Every major news provider had an obituary on file, revised and updated every year or so as the Queen Mother's extraordinary longevity continued. She had planned her own funeral long in advance; the implications of her passing had been contemplated and discussed for decades.
The media pessimistically warned that public response would be disappointingly lukewarm. Even in the hours before her coffin was placed on its magnificent catafalque in the ancient Hall of Westminster, some commentators predicted that it would be mainly tourists who attended her lying-in-state, and speculated that its length had been deliberately kept short to avoid the embarrassment of a low turn-out. They were wrong.
Amazing life
I am writing this on the evening before her funeral. The last Empress of India lies in the solemn timeless space of the old hall of kings, itself an apt symbol of the breadth of history she represents: in this ancient hall, that saw Richard II deposed and Charles I condemned, lies a woman whom Queen Victoria cradled in her arms, who refused to leave London during the Blitz, and who by all accounts did a pretty neat Ali G impression.
