For a couple of days I felt like an honorary royal myself, receiving blessings and condolences from complete strangers in New York about the death of the Queen. “What a great lady, I’m so sorry she has ‘passed’,” they would say in hushed tones upon hearing my British accent. The Empire State Building was lit up in purple and all over the city flags flew at half mast.
There was non-stop coverage on CNN and other cable news channels. The newspapers were just as fulsome, brimming with expert commentary from quotable Brits-in-exile such as Tina Brown. “I am told Her Majesty had made it quietly known she would die in Scotland and had increased the amount of time she spent there to better her chances,” the former Vanity Fair editor confided in the New York Times.
