In the days after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997, the tabloids demanded that the Queen show her grief in public. The Daily Express printed the headline “Show Us You Care” over her picture. Buckingham Palace said the royal family had been “hurt by suggestions that they are indifferent to the country’s sorrow.”
On 5 September, the Queen spoke to the nation on television: “So what I say to you now, as your Queen and as a grandmother, I say from my heart.”
On 30 June 1998, in a World Cup match between England and Argentina, David Beckham was barged from behind by Diego Simeone. Beckham flicked his foot at Simeone and was sent off.
The Daily Mirror’s headline read: “Ten heroic lions, one stupid boy.”
In 2010, the journalist Andrew Rawnsley published The End of the Party, an account of the Labour government. It alleged that Prime Minister Gordon Brown had lost his temper with staff, including shoving an aide.
Downing Street called the claims malicious. Brown said: “I have never, never hit anybody in my life.”
On 24 May 2019, Theresa May announced outside 10 Downing Street that she would resign as Conservative leader. Her voice cracked as she said: “I will shortly leave the job that it has been the honour of my life to hold.” She ended: “I do so with no ill-will, but with enormous and enduring gratitude to have had the opportunity to serve the country I love.”
On 13 September 1940, Buckingham Palace was bombed. It was bombed nine times during the Second World War. In a letter, Queen Elizabeth, the wife of King George VI, wrote: “I am glad we have been bombed. It makes me feel I can look the East End in the face.”
Captain Edward Smith of the Titanic is remembered by the phrase “Be British,” said to be his last words as the ship sank. The phrase was popularized by the British press at the time. There is little evidence that he actually said it.
British English has many disapproving phrases for visible anger.
To lose it: To lose control of one’s temper.
To lose one’s rag: To become very angry.
To throw a wobbly: To have a sudden fit of temper.
To throw one’s toys out of the pram: To react to a setback like an angry child.
To fly off the handle: To become angry suddenly.
Keep your hair on: Calm down.
On 24 November 1992, in a speech at Guildhall in London marking 40 years since her accession, Queen Elizabeth II looked back on the year. She said: “1992 is not a year on which I shall look back with undiluted pleasure.”
She went on: “In the words of one of my more sympathetic correspondents, it has turned out to be an ‘Annus Horribilis’.”
At the Battle of Waterloo on 18 June 1815, Lord Uxbridge, commander of the Allied cavalry, was hit in the leg by one of the last cannon shots of the day. In the popular story, he was beside the Duke of Wellington and said: “By God, sir, I’ve lost my leg!” Wellington replied: “By God, sir, so you have!”
The exchange may not have happened in these words. Horace Seymour, who helped carry Uxbridge from the field, told the politician John Wilson Croker another version, which Croker wrote in his diary in 1818: “I have got it at last,” and “No? Have you, by God?”
Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If—” was first published in 1910, in Rewards and Fairies. It opens: “If you can keep your head when all about you / Are losing theirs and blaming it on you.”
In a BBC poll in the mid-1990s, it was voted the nation’s favorite poem.