THE REAL QUEEN

Few of us will ever feel real grief for someone we never actually knew in person. A moment when our eyes spontaneously well up as we watch a coffin carry them on the final journey to their place of rest.

But feel this we did as the nation went into mourning and the magnificent second Elizabethan era came to an end.

The Queen – who so graciously reigned over us throughout the significant moments of all our lives – was dead. Our constant, our strength, our Queen was gone in the blink of an eye.

While the public wept for a life that had been led, the whole world seemed to mourn our beloved Queen.

A woman who had no personal enemies and the respect of all those at loggerheads with the institution she led.

The Queen’s passing caused an avalanche of memories to flood in from all over.

From tens of thousands of people who cherished their recollections of a person who played a constant part in all their lives.

Everywhere, it seemed, people bore witness through words to her humour, her presence, her commitment and love.

I was lucky enough to experience this first-hand on the many occasions my job brought me into contact with the Queen.

Once, at a reception in Buckingham Palace, I had to nervously line up to shake Her Majesty’s hand.

The problem was that two days earlier I had smashed my head open playing rugby and I was bandaged up like Basil Fawlty.

When it was my turn to shake her hand, she just looked at the dressing and said, ‘Oh dear, what has happened to your head?’

My nerves vanished when I quickly explained that the injury looked much worse than it was, to which she diplomatically said, ‘That’s good to know.’

This week, as presidents and prime ministers paid tribute to Queen Elizabeth The Great, families up and down the land did the same.

My mother recalled the moment when, as a child, she watched my grandmother cry as the news that George VI had died came over the ‘wireless’ at their home.

Her mother’s tears that day, she told me, were for a princess whose life had just changed forever.

A young woman who – but for the behaviour of her uncle – was never destined to rule.

Like many in their generation, the adults in our family who witnessed the start of the Queen’s reign were worried by the magnitude of the task that the then 25-year-old princess faced.

For me, the sight of my mother’s emotion at the end of that same reign says everything I need to say.

70 years may have passed, but the grief and love for Elizabeth has only just begun.

As she famously said in honour of the victims of the 9/11 attacks, grief is the price we pay for love.

Your Majesty, you were certainly loved, and may you rest in peace.