knew the drill. "Don't forget: you have to call her ma'am." He pronounced it to rhyme with "arm". While we dutifully mumbled, she greeted us with a broad smile and a cheerful "hello" before asking me about myself and how I was enjoying singing so far. The lift to the cross-country finish line was humorously refused as something her security guards might not permit, a demonstration of her legendary diplomacy that has stuck with me ever since.
Young choristers have sung at St George's for seven centuries. During my time there, we performed at royal weddings, christenings and jubilee celebrations, and for foreign royalty, prime ministers and world leaders. In the many tributes since her death, Queen Elizabeth II has been portrayed as the matriarch of the nation, but for us she really did seem like a kindly, if remote, grandmother. It didn't mean much to me then but I realise now what a rare privilege it was to witness the Queen, and other members of the royal family, in their off-duty moments where we could speak to them with the confidence and naïveté of a scruffy eight-year-old.
The St. George's Chapel Choir during a rehearsal ahead of the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. Photo / AP
We played sports on the private land around Windsor — essentially the royal family's back garden — and whenever we came across her, she would unfailingly stop and chat. Perhaps we reminded her of her grandchildren William and Zara, who were then about our age.
After Easter services in the family's private chapel, she would quiz us about how many chocolate eggs we were planning to eat. If a certain boy sang a solo, she would come and say well done afterwards. We were just as excited about meeting Princess Diana when she made occasional visits to Windsor, but I remember we felt a greater connection to the Queen. The rumour was that she paid for our tuition scholarships herself, though I've no idea if it was true.
My voice broke in 1992, so my choir days were over. But we senior boys were drafted into action in November that year, when fire broke out inside the state apartments. Along with other residents and employees of the castle, we formed human chains to rescue artwork and furniture, then rushed back to watch the six o'clock news to see whether we had made it on to the TV. Later, through our dormitory windows, we watched the flames consume the castle's Brunswick Tower.
The castle was swiftly restored and today the boys (and now girls) of St George's Chapel choir still sing regularly for royal events. They serenaded Harry and Meghan on their wedding day, and will undoubtedly sing the Queen to her rest when she is buried at Windsor this month, alongside her mother and father.
I took my own sons to the castle this year, during the Jubilee celebrations. It was my first visit in years, and it felt odd to be paying to walk through the grounds I knew so well. I pointed out the Royal Standard to my eldest, who is only a few years younger than I was when I joined the choir. "That means the Queen is here," I said. "Can we go and meet her?" he asked. "I don't know about that," I replied. "But if you see her around, don't forget you have to call her ma'am."
