There are dates that generations of British schoolchildren remember: 1066 – the battle of Hastings; 1215 – the sealing of Magna Carta; 1588 – the defeat of the Spanish Armada; and the outbreak of the world wars in 1914 and 1939. Now, we add 2022 to that list: the death of Queen Elizabeth II, the longest-reigning monarch in British history.
Hers was a funeral like none seen before. Indeed, a monarch’s funeral has never been televised before and so, like the Queen’s coronation, it breaks new ground. The Queen’s reign has been bookended by seminal moments for a global audience. Yet amid the innovation and colour, this was a day weighty with historical moment, with echoes of the past and pointers to the future. The decision for the young Prince George and Princess Charlotte to walk behind the coffin was explained by the palace as making the occasion about the future as much as the past.
