Today, King Charles returned to London to address the nation. Outside Buckingham Palace, people have been coming to lay flowers ever since the Queen’s death was announced.
For the sense of grief that is felt in London and the nation for the Queen is palpable. Today these feelings find expression in the sound of bells — from Westminster Abbey to parish churches — and the sound of gun salutes from stations at Hyde Park and around the country.
The service for the Queen at St Paul’s, to offer prayers for her and express thanksgiving for her reign, and the assembling of Parliament, were apt ways to express the near-universal feelings of grief and gratitude. This evening’s address by the new King will put his and our loss in words.
What has been remarkable is how profound that collective sense of loss is. The taxi drivers who assembled on the Mall last night, the post-office and rail workers who called off their strikes, the young people who gravitated to the Palace, all testify to the affection and respect in which the Queen was, and is, held.
She is gone now but we who lived during her reign are fortunate to have had as head of state and queen a woman whose sense of duty was steady and unwavering. In this and other ways she kept alive the values of the generation to which she belonged. She was a living link with a very different world.
In her stoicism and her dignity she embodied qualities which are different from those valued now, but people of all ages nonetheless recognised and valued her authenticity. She was from the generation which weathered the war, and she shared the stoicism of that tough cohort.
And yet she did her best to adapt to changing times; during the Covid pandemic, she responded with warmth and empathy to those affected by the crisis.
Grief and gratitude
Certainly she had a life of great privilege associated with her role, but that role was not always easy. Her marriage to Prince Philip, her “rock”, was a source of great strength, but it had its difficulties; the divorces of her children caused her pain.
And yet, sustained by her Christian faith, she continued to fulfil her role. That role was not just ceremonial. Her function entailed advising successive prime ministers; many have paid tribute to the Queen’s wisdom and long experience.
Almost her last act as monarch — just two days before her death — was to bid farewell to Boris Johnson and to welcome her 15th prime minister, Liz Truss.
By simply living so long, she gave the nation and much of the Commonwealth a subliminal sense of security, a protective carapace of continuity.
While governments came and went, and society changed beyond recognition, people had a reassuring sense that while the Queen continued to reign, all was well. Her death was hardly unexpected, but it is still shocking.
The nation is now, to a quite extraordinary extent, united in grief but it is mixed with gratitude to have been blessed with such a monarch. The King returns to a city that feels an acute sense of loss.
London was where the great events of the Queen’s life were enacted, and London is now mourning a great and gracious sovereign.
