The overwhelming silence in the ancient building was what the little girl noticed first. It was as if, she said, “the king were asleep”. It was January 1936. The king was George V, the little girl his granddaughter, Princess Elizabeth of York, afterwards Elizabeth II.
The Queen was only nine when, for the first time, she experienced the sombre magnificence of a royal lying-in-state in Westminster Hall. Her mother’s lady-in-waiting wrote that Elizabeth “adored” her gruff, plain-spoken grandfather, who had died at the age of 70: they shared a love of horses, stamp collecting and the Highlands.
