September 8 is approaching, and we’re missing Queen Elizabeth, okay? If anyone was as good at their job as she was, we don’t know who they are—after all, she perfected being a monarch over the course of 70 years on the throne. But there was one part of the role in modern days that drove her mad: whereas in the past at walkabouts she would see a sea of faces, in her latter years as Queen, all she saw was a swath of cell phones, desperate to snap a photo of her rather than take her in as she stood in front of them.
The Mirror reports that Her late Majesty expressed sorrow over how the experience of greeting well-wishers had changed during her reign, which had gone from meeting people face-to-face to mostly interacting with their technology in her face as they attempted to take photos and videos to capture the moment. It’s not that she was against cell phones—she got her first one in 2001—but she told award-winning violinist Nicola Benedetti that digital devices had mightily impacted the world, right down to her work as Queen. Benedetti spoke to the late Queen when she received the Queen’s Medal for music back in 2017—the youngest recipient of that medal.
“I quote our late Queen, who I met after winning the Queen’s Medal for music,” Benedetti told BBC Radio 4’s Today program. “She said her view of the world [had] been impacted so much by digital devices. She used to look out into a sea of people and then, in the last 10 years or so, she just [looked] out into a sea of phones, she said to me. She was talking about the unbelievable power and importance of music education. But she also said [playing an instrument in an orchestra] was one of the only times when nobody is looking for anything else. You’ve got an instrument in hand, and everyone is collectivized around this one thing. It requires you to listen harder than you speak or talk. You have to be part of a bigger organism. To lose that would be such a heartache.”
Royal author Ian Lloyd said walkabouts—for which Her late Majesty became so known for undertaking—began in the 1970s as a way for her to meet and engage with the public. “But, in the digital era, she missed that eye contact, with mobile phones thwarting that genuine connection,” he said. “People would just hold up their camera phones or, even worse, their iPads, so she would be faced with a wall of screens. They just want to record the moment rather than experience it, which is a shame.”
And, while the late Queen did have a cell phone, she only really talked to two people on it, royal expert Jonathan Sacerdoti said on the “Royally Us” podcast. “Apparently the Queen has two people who she speaks to the most on her phones, and she also apparently has a mobile phone which is said to be Samsung packed with anti-hacker encryption by MI6 so nobody can hack into her phone,” Sacerdoti said in an episode recorded before her passing. “But the two people she phones the most are said to be her daughter, Princess Anne, and her racing manager, John Warren.”
Speaking of the Princess Royal, she echoed her mother’s feelings about digital devices and walkabouts, per The Daily Mail: “I’m glad I’m not starting [to do walkabouts] now because at least you [previously] had people to talk to—now you don’t, really,” she said. “Phones are bad enough but the iPads, you can’t even see their heads! You don’t know who you’re talking to. I either don’t bother, or I say, ‘Look, if you want to meet us, I suggest you put that down!’ It’s weird. People don’t think they’ve experienced the event unless they’ve taken photographs. And usually, you’re standing immediately in front of them.”
One more anecdote about Her late Majesty and technology: On one occasion Clare Short, international development secretary under Tony Blair, realized she had left her cell phone on when it rang during a meeting of the Privy Council with the late Queen present. “Oh dear,” Queen Elizabeth said. “I hope it wasn’t anyone important.”
