Queen Elizabeth in rare address: 'We will overcome'

Queen Elizabeth II, who lived through the London Blitz of World War II, delivered a rare televised address to the nation Sunday, speaking "from my heart as your queen and a grandmother" amid "an increasingly challenging time."

"We should take comfort that while we may have more still to endure, better days will return," she said in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

"We will be with our friends again; we will be with our families again; we will meet again."

The queen said she hoped that in the years to come "those who come after us will say the Britons of this generation were as strong as any."

Elizabeth II usually addresses the nation only on Christmas. It was just the fourth time in her 65-year reign that she did so in response to an extraordinary event.

The others were Britain's entry in the Gulf War in 1991, and the deaths of her mother and Princess Diana.

Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was taken Monday evening to the intensive care unit of St. Thomas Hospital in London due to increasingly severe symptoms of COVID-19.

'We will overcome it'

On Sunday, she thanked health-care and essential workers "who selflessly continue their day-to-day duties outside the home in support of us all."

"Together we are tackling this disease, and I want to reassure you that if we remain united and resolute, then we will overcome it."

She said many are finding the self-isolation "an opportunity to slow down, pause and reflect in prayer or medication."

The queen said she was reminded of her first broadcast, in 1940, with the aid of her sister, Margaret.

That address was to children who had been evacuated from their homes during the Nazi bombing raids on London.

"Today, once again, many will feel a painful sense of separation from their loved ones," she said.

"But now, as then, we know deep down that it is the right thing to do."

This challenge is different, she said, as we "join with nations all across the globe in a common endeavor, using the great advances of science and our common compassion to heal."

"We will succeed, and that success will belong to every one of us."

See the queen's address:

Queen Mary's brooch

Noting the queen's jewelry choices on such occasions
"are the subject of deep and constant analysis," Town & Country magazine Editor-in-Chief Stellene Volandes pointed out many were surprised to see she wore a turquoise and diamond brooch that was given to her grandmother Queen Mary. The ocassion was Mary's wedding day in 1893.

"With this choice, was Her Majesty harkening back to the past and all that her family, her country, and her world, has survived?" Volandes asked. "Was she linking herself to her grandmother who helped support the King during the First World War? Or did she want a colorful brooch that might lift the spirits?"

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