“God Save the King” is the national anthem of the United Kingdom. The words change with the monarch — it was “God Save the Queen” for the seventy years of Elizabeth II’s reign, and reverted in September 2022, which required a great many organisations to reprint a great many things.
Nobody ever adopted it
There is no Act of Parliament, no royal proclamation and no official document making it the national anthem. It became one entirely by custom.
The song appeared in London theatres in 1745, during the Jacobite rising, when audiences at Drury Lane sang it in support of George II after the defeat at Prestonpans. It caught on, other theatres copied it, and within a generation it was simply what was sung. Its composer is unknown, though the tune has been attributed to several eighteenth-century figures without resolution.
One verse
In practice only the first verse is ever sung:
God save our gracious King,
Long live our noble King,
God save the King!
Send him victorious,
Happy and glorious,
Long to reign over us,
God save the King.
A second verse exists and is occasionally used at state occasions. A third, calling on God to help Marshal Wade “rebellious Scots to crush”, is emphatically not sung, and its existence is raised regularly in Scottish arguments about the anthem.
England has no anthem of its own
This is the constitutional oddity that most annoys the English. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland each use a distinct song at sporting events — Flower of Scotland, Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau and, for Northern Ireland football, Londonderry Air — while England uses the UK anthem.
The result is that at a Six Nations match, Wales sings a Welsh anthem and England sings the British one, which is a fair illustration of how the four nations understand the union differently. Campaigns to adopt Jerusalem or Land of Hope and Glory as an English anthem surface every few years; the England cricket and Commonwealth Games teams already use Jerusalem.
Where it is sung
At state occasions, royal events, the Last Night of the Proms, remembrance services and international sporting fixtures. It used to be played at the end of the evening in cinemas and theatres, with audiences expected to stand — a custom that faded through the 1970s as people began walking out during it.
The republican problem
The anthem is about the monarch rather than the country, which makes it awkward for anyone who is not a monarchist. Booing during it at football matches — particularly by Scottish and Irish crowds — is common enough to be unremarkable, and several politicians have made news simply by not singing it.
The borrowed tune
The melody has been used by a startling number of other countries. It was the royal anthem of Prussia, imperial Russia and several German states, and it is still the tune of Liechtenstein’s national anthem — which produces an unusual moment whenever the two countries meet in a football qualifier and both anthems turn out to be the same song.
Americans will also recognise it as My Country, ‘Tis of Thee.