IN these troubled and turbulent times, not helped by a seemingly endless run up to the General Election on July 4, it is hardly surprising that four in ten people are turning away from news bulletins.

Head in the sand it might seem but perhaps in rejecting an interminable diet of war, famine, economic woe and any number of other apocalyptic horsemen you mind wish to imagine, perhaps it is a reflection of humankind’s fundamental optimism. 

We want to be aware of what is going on around us but we also want solutions and positivity. We want to celebrate our ability to cope, keep calm and carry on.

I was privileged to be in the audience at Portsmouth for the D-Day 80 Commemorations. Although all of us, apart from the twenty or so veterans that were front and centre of the activities, were all post war babies, even the youngest generation were in no doubt about what it was all about.

Moving stories of courage and suffering, an evocation of Vera Lynn and Gracie Fields, of White Cliffs and Sing as we Go, it was fundamentally a positive act of remembrance, of how our sceptred isles came through it all, bloodied but unbowed.

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When the King and Queen appeared on stage we stood and applauded, acknowledging the sovereign’s own courage, appearing just a day after another round of cancer treatment in hospital, leading this historic occasion when anyone else in his position would have been at home with their feet up.  We remained standing throughout His Majesty’s moving and obviously heartfelt address, evoking memories of his grandfather’s steadfastness eight decades earlier.

In such times such occasions breathe new life into our bruised and battered souls. We walked away across Southsea Common, no less certain about the horror and ultimate futility of war, but somehow uplifted. We need these events.

And so it was ten days later when the Irish Guards had the honour of trooping their colour on the King’s official birthday. We see it every year, but this year a last-minute appearance by the Princess of Wales added a much welcome layer of royal icing. The Royal who never puts a foot wrong won the nation’s hearts years ago. Today we are all anxious about her cancer diagnosis. As anyone who has undergone such treatment knows, you get good days and bad days. Catherine was having a good day and rose magnificently to the occasion looking band-box resplendent as she watched with her children from a window and later emerging to cheering crowds relieved to see her on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, for this day at least.

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Once again the guards regiments had done their precision drill, to the envy of foreign dignitaries braving a rainy Horse Guards parade. It never seems to vary save for which regiment is parading its colour. Over the years, there’ve been skittish horses and on a particularly hot June day a guardsman fainting but, with an admirable demonstration of Army discipline, lying to attention before being brought round.

We need these events. They are milestones in our calendar. When much around us seems to be crumbling, these markers seem immutable, undisturbed by the prospect of an increasingly fractious election campaign. Just imagine how it is in France at the moment. Emmanuel Macron is both political leader and Head of State. The French have no separation of these institutions. When one goes it all goes.

Asked why I am such a keen monarchist, I usually reply, “Because it denies an overweeningly ambitious political chancer from having the ultimate top job.” More recently I have come to think it’s also because of the unerring example of service rendered by our late Queen and now the King that demonstrates a positive force in our land.  Something for us to cleave to, remembering that things could be much worse without them.