04 July 2018 - Ministers Rehearse for Queen's Death
Ministers rehearse for death of the Queen
Tim Shipman (The Times, 01/07/2018)
Ministers have taken charge of plans for the days following the Queen’s death for the first time. They led a secret Whitehall exercise last week to prepare for 10 days of national mourning.
David Lidington, Theresa May’s deputy, chaired an extensive meeting on Thursday that also included the home secretary, Sajid Javid; Andrea Leadsom, the leader of the Commons; and the Scottish secretary, David Mundell.
The exercise, dubbed “Castle Dove”, focused on “D+1”, the day after the Queen’s death, with ministers deciding when the prime minister would make public statements.
Ministers 'rehearse for Queen's death for first time in secret exercise'
Hatty Collier (Evening Standard, 02/07/2018)
Government ministers have rehearsed for the Queen’s death for the first time in an “unprecedented” exercise to prepare for 10 days of national mourning, it has been reported.
Cabinet ministers and Whitehall officials this week met for the exercise, apparently known as Castle Dove, to discuss ‘D+1’, the day after the monarch’s death, according to the Sunday Times.
According to the newspaper, Theresa May’s deputy David Lidington chaired the meeting on Thursday which was also attended by home secretary Sajid Javid, leader of the commons Andrea Leadsom and Scottish secretary David Mundell.
The death of Queen Elizabeth will be one of the most disruptive events in Britain in the past 70 years
Rob Price (Business Insider UK, 29/06/2018)
Queen Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God Queen of this Realm and of Her other Realms and Territories, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith, is not going to live forever.
Since ascending to the throne in 1952, the monarch has seen 13 prime ministers serve Britain and lived through another 13 US presidents. She's now 92. At some point — not for many years yet, we hope — Queen Elizabeth II's reign will come to an end.
But what happens then?
'London Bridge is down': the secret plan for the days after the Queen’s death
Sam Knight (The Guardian, 17/03/2017)
In the plans that exist for the death of the Queen – and there are many versions, held by Buckingham Palace, the government and the BBC – most envisage that she will die after a short illness. Her family and doctors will be there. When the Queen Mother passed away on the afternoon of Easter Saturday, in 2002, at the Royal Lodge in Windsor, she had time to telephone friends to say goodbye, and to give away some of her horses. In these last hours, the Queen’s senior doctor, a gastroenterologist named Professor Huw Thomas, will be in charge. He will look after his patient, control access to her room and consider what information should be made public. The bond between sovereign and subjects is a strange and mostly unknowable thing. A nation’s life becomes a person’s, and then the string must break.
There will be bulletins from the palace – not many, but enough. “The Queen is suffering from great physical prostration, accompanied by symptoms which cause much anxiety,” announced Sir James Reid, Queen Victoria’s physician, two days before her death in 1901. “The King’s life is moving peacefully towards its close,” was the final notice issued by George V’s doctor, Lord Dawson, at 9.30pm on the night of 20 January 1936. Not long afterwards, Dawson injected the king with 750mg of morphine and a gram of cocaine – enough to kill him twice over – in order to ease the monarch’s suffering, and to have him expire in time for the printing presses of the Times, which rolled at midnight.