We asked Lindsey, Senior Media Consultant and bi-national, British-French for a personal perspective on the death of Queen Elizabeth II.

What were you doing when you heard about the Queen’s death?

I was on a video call with a client. It was a strange moment. I got a message from my husband saying “The Queen is dead!” and I automatically Googled to read more, but there was nothing. I replied “but how do you know?”. He said that the programming had stopped and everyone was wearing a black tie. For me this was the strangest moment. Knowing before you’re supposed to know. The unspoken codes we all know and understand, the moment the media has been preparing us for the last few years as the Queen reached old age, “Operation London Bridge”. I searched again online and it was full of almost identical articles about the Operation, the ten day plan. 

It was hard to concentrate on the rest of the call, it goes without saying and that evening, after the official announcement was made, all I wanted to do was watch the BBC that showed nothing for hours but the crowds starting to gather at Buckingham Palace to leave flowers. I felt sorry for the presenter trying to think of something new to say. 

It was such a strange week for the UK with a new monarch and new Prime Minister in the same week. It felt scary. The UK has had unstable leadership for some time, so to lose the one consistent figure, felt very sad. 

Since last Thursday, has your work, your contacts with the English media, changed? 

At first I was a little concerned that it would really put my work on hold for several weeks. Obviously our main preoccupation is media relations, with one of the countries being the UK. Actually it’s only 10 days, luckily it hasn’t impacted anything too heavily. We delayed one announcement by one day and have focused on specialised press, avoiding large national / general media outlets that will be covering nothing but the royal family. 

It’s a very sad event but it is actually fascinating to see how the media have handled it and how the royal family handles the media. The Queen’s media team was the best there is, she managed to keep her private life quite private (unless you believe everything on The Crown!). The Queen that we saw in the media was the Queen she wanted us to see. She was very professional in that sense. 

The television in the UK has been completely dominated by the funeral proceedings, with even a live stream of the public visiting the Queen’s coffin lying in state. It’s not a surprise, the television has always been important to the public’s relationship with the Queen. She was responsible for the first televised Christmas broadcast by a British monarch in 1957 with the last one in 2021 attracting 9 million viewers. The Royal Family opened its doors to the cameras June 1969 for a documentary which gave audiences never seen before access to their everyday lives, with an estimated global audience of 350 million.The first royal website was launched in 1997. It launched a Youtube channel in 2009 and joined Twitter in 2011. In 2020, during the Covid-19 lockdown the Queen held a Zoom meeting with care workers.

From what I’ve seen the press in the UK has been very respectful, no matter where on the political / royalist spectrum they sit. I think after the funeral, things will return to ‘normal’ pretty quickly. Life will be different with a new monarch and a new Prime Minister but new beginnings are not always a bad thing.

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