Queen Elizabeth reportedly won’t be returning to London anytime soon. Roya Nikkhah, the royal correspondent for The Sunday Times, reported on Aug. 23 that Her Majesty will be making Windsor Castle her “main home for the foreseeable future.” While the monarch would normally return to Buckingham Palace after her summer in Balmoral, she will instead head back to Windsor this year. According to the report, Prince Harry ’s grandmother “is not expected to resume residence at Buckingham Palace again until the threat from coronavirus has lifted.” However, the Queen is “keen” to commute to London for engagements and events at Buckingham Palace if “it is considered safe,” but “is unlikely to take up residence there again this year.”
© WireImageThough she won’t be returning to London, she is expected to spend her annual Christmas break at Sandringham “where another bubble will be created.” The Queen, 94, and Prince Philip , 99, began their traditional summer vacation in Scotland earlier this month. Prior to their holiday, the royal couple had been self-isolating at Windsor since March due to the COVID-19 outbreak. The monarch has continued to work remotely amid the pandemic, which led to the cancelation of her Buckingham Palace garden parties and forced her annual birthday celebration, Trooping the Colour, to be scaled down in an unprecedented event at Windsor.
In April, the royal delivered a powerful speech addressing the pandemic. “I am speaking to you at what I know is an increasingly challenging time. A time of disruption in the life of our country: a disruption that has brought grief to some, financial difficulties to many, and enormous changes to the daily lives of us all,” she began. The Queen went on to thank NHS workers, care workers, essential workers and those who were staying at home to protect the vulnerable. “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.
© Steve Parsons/PA Images via Getty Images“While we have faced challenges before, this one is different. This time we join with all nations across the globe in a common endeavour, using the great advances of science and our instinctive compassion to heal. We will succeed - and that success will belong to every one of us,” Her Majesty added. “We should take comfort that while we may have more still to endure, better days will return: we will be with our friends again; we will be with our families again; we will meet again.”
Although the Queen won’t be moving back to London in the near future, members of her family reportedly will be. Per The Sunday Times, Prince Charles , Camilla, Prince William , and Kate Middleton are “expected to return to London and resume residence at Clarence house and Kensington Palace soon.” The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have been staying at their country home Anmer Hall in Norfolk with their children— Prince George , Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis —since March. “I found it pretty testing. I’m not going to lie,” William previously said of his lockdown experience on BBC Radio 5 Live’s That Peter Crouch Podcast . “Trying to keep the children engaged and interested in some sort of work. It’s been an interesting few months.”
