March 27, 2024

Finest Hour 199, Special Issue 2022

Page 06

On 19 September, as the world watched the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II at Westminster Abbey, an international audience assembled at another Westminster—Westminster College— where America’s National Churchill Museum conducted a Ceremony of Remembrance for the late Queen. The ceremony was held in St. Mary the Virgin, Aldermanbury, an appropriately stately setting designed and constructed in the 1670s by Royal Architect Sir Christopher Wren.

Churchill Fellow and the Museum’s Sandra L. and Monroe E. Trout Director and Chief Curator Timothy Riley presided at the ceremony, which included remarks by students and long-time museum member Nancy Tucker Cleveland, who recounted her experience in London during the late Queen’s Coronation in 1953. “God Save the King” was played on the church’s historic Mander organ, bells tolled, and items from the museum’s collection including letters, photographs, and other artifacts from, or related to, the Royal Family were on display in a special exhibition called “A Royal Legacy at America’s National Churchill Museum.”

While the ceremony looked back at the late Queen’s extraordinary legacy, Riley concluded the ceremony by reading from a 2019 letter from King Charles III, then the Prince of Wales, to the museum. His Majesty graciously acknowledged the museum’s work and gave a Churchillian reminder of the importance of studying the past and using its lessons to build a better future: “As Sir Winston Churchill said in 1944, ‘the longer you can look back, the farther you can look forward.’ While there is still much to be done before the future of this uniquely special place can be fully assured, I should like to thank you all most warmly for your continuing efforts to protect, preserve and cherish it.” God Save the King.