Bryony Gordon tells Chris Evans about the ‘astonishing’ atmosphere at Buckingham Palace after the Queen’s Death

Virgin Radio

12 Sep 2022, 11:26

Journalist and author Bryony Gordon had quite the weekend after being drafted in to report from the scene of Buckingham Palace just days following the death of Queen Elizabeth II. While on The Chris Evans Breakfast Show, Bryony revealed what it was like to witness the new King Charles III arrive back in London following the sad news, her relationship with the royal family, as well as an insight into her debut YA novel, Let Down Your Hair.

Bryony was enlisted by The Telegraph to report alongside the masses of people who descended on Buckingham Palace following the news of the monarch’s passing, and was one of the many lined up at the barricades who shook King Charles III's hand as he walked through the adoring crowd.

On her experience watching people share their grief with the new monarch, Bryony explained: “I was standing just before the King came, there was the 96 gun salute. It was astonishing that you were standing there in the centre of London, and there were tens of thousands of people and you could hear a pin drop. Just those 96 cannons going out and it was incredibly moving because you don't get that kind of thing nowadays.”

Not only has the country lost the long-reigning Queen, but the royal family has lost its matriarch, and Bryony admitted it was clear to see that the younger generation of royals has the “priority to mourn their grandmother.”

She continued: “You see the personal grief behind the public face of mourning. So whether it's the King referring to his ‘darling mama’, or Harry referring to the 'infectious smile of his granny', and you have those moments where you go, ‘Oh, yeah, this is also a family who are kind of navigating all the normal grief things that normal families do when the matriarch goes.’”

The writer also shared her close connection to the family, adding: “I have always spoken about my mental health, and I was invited to take part in their Heads Together campaign, which is when they all came together in 2017, to talk about mental health. I ran the marathon for them, and just before that I had done a podcast, I did a podcast called Mad World. 

“I had done one with Prince Harry in which he, I don't know if people remember, but where he first spoke about his mental health and his grief. It was a really amazing, moving moment that still feels really strange.”

Meanwhile, Bryony is celebrating the release of her debut Young Adult novel, called Let Down Your Hair, which is out this Thursday (15th September).

The story is loosely based on the tale of Rapunzel, but Bryony also took inspiration from her own experiences with alopecia areata when she was a teenager. 

Bryony admitted she wanted to write a book “that I wanted to read when all my hair fell out” aged 18, and based the story around a hair content creator who goes through a similar journey with alopecia. 

On the book, the podcaster said: “It's about body image, which is a huge issue for young women. It's about perfection, it's about that whole weird, toxic positivity culture that you get on social media, where people talk about living their true authentic selves, but yet they do it with masses of filters and photoshopped pictures, and that weirdness of not knowing what's real and what's not.”

It’s not a book bashing social media though, as Bryony shared: “I really wanted to get across the fact that social media is not all bad. There are brilliant things about social media, it allows you to connect with people you wouldn't have. When I was 17, if I had social media, I would have been able to connect with other young girls who also had alopecia. So I wanted to bring out that side and show that social media is not all evil. A lot of it is but it can be used for great purposes.”

Despite the good that social media can bring, Bryony did compare social media apps, and all that comes with it, to drinking or using drugs, with the attention and interaction giving off the same high. 

“I'm pretty sure that in decades to come, we will look back on our use of social media now, in the same way that we do look back at those adverts for smoking, saying that were good for you. Mark Zuckerberg will be the Marlboro Man."

Bryony Gordon’s new novel, Let Down Your Hair, is out Thursday 15th September.

For more great interviews listen to  The Chris Evans Breakfast Show with Sky, weekdays from 6:30am on Virgin Radio, or  catch up on-demand here.