Let The Nation Roar With Pride For Our Indomitable Queen

News that the Queen has been in hospital has caused the nation to take a collective gulp. For a start, we aren’t used to it – the last time it happened was in 2013 when she contracted a stomach bug.

- Patrick O’Flynn

Her latest stay, overnight on Wednesday, was similarly brief and she was back at her desk in Windsor Castle by Thursday afternoon.

While Buckingham Palace is under no obligation to provide the media with a complete running commentary about Her Majesty’s state of health, it did not help that it had denied that she was at all unwell when announcing a day earlier that she had cancelled a planned visit to Northern Ireland.

That hardly sat well with Thursday’s statement from the Palace that: “Following medical advice to rest for a few days, the Queen attended hospital on Wednesday afternoon for some preliminary investigations.”

Given that she is 95 and that the loss of her long-serving consort, the Duke of Edinburgh, earlier this year was in itself a profound blow to our national spirits, it is no surprise that the idea of the Queen’s health being troublesome should focus our minds. She is not, after all, immortal.

F OR the vast majority of us, she has been monarch for all our adult lives. Prime ministers have come and gone – she is currently on her 14th – but Elizabeth II has always reigned, a rock of stability in a turbulent world.