The manufactured controversy-foam (queue-jumping celebrities, holiday camps turning guests away for the day, whether Harry could wear his uniform, whether Paddington’s iconography could be grafted onto the torch of the ages) has dissipated and reality has emerged. A reality managed and meticulously planned, but here nonetheless. If that’s not your thing, Channel 4 has programs about the royal gardens – and if that’s not really your thing, then on Channel 5, The Emoji Movie awaits. The BBC, meanwhile, fills the relentless minutes before the funeral begins, with Huw Edwards interviewing the interlocutors. They range from the polished professional (Sebastian Coe, Gyles Brandreth) to the overwrought and genuinely emotional (Dame Kelly Holmes) through the irrevocably selfish (Andrew Lloyd Webber, who tells us his Requiem was performed in Westminster Abbey). At ITV, they rely more on vox pops, Jennie Bond, shots of horses waiting in Hyde Park barracks and shots of the thousands of people – including a glittering king and queen in pearls – lining the route. The abbey fills with the great and the good and Boris Johnson. The coffin is carried in the state carriage and – oh England, my England – is dragged by 142 sailors to the abbey. Once the funeral procession begins, there is, wisely, virtually no commentary from the BBC (little more than ITV) until the service. The readings are going really well until we bump into Liz Truss, who looks and sounds like she’s recently been hit with a bat with spikes. The Archbishop of Canterbury gives either a deeply flattering sermon on basic Christian principles or a good kicking to about half the congregation, depending on how much you read into a line about those who “cling to the service” and who will and won’t be remembered then mold. The magnificence, the timing, the magnificence: of course these are extreme, they are unique, they are for many absurd. But as you watch, the set-dressing falls away and the commonality remains. There are fewer hats at a common man’s funeral, but the faces beneath them – pursed lips, supportive smiles – are the same. The moment of disbelief when the coffin arrives – it’s not carried by the Grenadier Guards, but the quiet prayer that no one digs is the same – holding the body of the real Queen, evokes the disbelief we’ve all felt at funerals, when the deceased loved one is brought face . Really? – you think. Not anymore? Not anymore. You have a good time with the readings, whether it’s from the church leaders or the local vicar, but the music – from a CD or a lone piper – undoes you. People watch Queen Elizabeth’s funeral on a big screen in Holyrood Park, Edinburgh. Photo: Russell Cheyne/Reuters The last post is played and the feast and funeral procession starts for Wellington Arch and from there, St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle. The commitment by the Dean of Windsor will be the final televised part. The Queen will be buried next to her husband, parents and sister. The family will hold their own service at 7 p.m. after the cameras roll away. You could – and apologies if this comes too close to the unforgiving mastermind – see the Queen’s death as a final act of service to country. Because, of course, along with many others around the world, we are a grieving nation. We had two years of loved ones die unnatural deaths. Often they died alone and we left without many of the rituals and comforts we needed to help us grieve and heal. Including the Queen herself, who sat – as Covid protocol dictated – alone at Prince Philip’s funeral, and whose image became a study in contrast to many photos of the government flouting every lockdown law it imposed. Her funeral was an opportunity to relieve those upset sorrows and shed a few tears for everyone and everything we lost, en masse instead of in terrible isolation. It was – as the strange but accurate phrase goes – a good funeral. Not only because it was in recognition of a genuine good. There was no painful search for euphemism, no careful negotiation. Everything in her life became as if she left. Whatever misgivings you may have about the institution as a whole, it’s hard to deny that Elizabeth II was the best of it. God help, in these convulsive and fragmented times, the King.
