‘She had a calm authority’

Nihal Arthanayake, broadcaster: The Queen represented a strong sense of duty and honour. I think that those two things have been under attack for some years now. The ideas that you should be a person of your word, that you should contribute in a manner that is beautiful, she represented all that. She just had a calm authority.

I think it was five years after Partition that she became Queen and Britain had to look at itself. What was its role in the future world? And they – these new young countries – wanted to assert their own independence. The fact that there was still a great deal of affection for Her Majesty the Queen around the Commonwealth, shows that she managed that transition incredibly well.

Now, you can’t speak for all Asians, because some Asians will, obviously, not see the Queen that way. But we shouldn’t underestimate how difficult it would have been for a young Queen in her 20s to be faced with a world that was changing, and the death throes of an empire. And the fact that she largely kept the Commonwealth together, I think, is testament to the respect that many around the world had for her.