A tiny, bowed figure dressed in black, sitting statuette still and completely alone, Covid rules barring her from a single warm hand to hold.
That image of our masked Queen at the Duke of Edinburgh ’s funeral last April, sitting isolated in St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle just hours after she had said a final, private goodbye to her husband of 73 years, has engraved itself into national memory.
She seemed to shrink before our eyes as the coffin of her childhood crush, the boy she admitted she admired for his “Viking” blond good looks, who won her teenage heart at 13, who called her ‘Cabbage’ and ‘Lilibet’ and always made her giggle, was lowered out of sight.
