Aldo Cazzullo (photo by Carlo Furgeri Gilbert).
D.fter the Queen’s funeral, I was in the corner of Green Park which has become an open-air memorial to Elizabeth. It was night but the place was crowded, and not sad. On the lawn the English had placed thousands of bouquets of flowers, thousands of letters.
I have read a few. They were all in beautiful handwriting, as if Elizabeth could really read it. Many thanked the queen for her service to the nationtreating her with deference but also as a family person, towards whom one feels a deep respect.
Then there were the children’s drawings. Almost all of them featured Paddington beara character born in 1958 but revitalized by the video in which he takes tea with the queen, drinking it directly from the teapot, and offers a jam sandwich to Elizabeth, who in turn takes one out of her bag.
Thanks to that video, the queen entered the life of the last generation of Britsand the first “public” memory will remain for many children, the first memory of something that happened not only to them but to everyone.
When I interview a character, I always ask what their first public memory is. There are events that mark our lives: Piazza Fontana, the Moro case, the 1982 World Cup, the fall of the Wall, 11 September… Some point to an event that happened when they were three or four years old; others a fact that happened when they were already twenty.
The degree of attention to politics, news, public life varies greatly. Certainly for many English children the first memory will be the death of the queen. And in almost all the drawings the little ones identified with the bear, while they saw in the monarch a grandmother, or rather a great-grandmother, tender and smiling.
Then of course Elizabeth met Churchill, clashed with Thatcher, was persuaded by Blair to put the Buckingham Palace flag at half mast for Diana. But for a generation she will remain the white-haired lady who took tea with the bear.
Do you want to share emotions, memories, reflections with us? Write to us [email protected]
All the articles by Aldo Cazzullo
iO Donna © REPRODUCTION RESERVED