This, then, was the last, layman’s leg of the Queen’s final journey.
Transferred from State Gun Carriage to simple black hearse, she began a final commute familiar to millions, heading home to her beloved husband, Philip, for the last time.
Far from the scarlet and gold of Westminster Abbey, the hushed words of bishops and the gathering of presidents and prime ministers, this was a final journey through real Britain – the only cathedrals the giant warehouses of IKEA and high-rise housing estates.
