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dot com. Hello, welcome to the rest is history. And welcome to the rest is history. And

welcome back to those of you who've listened to the first of these two podcasts that we're doing to mark the death of Queen Elizabeth

the second and the accession of King Charles the third. So Tom, we ended the last episode you were talking about the Queen's anointing at her coronation in

1953 and her sense of, dare I say it, as her sacral queenship and I guess for the first

certainly the first few years the first sort of half decade decade or so Everything is actually pretty smooth, isn't it?

For the Queen sort of domestically, but of course the paradox is that a home her

reign seems entirely untroubled,

but abroad, the context is changing so quickly.

You know, she becomes Queen of an Empire,

but within a decade or so,

that empire is largely defunct, isn't it?

Yeah, and she, I mean I think she plays, I don't know, an important role, but she certainly plays

a facilitating role, doesn't she, in the process of decolonization?

She is, I mean, she's certainly not battling to save the empire.

And, I mean, so when Harold McMillan gives his his speech in South Africa about the

winds of change, playing and all that kind of thing, she writes to him and says, you know, what a wonderful

speech. I approve of it. And it's not like she is going around desperately trying to stay Queen of all these various countries. I mean, although, I mean, it is striking that she was Queen of Pakistan. She was Queen of Sri Lanka. I mean it's kind of amazing to think that, but the great object of her love becomes the Commonwealth, which is essentially a kind of quite a neat shimmy. So what had been the empire becomes first the British Commonwealth and then the Commonwealth in which Britain has no kind of primal role and the Queen's evident devotion to the Commonwealth and to all the

countries of the Commonwealth kind of enables even countries that have been kind of emerged from colonial wars from kind of

...