A front row to history

Picture: Twitter/British Army

The flags have returned to full mast. Television presenters are wearing colour again. Politicians are back on our airwaves spinning their way through the cost of living crisis. Life after 12 extraordinary days is back to normal. 

“Don’t know about you, but I’m looking forward to something else,” crowed the predictable tweets from the more reactionary quarters of social media last night as the Queen’s funeral, and a week and a half of blanket coverage of what has been, without wishing to sound hyperbolic, a properly historic event, came to an end.

On a superficial level, the days since news broke on 8 September of the Queen’s death have shown British pomp and circumstance at its most baffling. Anyone of a republican point of view, or simply indifferent to the role of monarchy in a modern democratic society will have found the enforced lockdown of anything extravagant in the wake of a frail 96-year-old’s death absurd: the abandoning of broadcast schedules, on-air presenters dressed uniformly in black, filling hours of rescheduled rolling programming with nothing but conjecture and babble.

Picture: The Royal Family

But to many, many more, the passing of Queen Elizabeth II and the accession of King Charles has been nothing short of history unfolding before us. From the moment daytime TV was interrupted by grave-looking newsreaders dressed in black, standing in front of Buckingham Palace, the auspicious moments kept coming. They were captured on live television in a manner no monarchic transition in Britain’s long regal history has ever previously witnessed: we were there at Balmoral when The Firm’s senior team arrived in united grief; there when the Queen’s body was transported to Edinburgh and there when it landed at RAF Northolt, emerging from the loading ramp of a giant, slate-grey Globemaster transport aircraft. We were there as it was driven slowly through rain-soaked west London streets to Westminster. There when more than a quarter of a million people queued for hours on end to see the late monarch lying in state, itself a demonstration of endurance, unquestioning loyalty and quirky fanaticism. We were there when the new King signed registers, met the newly-installed prime minister, and shook countless strangers’ hands in the devolved provinces. There as two estranged brothers and their wives went walkabout in Windsor. And there, finally, as members of an estimated five billion-strong worldwide audience tuned in for a six-hour funeral.

An opinion poll published shortly before the Queen’s death suggested that more than 60% of the UK was broadly in favour of the monarchy. In the days since, that manifested itself at the expense of anything else getting a look-in on the news agenda. Liz Truss, in post for just two days before HMTQ popped her clogs, had barely got going with her new agenda before she was reduced, temporarily, to a bit part role in the nation’s fabric. If nothing else, the mourning period gave us respite from the relentless churn of politics that have consumed our media for…well, forever.

The billions watching around the world, not to mention the tens of thousands who lined the funeral cortege route from Westminster to Windsor, on top of the thousands who assembled before giant screens in municipal parks, gave credence to the belief that the Queen’s death meant a lot to many, even those in places where she’d only ever been heard of. 

She was “the world’s Queen”, a remarkable comment, given both the political systems in place int the free and not so free world, but also our own post-imperial, ‘Little Britain’ inferiority complex. Somehow she even transcended her own status - an unelected head of state in several nations, featuring on at least 30 currencies, and with one of the wealthiest portfolios of any individuals on the planet. And, yet, when she said “We will meet again” in that resonant address during the pandemic, she touched further and deeper than any politician did during the crisis. There was a reason why, over these days, we’ve seen and heard endless vox pops conducted in high streets and market squares saying more or less the same thing - that they’d miss - in no particular order - her smile, her duty, her constancy.

If that hadn’t affected you, then the lump-inducing notes from the lone piper in Windsor’s St. George’s Chapel yesterday as they faded away provided the eeriest of musical beds for the lowering of the Queen’s coffin into the chapel’s vault. Anyone who has ever attended the funeral of a loved one will know that awful, irreversible moment of goodbye. It was etched on the face of King Charles as the camera framed him. I challenge anyone not to have been moved by it, or anyone not to have empathy for his family.  

Wherever you stand on monarchy, there’s no escaping the fact that we’ve emerged from an incredible period of our nation’s history. The “ending of the second Elizabethan Era” has a grandeur to it, but it would be fascinating to know how historians will regard it decades or centuries from now. Television has amplified it: when the Queen ascended the throne in 1952, and was crowned in June 1953, hardly anyone had TV sets. At the end of her life, we’ve got them all in our pockets. Yesterday I spent the better part of ten hours in front of our TV, from the build-up to the funeral to its conclusion. Believe me, I’m no rampant monarchist, but I know a once-in-a-lifetime event when I see one. On various levels it was fascinating - the application of long planned-for protocols, arcane traditions, the single greatest collection of world leaders ever assembled, the mass of people turning out for one person. And this on top of moments such as Charles and his siblings resembling human waxworks for their 15-minute vigil at Westminster Hall, as members of the general public filed past, some in disbelief as to who they were seeing before them.

It was all part of a celebration of a life as much as commemoration of a long life lost. The hats, the outfits, the smiles, the corgis, the appearances with James Bond and Paddington Bear, the waving - there is a lot we’ll miss.

Picture: Twitter/The Royal Family