4 minute read
Memories of the Queen
AUSTIN BURN, who spent 18 years working for the royal family, reflects on how the Queen treated everyone with respect, had ‘a real interest’ in The Salvation Army and was open about her own faith
Interview by Andrew Stone
Austin Burn
WHETHER they were outside
Buckingham Palace and saw the small white notice being attached to the gates or were somewhere remote and received a notification on their phone, many people will remember how they felt when they learnt that the Queen had died peacefully at Balmoral on the afternoon of 8 September 2022.
With most of the population in the UK unable to remember a time when the Queen was not on the throne, her death will bring an enormous sense of loss. One person who will feel that sense of loss more than most is Austin Burn, who spent 18 years working for the royal family, first as an under-butler, then as a footman and then in a role called Page of the Presence. He has worked at all the royal residences, including Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle and Balmoral as well as on the royal yacht Britannia.
Austin’s experiences mean that he knows what people currently working in those royal residences will be experiencing right now.
‘Everyone will be feeling a great sense of loss,’ he says. ‘Working for the royal family feels like you’re working for your adopted family. I spent almost two decades working for them, and I am gutted. The Queen has been like the grandmother of the nation, but it’s also a very personal loss for the many people who worked for her.’
With a period of mourning having begun and a state funeral being planned for Monday (19 September), Austin reflects on two other deaths within the royal family.
‘I was privileged to be in Windsor Castle for the funeral of Prince Philip,’ he recalls. ‘I also went to the Queen Mother’s funeral, but because I had spent more time with Prince Philip than I did the Queen Mother, it was a totally different experience – particularly because the prince’s was so much smaller and informal.’ It was the Queen herself who invited Austin to her mother’s funeral. Knowing that he was a lifelong member of The Salvation Army, she wanted him to represent the church and charity at the service. Throughout his time working for her, the Queen always took an interest in Austin’s membership and any voluntary roles that he carried out for the organisation. In 2001, after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, Austin spent time in the US with The Salvation Army, providing support to the emergency services. ‘When I returned, I was at an event talking to some friends,
Austin worked at Buckingham Palace and other royal residences
The Queen with Austin in 1996 when she opened Edward Alsop Court, a Salvation Army centre in Westminster for people experiencing homelessness
when all of a sudden someone tapped me on my shoulder,’ he remembers. ‘I turned round and came face to face with the Queen, who asked me about what I got up to at Ground Zero. She had a real interest in what I had done there.’
However, Austin explains that the Queen’s interest in The Salvation Army went far beyond what one member of her staff did, and that the interest was shared by other members of her family.
‘The Salvation Army is very well respected within the household,’ he says. ‘The Queen had a real interest in it. It’s why she opened various Army centres. But that respect goes back to Queen Victoria and has continued through every generation since.
‘Whenever there was anything on at St Paul’s Cathedral, like a service which I was invited to and where the Queen would be, I would always go in Salvation Army uniform, because that’s what the Queen would have expected.’
Austin also reveals that the Queen was well aware that uniform-wearing members of The Salvation Army are teetotal.
‘There was one time when the Queen
wanted her evening tipple. When I gave it to her, she said: “Austin, for a Salvationist, you make a fantastic gin and Dubonnet!”’ Austin is sure, though, that the Queen’s The Queen had interest in The Salvation Army was influenced by her own Christian faith. a strong faith ‘The Queen was always open about her own Christianity,’ he says. ‘She had a strong faith and went to church every week. I will remember her as a good Christian lady who treated everybody with respect, no matter who they were. ‘Her Majesty was a wonderful leveller who had a great sense of humour and could talk to people from every walk of life.’
