First day of mourning for a nation still reeling from her loss
STILL shell-shocked from the news of the Queen’s death, the Royal Family and the nation embarked on the first day of mourning yesterday.
Across the land, schoolchildren and workers paused to honour Her Majesty, and thousands gathered to lay flowers.
Electronic advertising hoardings switched to show faces of the monarch and the capital cities of the UK echoed with the boom of gun salutes. And as the nation began to come to terms with the saddest of news, the grieving royals began the process of saying their own farewells as the King’s reign took hold.
PUBLIC TRIBUTES
EVEN before dawn yesterday, crowds began gathering at the Queen’s principal residences. Windsor Castle, her primary home in latter years, was a place of mournful silence as well-wishers laid flowers and reflected on her life.
As the day wore on, thousands of the curious and the sad made the pilgrimage to the gates of the castle. Children too young to understand the enormity of the events were among those in tears.
Sarah Minch had brought her son Johnny, five, to lay flowers. Attached was a card with Paddington Bear on the front.
She said: ‘We loved the sketch she did with Paddington for the Platinum Jubilee, and hopefully that is something my son will remember watching. It’s those shared moments that can be so important. It’s desperately sad and I wanted to bring him here to pay our respects.’
Alice, eight, came with her mother to lay down bright pink roses and a hand- drawn picture of Queen Elizabeth wearing a crown and standing underneath a rainbow. A couple from nearby Bracknell, Angela and Gareth Jenkins, brought hand-picked flowers from their own garden.
She said: ‘We’ve been very saddened by the news. We drove over this morning to leave these flowers, just to pay our respects to Her Majesty and acknowledge our gratitude for her service really.’
THE KING LEAVES BALMORAL
ON the Balmoral estate, the new King Charles III and the new heir to the throne, William, were preparing to face the epoch-making day.
It was late morning when an ashen-faced Charles was seen first for the first time since his accession to the throne.
With the Queen Consort, Camilla, he was driven out of Birkhall, his own Scottish residence a short distance from Balmoral Castle, at 11.15am. Dressed entirely in black, she was sat in the front passenger seat, staring straight ahead.
Charles, dressed in his mourning clothes of a black suit and tie, looked sombre as he sat in the back with a protection officer.
Their party arrived at Aberdeen airport at 12.14pm.
They emerged from the car amid blustery conditions, Camilla under a bubble umbrella and a windswept Charles exchanging pleasantries with staff before boarding an Embraer Legacy 600 executive jet operated by the Royal Air Force.
The RAF wasted no time and it was wheels-up at 12.30pm as the historic flight down to Buckingham Palace got under way, its progress followed live on flight tracker websites by more than 240,000 people.
HARRY FIRST TO GO
PRINCE Harry, however, had been the first to emerge from Balmoral Castle, grief etched on his face.
He sat bereft in the rear of a Range Rover as it swept through the gates at 8.28am for the journey back to Aberdeen Airport.
The Duke of Sussex, having lost his desperate race against time the previous evening to reach his beloved grandmother in time to say goodbye, had spent only 12 hours at the castle overnight.
The last to arrive, he was the first to leave, and on both occasions did so alone.
Flanked by five police outriders, Harry arrived at the airport at 9.20am. On Thursday, he had chartered a private jet in his dash to reach the Queen’s bedside. Yesterday, he boarded a scheduled British Airways flight to London’s Heathrow. For a moment there was a brief glimpse of the unstuffy Prince Harry of old, when he instinctively put his arm around an airport worker who offered her condolences.
Phyllis Stewart comforted the duke as she walked him to the air
craft steps. In turn, the duke, wearing a black suit and carrying his own shoulder bag, smiled and gently patted her shoulder before climbing up the steps.
His BA flight took off at 10am. It must have seemed like almost no time since he was last in the air, the day before, when Buckingham Palace made the announcement to the world before his plane had landed. Once back in London, a pensive-looking Harry was driven to Windsor where he was reunited with the Duchess of Sussex at Frogmore Cottage.
Meghan, after initially planning to come to Balmoral with her husband, had stayed in Windsor
after a change of plan that was waspishly interpreted by the BBC’s royal correspondent Nicholas Witchell as a response to concerns ‘she might not be terribly warmly welcomed, to be perfectly candid about it’.
TRIBUTES IN LONDON
AS the King flew south, MPs in the House of Commons were offering eulogies to his late mother. The chamber was a sea of black.
At 12.49pm, backbench MP Boris Johnson – only three days after his own trip to Balmoral to resign as prime minister – gave a beautiful and heartfelt tribute, dubbing her ‘Elizabeth the Great’.
He told the Commons: ‘ She showed the world not just how to reign over a people, she showed the world how to give, how to love and how to serve.’
‘On Tuesday, she saw off her 14th Prime Minster and welcomed her 15th – and I can tell you, in that audience, she was as radiant, and as knowledgeable, and as fascinated by politics as ever. I think she became the greatest statesman and diplomat of all.’
Outside in Hyde Park, there was a procession of 71 horses from The King’s Troop Royal Horse Artillery, of which 36 pulled First World War-era 13-pounder field guns into position.
Similar guns were being wheeled into place at the Tower of London by the Honourable Artillery Company – and by other Armed Forces personnel in Edinburgh, Cardiff, Belfast, Plymouth, York, Stonehenge and Portsmouth, and overseas in Gibraltar and Jersey.
At 1pm precisely, they fired the Death Gun Salute – one round every 10 seconds, with 96 rounds to mark every year of the Queen’s long life.
RETURN TO THE CAPITAL
WHEN the King’s flight touched down at RAF Northolt in west London at 1.34pm, the sunshine came out.
In fact, it was apparently so stuffy inside the State Rolls Royce sent to collect him that Charles spent some time apparently struggling to find the button to lower the window.
And then, with Camilla by his side, the King’s party cruised on to the A40 and into central London. Police motorcycle outriders zipped ahead to stop the traffic at junctions, and as the convoy threaded its way through streets near Paddington, stunned Londoners stopped what they were doing as they suddenly realised the historic moment they were witnessing – King Charles III’s approach to Buckingham Palace. Even before the convoy reached the final leg, Constitution Hill, the streets were lined with well-wishers.
And as the Rolls Royce rounded the corner to the palace, Charles experienced the first taste of the public’s reaction to him becoming King – thunderous applause.
What followed was stunning affirmation, if he needed it, of the nation’s rapturous embrace.
As he stepped from the car and walked down a line of well-wishers outside the palace gates, he was bestowed at every step with cheers, tears and cries of ‘God save the King’. One woman kissed his hand – another kissed his cheek.
‘God bless you Sir’, and ‘We love you, King Charles – and we loved your mum’ were among the remarks, along with a hearty ‘Well done Charlie!’ from a man at the back.
The King seemed overwhelmed, but managed to thank everyone as he shook at least a hundred hands. Vicky Binley, 51, who kissed Charles on the hand, said he told her: ‘Oh thank you so much, I’ve been dreading this day.’
A NATION MOURNS
THE warmth of the nation towards the new King was reflected outside royal residences everywhere. Members of the public offered Charles their best wishes as they laid flowers and mourned the Queen. At Windsor, the Green Watch of the Windsor Castle Fire Service laid flowers at the gate with a note saying ‘Rest in Peace Your Majesty. Thank you for 70 years of Service.’
PC McAllister of Surrey Police wrote in a note on flowers: ‘Rest now, Your Majesty. We are proud to have served you. ‘You were a beacon of shining light and the perfect monarch. You will be missed. Thank you for everything Ma’am.’ In a sign of the changing times, some people used their phones to hold video calls with elderly relatives or those unable to travel distances to show them the tributes as they were being laid.
At Balmoral, the Queen’s coffin, draped in the Royal Standard with a wreath of her favourite flowers, is resting in the castle’s ballroom, where Her Majesty had danced as a girl. The Duke of Cornwall and Cambridge departed at lunchtime to return to London,
and was last night back with his family in Windsor.
Today William will undertake his first duties as the heir to the throne as he joins the Privy Council for the proclamation of his father as monarch.
KING’S ADDRESS
LAST night there was a public service of remembrance at St Paul’s Cathedral in central London, attended Miss Truss and senior ministers.
And at 6pm, the King melted hearts with an address to the nation, broadcast on television and inside the cathedral.
He paid tribute to his late mother and spoke of his ‘profound sorrow’. He said she was ‘an inspiration’, an example to him and to his family and was ‘mourned most deeply’.