It Was Duke-duke Once Again With the April 1999 Tv Movie Reunion of the 1960s Series
I north the plans that exist for the death of the Queen – and there are many versions, held by Buckingham Palace, the government and the BBC – most envisage that she will die after a short illness. Her family and doctors will be there. When the Queen Female parent passed away on the afternoon of Easter Saturday, in 2002, at the Regal Club in Windsor, she had time to telephone friends to say goodbye, and to give abroad some of her horses. In these last hours, the Queen's senior doctor, a gastroenterologist named Professor Huw Thomas, will be in charge. He will look after his patient, control access to her room and consider what information should exist fabricated public. The bond between sovereign and subjects is a strange and more often than not unknowable thing. A nation's life becomes a person's, and so the string must suspension.
At that place will be bulletins from the palace – not many, but plenty. "The Queen is suffering from great physical prostration, accompanied by symptoms which cause much feet," announced Sir James Reid, Queen Victoria's physician, two days before her death in 1901. "The King's life is moving peacefully towards its close," was the final find issued by George Five'south doctor, Lord Dawson, at 9.30pm on the dark of 20 Jan 1936. Not long later, Dawson injected the male monarch with 750mg of morphine and a gram of cocaine – plenty to kill him twice over – in order to ease the monarch'due south suffering, and to have him expire in fourth dimension for the printing presses of the Times, which rolled at midnight.
Her eyes will be closed and Charles volition be king. His siblings will osculation his hands. The kickoff official to bargain with the news volition be Sir Christopher Geidt, the Queen'southward private secretarial assistant, a former diplomat who was given a 2d knighthood in 2014, in function for planning her succession.
Geidt will contact the prime government minister. The last time a British monarch died, 65 years ago, the demise of George VI was conveyed in a code word, "Hyde Park Corner", to Buckingham Palace, to forestall switchboard operators from finding out. For Elizabeth 2, the plan for what happens next is known as "London Bridge." The prime number minister will be woken, if she is non already awake, and civil servants will say "London Bridge is downward" on secure lines. From the Foreign Office's Global Response Centre, at an undisclosed location in the capital letter, the news will go out to the fifteen governments outside the UK where the Queen is also the caput of land, and the 36 other nations of the Republic for whom she has served as a symbolic figurehead – a confront familiar in dreams and the untidy drawings of a billion schoolchildren – since the dawn of the atomic age.
For a time, she will be gone without our knowing it. The information will travel like the compressional wave alee of an earthquake, detectable only past special equipment. Governors general, ambassadors and prime ministers will learn start. Cupboards will exist opened in search of black armbands, iii-and-a-quarter inches wide, to be worn on the left arm.
The rest of us will detect out more quickly than earlier. On 6 Feb 1952, George Half dozen was found by his valet at Sandringham at 7.30am. The BBC did not broadcast the news until 11.15am, almost iv hours later. When Princess Diana died at 4am local time at the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital in Paris on 31 August 1997, journalists accompanying the former strange secretary, Robin Cook, on a visit to the Philippines knew within xv minutes. For many years the BBC was told near royal deaths first, but its monopoly on broadcasting to the empire has gone at present. When the Queen dies, the announcement will go out as a newsflash to the Press Association and the residual of the world's media simultaneously. At the same instant, a footman in mourning clothes will emerge from a door at Buckingham Palace, cross the boring pinkish gravel and pin a blackness-edged discover to the gates. While he does this, the palace website will be transformed into a sombre, single folio, showing the same text on a night background.
Screens will glow. At that place will be tweets. At the BBC, the "radio alarm manual system" (Rats), will exist activated – a cold war-era alarm designed to withstand an attack on the nation'due south infrastructure. Rats, which is also sometimes referred to every bit "regal about to snuff it", is a about mythical part of the intricate compages of ritual and rehearsals for the death of major regal personalities that the BBC has maintained since the 1930s. Near staff take only e'er seen it work in tests; many have never seen it work at all. "Whenever there is a foreign noise in the newsroom, someone always asks, 'Is that the Rats?' Because we don't know what it sounds similar," one regional reporter told me.
All news organisations will scramble to get films on air and obituaries online. At the Guardian, the deputy editor has a listing of prepared stories pinned to his wall. The Times is said to take eleven days of coverage prepare to become. At Sky News and ITN, which for years apposite the death of the Queen substituting the proper noun "Mrs Robinson", calls will become out to royal experts who have already signed contracts to speak exclusively on those channels. "I am going to be sitting outside the doors of the Abbey on a hugely enlarged trestle table commentating to 300 one thousand thousand Americans about this," one told me.
For people stuck in traffic, or with Heart FM on in the groundwork, there will just be the subtlest of indications, at first, that something is going on. Britain's commercial radio stations have a network of bluish "obit lights", which is tested one time a calendar week and supposed to light up in the event of a national ending. When the news breaks, these lights will first flashing, to alert DJs to switch to the news in the next few minutes and to play inoffensive music in the concurrently. Every station, down to infirmary radio, has prepared music lists fabricated up of "Mood 2" (lamentable) or "Mood ane" (saddest) songs to achieve for in times of sudden mourning. "If you e'er hear Haunted Dancehall (Nursery Remix) by Sabres of Paradise on daytime Radio i, plough the Tv set on," wrote Chris Price, a BBC radio producer, for the Huffington Post in 2011. "Something terrible has just happened."
Having plans in place for the death of leading royals is a do that makes some journalists uncomfortable. "There is one story which is deemed to exist so much more important than others," ane former Today plan producer complained to me. For 30 years, BBC news teams were hauled to piece of work on tranquillity Sunday mornings to perform mock storylines about the Queen Mother choking on a fishbone. At that place was once a scenario well-nigh Princess Diana dying in a car crash on the M4.
These well-laid plans have not always helped. In 2002, when the Queen Mother died, the obit lights didn't come up on because someone failed to button the push down properly. On the BBC, Peter Sissons, the veteran anchor, was criticised for wearing a maroon necktie. Sissons was the victim of a BBC policy change, issued after the September xi attacks, to moderate its coverage and reduce the number of "category one" royals eligible for the full obituary process. The last words in Sissons's ear before going on air were: "Don't get overboard. She's a very old adult female who had to go some fourth dimension."
But there will be no extemporising with the Queen. The newsreaders volition article of clothing black suits and black ties. Category one was made for her. Programmes will finish. Networks will merge. BBC i, 2 and iv volition be interrupted and revert silently to their respective idents – an exercise class in a hamlet hall, a swan waiting on a swimming – earlier coming together for the news. Listeners to Radio 4 and Radio five alive will hear a specific formulation of words, "This is the BBC from London," which, intentionally or non, will summon a spirit of national emergency.
The principal reason for rehearsals is to take words that are roughly approximate to the moment. "Information technology is with the greatest sorrow that nosotros make the following declaration," said John Snagge, the BBC presenter who informed the world of the death of George VI. (The news was repeated seven times, every fifteen minutes, and so the BBC went silent for 5 hours). Co-ordinate to one former caput of BBC news, a very similar set of words will exist used for the Queen. The rehearsals for her are different to the other members of the family, he explained. People become upset, and contemplate the unthinkable oddness of her absenteeism. "She is the only monarch that most of united states of america take e'er known," he said. The regal standard will appear on the screen. The national canticle will play. You volition recall where you were.
W hen people think of a contemporary royal decease in Britain, they call up, inescapably, of Diana. The passing of the Queen volition be monumental by comparing. It may not be as nakedly emotional, but its attain volition exist wider, and its implications more dramatic. "Information technology volition exist quite fundamental," every bit 1 former courtier told me.
Part of the effect will come from the overwhelming weight of things happening. The routine for modern regal funerals is more or less familiar (Diana's was based on "Tay Bridge", the program for the Queen Female parent's). But the decease of a British monarch, and the accretion of a new caput of state, is a ritual that is passing out of living retentivity: three of the Queen's last 4 prime ministers were built-in after she came to the throne. When she dies, both houses of parliament volition be recalled, people will go home from piece of work early, and aircraft pilots will announce the news to their passengers. In the 9 days that follow (in London Bridge planning documents, these are known as "D-solar day", "D+1" and and then on) there will be ritual proclamations, a four-nation tour by the new rex, bowdlerised tv programming, and a diplomatic assembling in London not seen since the death of Winston Churchill in 1965.
More overwhelming than any of this, though, in that location will be an almighty psychological reckoning for the kingdom that she leaves behind. The Queen is Britain'southward last living link with our former greatness – the nation's id, its problematic self-regard – which is still defined by our victory in the second globe state of war. One leading historian, who like most people I interviewed for this article declined to exist named, stressed that the farewell for this country's longest-serving monarch will be magnificent. "Oh, she volition go everything," he said. "We were all told that the funeral of Churchill was the requiem for U.k. equally a nifty power. Just actually information technology will actually exist over when she goes."
Unlike the US presidency, say, monarchies allow huge passages of time – a century, in some cases – to get entwined with an individual. The second Elizabethan age is likely to be remembered as a reign of uninterrupted national decline, and even, if she lives long enough and Scotland departs the union, as i of disintegration. Life and politics at the end of her rule volition be unrecognisable from their grandeur and innocence at its beginning. "We don't arraign her for it," Philip Ziegler, the historian and regal biographer, told me. "Nosotros have declined with her, so to speak."
The obituary films volition remind the states what a dissimilar country she inherited. Ane piece of footage will be played over again and again: from her 21st altogether, in 1947, when Princess Elizabeth was on vacation with her parents in Cape Boondocks. She was 6,000 miles from home and comfortably inside the pale of the British Empire. The princess sits at a table with a microphone. The shadow of a tree plays on her shoulder. The camera adjusts three or four times as she talks, and on each occasion, she twitches momentarily, betraying tiny flashes of aristocratic irritation. "I declare before y'all all that my whole life, whether information technology exist long or brusk, shall exist devoted to your service, and the service of our nifty imperial family to which we all belong," she says, enunciating vowels and a formulation of the world that have both vanished.
It is not unusual for a country to succumb to a state of denial as a long chapter in its history is nearly to end. When it became public that Queen Victoria was dying, at the age of 82, a widow for half her life, "astonished grief … swept the country", wrote her biographer, Lytton Strachey. In the minds of her subjects, the queen'southward mortality had become unimaginable; and with her demise, everything was suddenly at risk, placed in the hands of an elderly and untrusted heir, Edward Vii. "The wild waters are upon united states of america at present," wrote the American Henry James, who had moved to London 30 years earlier.
The parallels with the unease that we will feel at the death of Elizabeth II are obvious, but without the consolation of Britain's status in 1901 as the world'southward near successful land. "We take to take narratives for royal events," the historian told me. "In the Victorian reign, everything got better and better, and bigger and bigger. Nosotros certainly tin't tell that story today."
The upshot is an enormous objection to even thinking virtually – let alone talking or writing about – what volition happen when the Queen dies. Nosotros avoid the subject area every bit we avoid it in our own families. It seems similar good manners, merely information technology is also fear. The reporting for this article involved dozens of interviews with broadcasters, regime officials, and departed palace staff, several of whom have worked on London Bridge directly. Almost all insisted on complete secrecy. "This meeting never happened," I was told after one conversation in a gentleman'southward social club on Mantle Mall. Buckingham Palace, meanwhile, has a policy of not commenting on funeral arrangements for members of the royal family.
And yet this taboo, like much to do with the monarchy, is not entirely rational, and masks a parallel reality. The next great rupture in Britain's national life has, in fact, been planned to the infinitesimal. It involves matters of major public importance, will be paid for by usa, and is definitely going to happen. According to the Role of National Statistics, a British woman who reaches the age of 91 – as the Queen will in Apr – has an average life expectancy of four years and three months. The Queen is budgeted the cease of her reign at a time of maximum disquiet about Britain's place in the world, at a moment when internal political tensions are close to breaking her kingdom apart. Her expiry volition likewise release its ain destabilising forces: in the accession of Queen Camilla; in the optics of a new king who is already an erstwhile human being; and in the futurity of the Commonwealth, an invention largely of her making. (The Queen'due south title of "Head of the Commonwealth" is not hereditary.) Australia'southward prime minister and leader of the opposition both desire the country to get a commonwealth.
Coping with the style these events fall is the next great challenge of the Firm of Windsor, the terminal European royal family to do coronations and to persist – with the complicity of a willing public – in the magic of the whole enterprise. That is why the planning for the Queen'south decease and its ceremonial backwash is and then extensive. Succession is part of the job. It is an opportunity for lodge to be affirmed. Queen Victoria had written down the contents of her coffin by 1875. The Queen Female parent's funeral was apposite for 22 years. Louis Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of India, prepared a winter and a summer carte for his funeral tiffin. London Span is the Queen's exit plan. "It'southward history," equally one of her courtiers said. It volition be 10 days of sorrow and spectacle in which, rather like the dazzling mirror of the monarchy itself, we will revel in who we were and avoid the question of what nosotros have become.
T he thought is for nothing to be unforeseen. If the Queen dies abroad, a BAe 146 jet from the RAF's No 32 squadron, known equally the Royal Flight, will take off from Northolt, at the western edge of London, with a coffin on board. The majestic undertakers, Leverton & Sons, proceed what they call a "first call coffin" fix in case of imperial emergencies. Both George V and George 6 were buried in oak grown on the Sandringham estate in Norfolk. If the Queen dies there, her body will come to London by car later a day or two.
The virtually elaborate plans are for what happens if she passes away at Balmoral, where she spends three months of the year. This volition trigger an initial moving ridge of Scottish ritual. First, the Queen's body volition lie at residuum in her smallest palace, at Holyroodhouse, in Edinburgh, where she is traditionally guarded past the Royal Visitor of Archers, who wear eagle feathers in their bonnets. Then the coffin will be carried up the Imperial Mile to St Giles's cathedral, for a service of reception, before being put on board the Royal Train at Waverley station for a sorry progress down the east coast mainline. Crowds are expected at level crossings and on station platforms the length of the state – from Musselburgh and Thirsk in the north, to Peterborough and Hatfield in the south – to throw flowers on the passing train. (Another locomotive will follow backside, to clear debris from the tracks.) "It's really very complicated," one transport official told me.
In every scenario, the Queen's torso returns to the throne room in Buckingham Palace, which overlooks the north-west corner of the Quadrangle, its interior courtyard. At that place will be an chantry, the pall, the royal standard, and four Grenadier Guards, their bearskin hats inclined, their rifles pointing to the floor, standing watch. In the corridors, staff employed by the Queen for more than than l years will pass, following procedures they know past heart. "Your professionalism takes over because there is a job to be washed," said one veteran of royal funerals. There will exist no fourth dimension for sadness, or to worry about what happens adjacent. Charles will bring in many of his own staff when he accedes. "Behave in mind," the courtier said, "everybody who works in the palace is really on borrowed time."
Exterior, news crews will get together on pre-agreed sites adjacent to Canada Gate, at the lesser of Light-green Park. (Special fibre-optic cablevision runs nether the Mall, for broadcasting British country occasions.) "I have got in front end of me an instruction book a couple of inches thick," said one TV director, who volition cover the ceremonies, when we spoke on the phone. "Everything in in that location is planned. Anybody knows what to practise." Across the country, flags will come downwards and bells volition toll. In 1952, Great Tom was rung at St Paul'southward every minute for two hours when the news was announced. The bells at Westminster Abbey sounded and the Sebastopol bell, taken from the Black Ocean city during the Crimean war and rung only on the occasion of a sovereign's death, was tolled 56 times at Windsor – once for each yr of George VI's life – from i.27pm until ii.22pm.
The 18th Duke of Norfolk, the Earl Marshal, volition be in accuse. Norfolks have overseen royal funerals since 1672. During the 20th century, a set of offices in St James'south Palace was always earmarked for their employ. On the morning of George Six's expiry, in 1952, these were existence renovated. By five o'clock in the afternoon, the scaffolding was downwards and the rooms were re-carpeted, furnished and equipped with phones, lights and heating. During London Bridge, the Lord Chamberlain's role in the palace will be the centre of operations. The current version of the programme is largely the work of Lieutenant-Colonel Anthony Mather, a former equerry who retired from the palace in 2014. As a 23-year-old guardsman in 1965, Mather led the pallbearers at Churchill's funeral. (He declined to speak with me.) The government'southward team – analogous the police, security, transport and armed forces – will assemble at the Section of Culture, Media and Sport. Someone will have the job of printing around 10,000 tickets for invited guests, the first of which will be required for the announcement of King Charles in nigh 24 hours time.
E veryone on the conference calls and around the table will know each other. For a narrow stratum of the British aristocracy and ceremonious service, the fine art of planning major funerals – the solemnity, the excessive item – is an expression of a sure national competence. Thirty-one people gathered for the first meeting to plan Churchill'southward funeral, "Functioning Hope Non", in June 1959, six years before his decease. Those working on London Bridge (and Tay Bridge and Along Bridge, the Knuckles of Edinburgh'south funeral) will have corresponded for years in a linguistic communication of bureaucratic euphemism, about "a possible futurity ceremony"; "a time to come trouble"; "some inevitable occasion, the timing of which, still, is quite uncertain".
The start plans for London Bridge appointment back to the 1960s, before beingness refined in detail at the plough of the century. Since then, in that location have been meetings 2 or 3 times a year for the diverse actors involved (around a dozen government departments, the police, army, broadcasters and the Majestic Parks) in Church House, Westminster, the Palace, or elsewhere in Whitehall. Participants described them to me equally deeply civil and methodical. "Everyone effectually the world is looking to us to do this once again perfectly," said one, "and nosotros will." Plans are updated and old versions are destroyed. Arcane and highly specific knowledge is shared. It takes 28 minutes at a boring march from the doors of St James'due south to the entrance of Westminster Hall. The coffin must have a simulated chapeau, to hold the crown jewels, with a rim at least three inches loftier.
In theory, everything is settled. Just in the hours after the Queen has gone, in that location volition be details that merely Charles can make up one's mind. "Everything has to be signed off by the Duke of Norfolk and the King," one official told me. The Prince of Wales has waited longer to assume the British throne than whatever heir, and the world will now swirl around him at a new and uncrossable distance. "For a niggling while," wrote Edward VIII, of the days between his begetter's death and funeral, "I had the uneasy sensation of being left lone on a vast phase." In contempo years, much of the work on London Span has focused on the precise choreography of Charles's accession. "There are actually two things happening," every bit one of his directorate told me. "There is the demise of a sovereign so at that place is the making of a king." Charles is scheduled to make his outset address as head of country on the evening of his mother's death.
Switchboards – the Palace, Downing Street, the Department of Culture, Media and Sport – will be swamped with calls during the commencement 48 hours. Information technology is such a long time since the decease of a monarch that many national organisations won't know what to do. The official advice, as it was concluding time, volition be that business should continue as usual. This won't necessarily happen. If the Queen dies during Royal Ascot, the run into will be scrapped. The Marylebone Cricket Club is said to concord insurance for a like outcome if she passes away during a habitation test friction match at Lord's. Afterward the death of George VI in 1952, rugby and hockey fixtures were called off, while football matches went ahead. Fans sang Abide With Me and the national canticle before kick off. The National Theatre volition close if the news breaks before 4pm, and stay open if not. All games, including golf, will be banned in the Royal Parks.
In 2014, the National Association of Borough Officers circulated protocols for local authorities to follow in case of "the expiry of a senior national figure". It advised stockpiling books of condolence – loose foliage, and so inappropriate letters tin can be removed – to be placed in town halls, libraries and museums the twenty-four hour period later on the Queen dies. Mayors volition mask their decorations (maces volition be shrouded with black bags). In provincial cities, large screens volition be erected so crowds can follow events taking identify in London, and flags of all possible descriptions, including beach flags (but not red danger flags), will be flown at one-half mast. The land must be seen to know what it is doing. The most recent prepare of instructions to embassies in London went out just before Christmas. One of the biggest headaches will exist for the Strange Part, dealing with all the dignitaries who descend from all corners of the earth. In Papua New Guinea, where the Queen is the caput of state, she is known as "Mama vest big family". European royal families volition be put upward at the palace; the rest volition stay at Claridge'due south hotel.
Parliament will gather. If possible, both houses will sit within hours of the monarch's death. In 1952, the Eatables convened for ii minutes before noon. "We cannot at this moment exercise more than record a spontaneous expression of our grief," said Churchill, who was prime government minister. The house met again in the evening, when MPs began swearing the oath of fidelity to the new sovereign. Messages rained in from parliaments and presidents. The US Business firm of Representatives adjourned. Ethiopia announced two weeks of mourning. In the Firm of Lords, the two thrones volition be replaced by a single chair and a cushion begetting the aureate outline of a crown.
On D+1, the day later on the Queen's decease, the flags will go dorsum up, and at 11am, Charles will be proclaimed king. The Accession Quango, which convenes in the blood-red-carpeted Entrée Room of St James's Palace, long predates parliament. The meeting, of the "Lords Spiritual and Temporal of this Realm", derives from the Witan, the Anglo-Saxon feudal assembly of more than a g years ago. In theory, all 670 current members of the Privy Council, from Jeremy Corbyn to Ezekiel Alebua, the erstwhile prime minister of the Solomon Islands, are invited – but there is space for simply 150 or and then. In 1952, the Queen was one of 2 women present at her proclamation.
The clerk, a senior civil servant named Richard Tilbrook, will read out the formal diction, "Whereas it has pleased Almighty God to phone call to His Mercy our late Sovereign Lady Queen Elizabeth the 2d of Blessed and Glorious memory…" and Charles will carry out the starting time official duties of his reign, swearing to protect the Church in Scotland, and speaking of the heavy burden that is at present his.
At dawn, the central window overlooking Friary Court, on the palace's eastern front, volition accept been removed and the roof outside covered in red felt. Afterwards Charles has spoken, trumpeters from the Life Guards, wearing red plumes on their helmets, will step outside, requite iii blasts and the Garter Male monarch of Arms, a genealogist named Thomas Woodcock, will stand up on the balcony and begin the ritual proclamations of King Charles Iii. "I will brand the start one," said Woodcock, whose official salary of £49.07 has non been raised since the 1830s. In 1952, four newsreel cameras recorded the moment. This time in that location volition exist an audition of billions. People will await for auguries – in the atmospheric condition, in birds flying overhead – for Charles's reign. At Elizabeth's accretion, everyone was convinced that the new queen was too calm. The band of the Coldstream Guards volition play the national canticle on drums that are wrapped in blackness material.
The proclamations will only but be getting started. From St James'south, the Garter King of Arms and half a dozen other heralds, looking like extras from an expensive Shakespeare production, volition go by carriage to the statue of Charles I, at the base of Trafalgar Square, which marks London's official midpoint, and read out the news once again. A 41-gun salute – nigh seven minutes of artillery – volition be fired from Hyde Park. "There is no concession to modernity in this," i erstwhile palace official told me. In that location will exist cocked hats and horses everywhere. I of the concerns of the broadcasters is what the crowds will look like as they seek to tape these moments of history. "The whole globe is going to be bloody doing this," said i news executive, belongings up his phone in front of his face.
On the old boundary of the City of London, exterior the Regal Courts of Justice, a red cord will hang across the road. The City Align, a one-time police detective chief superintendent named Philip Jordan, will be waiting on a horse. The heralds will be formally admitted to the City, and there will be more trumpets and more announcements: at the Royal Exchange, and and then in a concatenation reaction across the state. 60-five years agone, there were crowds of 10,000 in Birmingham; v,000 in Manchester; fifteen,000 in Edinburgh. High Sheriffs stood on the steps of town halls, and announced the new sovereign co-ordinate to local custom. In York, the Mayor raised a toast to the Queen from a cup made of solid gold.
The same rituals will take place, merely this time effectually the new king volition likewise become out to meet his people. From his declaration at St James's, Charles will immediately tour the country, visiting Edinburgh, Belfast and Cardiff to attend services of remembrance for his mother and to see the leaders of the devolved governments. There will also be borough receptions, for teachers, doctors and other ordinary folk, which are intended to reverberate the altered spirit of his reign. "From 24-hour interval one, information technology is about the people rather than just the leaders being part of this new monarchy," said one of his advisers, who described the plans for Charles's progress as: "Lots of not existence in a car, merely actually walking effectually." In the capital letter, the pageantry of royal expiry and accession will exist primitive and bewildering. But from some other city each day, at that place will be images of the new male monarch mourning alongside his subjects, assuming his almighty, lonely role in the public imagination. "It is run across and exist seen," the adviser said.
F or a long time, the art of royal spectacle was for other, weaker peoples: Italians, Russians, and Habsburgs. British ritual occasions were a mess. At the funeral of Princess Charlotte, in 1817, the undertakers were drunk. Ten years later, St George's Chapel was so common cold during the burying of the Duke of York that George Canning, the foreign secretarial assistant, contracted rheumatic fever and the bishop of London died. "We never saw so motley, so rude, and so ill-managed a body of persons," reported the Times on the funeral of George IV, in 1830. Victoria's coronation a few years later was nothing to write home well-nigh. The clergy got lost in the words; the singing was awful; and the purple jewellers fabricated the coronation ring for the incorrect finger. "Some nations have a gift for ceremonial," the Marquess of Salisbury wrote in 1860. "In England the example is exactly the contrary."
What nosotros think of as the aboriginal rituals of the monarchy were mainly crafted in the late 19th century, towards the end of Victoria's reign. Courtiers, politicians and ramble theorists such every bit Walter Bagehot worried about the dismal sight of the Empress of India trooping around Windsor in her donkey cart. If the crown was going to give up its executive authorisation, it would take to inspire loyalty and awe by other ways – and theatre was part of the answer. "The more democratic we get," wrote Bagehot in 1867, "the more nosotros shall get to like state and show."
Obsessed by death, Victoria planned her own funeral with some style. But information technology was her son, Edward 7, who is largely responsible for reviving imperial display. 1 courtier praised his "curious power of visualising a pageant". He turned the state opening of parliament and armed forces drills, like the Trooping of the Colour, into full fancy-dress occasions, and at his own passing, resurrected the medieval ritual of lying in country. Hundreds of thousands of subjects filed past his coffin in Westminster Hall in 1910, granting a new sense of intimacy to the body of the sovereign. By 1932, George Five was a national male parent effigy, giving the beginning royal Christmas spoken language to the nation – a tradition that persists today – in a radio accost written for him by Rudyard Kipling.
The slaughter-house and the remoteness of the 19th-century monarchy were replaced by an idealised family and historic pageantry invented in the 20th. In 1909, Kaiser Wilhelm II boasted near the quality of German martial processions: "The English cannot come up upwardly to us in this sort of thing." Now nosotros all know that no one else quite does it like the British.
The Queen, by all accounts a practical and unsentimental person, understands the theatrical power of the crown. "I have to exist seen to exist believed," is said to be one of her catchphrases. And at that place is no reason to doubt that her funeral rites volition evoke a rush of collective feeling. "I think there will exist a huge and very genuine outpouring of deep emotion," said Andrew Roberts, the historian. Information technology volition be all about her, and it will really be about us. There will be an urge to stand in the street, to see information technology with your own optics, to be part of a multitude. The cumulative effect will be conservative. "I suspect the Queen's death will intensify patriotic feelings," ane constitutional thinker told me, "and therefore fit the Brexit mood, if you lot similar, and intensify the feeling that at that place is nothing to learn from foreigners."
The wave of feeling volition assist to swamp the awkward facts of the succession. The rehabilitation of Camilla as the Duchess of Cornwall has been a quiet success for the monarchy, but her accession every bit queen will test how far that has come up. Since she married Charles in 2005, Camilla has been officially known equally Princess Consort, a formulation that has no historical or legal meaning. ("It'southward bullshit," one erstwhile courtier told me, describing information technology as "a sop to Diana".) The fiction will end when Elizabeth Ii dies. Under common law, Camilla will become queen — the championship always given to the wives of kings. There is no culling. "She is queen whatever she is called," as one scholar put information technology. "If she is chosen Princess Consort there is an implication that she is not quite up to it. It'due south a problem." At that place are plans to analyze this situation before the Queen dies, only Male monarch Charles is currently expected to introduce Queen Camilla at his Accession Council on D+one. (Camilla was invited to join the Privy Council concluding June, then she will be nowadays.) Confirmation of her title will form part of the showtime tumultuous 24 hours.
The Commonwealth is the other knot. In 1952, at the last accession, there were but viii members of the new entity taking shape in the outline of the British Empire. The Queen was the head of state in seven of them, and she was proclaimed Head of the Republic to accommodate India's alone status as a republic. 60-five years subsequently, there are 36 republics in the organisation, which the Queen has attended assiduously throughout her reign, and at present comprises a third of the world's population. The problem is that the role is not hereditary, and there is no procedure for choosing the adjacent one. "It'southward a complete gray area," said Philip Murphy, director of the Institute of Democracy Studies at the University of London.
For several years, the palace has been discreetly trying to ensure Charles's succession as head of the bloc, in the absence of any other obvious option. Terminal October, Julia Gillard, the former prime minister of Australia, revealed that Christopher Geidt, the Queen'south private secretary, had visited her in February 2013 to enquire her to support the idea. Canada and New Zealand have since fallen into line, but the title is unlikely to exist included in King Charles's announcement. Instead it will exist function of the discreet international lobbying that takes place as London fills up with diplomats and presidents in the days after the Queen'southward death. There will be serious, busy receptions at the palace. "We are not talking near entertaining. But you have to show some class of respect for the fact that they have come," said one courtier. "Such feasting and commingling, with my father still unburied, seemed to me unfitting and heartless," wrote Edward Viii in his memoirs. The show must get on. Business will mix with grief.
T here will be a yard final preparations in the nine days earlier the funeral. Soldiers volition walk the processional routes. Prayers will be rehearsed. On D+1, Westminster Hall will exist locked, cleaned and its rock flooring covered with 1,500 metres of carpet. Candles, their wicks already burnt in, will exist brought over from the Abbey. The streets around will be converted into ceremonial spaces. The bollards on the Mall will be removed, and rail put upwardly to protect the hedges. At that place is space for seven,000 seats on Horse Guards Parade and 1,345 on Carlton House Terrace. In 1952, all the rhododendrons in Parliament Square were pulled up and women were barred from the roof of Admiralty Arch. "Nothing tin can exist done to protect the bulbs," noted the Ministry of Works. The Queen's 10 pallbearers will exist chosen, and practise carrying their burden out of sight in a barracks somewhere. British royals are buried in pb-lined coffins. Diana'due south weighed a quarter of a ton.
The population will slide between sadness and irritability. In 2002, 130 people complained to the BBC about its insensitive coverage of the Queen Mother's expiry; another 1,500 complained that Casualty was moved to BBC2. The Boob tube schedules in the days later on the Queen'southward expiry will change again. Comedy won't be taken off the BBC completely, but most satire will. There will exist Dad's Army reruns, but no Have I Got News For Y'all.
People will be touchy either way. Afterwards the death of George 6, in a society much more Christian and deferential than this one, a Mass Observation survey showed that people objected to the endless maudlin music, the forelock-tugging coverage. "Don't they call up of onetime folk, sick people, invalids?" 1 60-year old adult female asked. "It'south been terrible for them, all this gloom." In a bar in Notting Loma, one drinker said, "He's only shit and soil now like anyone else," which started a fight. Social media will exist a tinderbox. In 1972, the writer Brian Masters estimated that around a third of united states of america have dreamed near the Queen – she stands for authority and our mothers. People who are non expecting to cry will cry.
On D+iv, the coffin will motion to Westminster Hall, to lie in state for four total days. The procession from Buckingham Palace will be the starting time great war machine parade of London Bridge: downward the Mall, through Horse Guards, and past the Cenotaph. More or less the same slow march, from St James'south Palace for the Queen Mother in 2002, involved one,600 personnel and stretched for half a mile. The bands played Beethoven and a gun was fired every minute from Hyde Park. The road is thought to concur around a one thousand thousand people. The plan to get them there is based on the logistics for the London 2012 Olympics.
There may be corgis. In 1910, the mourners for Edward 7 were led past his fox terrier, Caesar. His son'south bury was followed to Wolferton station, at Sandringham, by Jock, a white shooting pony. The procession will reach Westminster Hall on the hour. The timing will be but so. "Big Ben starting time to chime as the wheels come up to a stop," as one broadcaster put information technology.
Inside the hall, in that location will be psalms equally the coffin is placed on a casket draped in purple. Male monarch Charles will be back from his tour of the home nations, to lead the mourners. The orb, the sceptre and the Imperial Crown volition exist fixed in place, soldiers will stand up guard and so the doors opened to the multitude that will take formed outside and volition now stream past the Queen for 23 hours a day. For George VI, 305,000 subjects came. The line was four miles long. The palace is expecting half a million for the Queen. There volition be a wondrous queue – the ultimate British ritual undertaking, with canteens, police, portable toilets and strangers talking cautiously to i another – stretching down to Vauxhall Span and then over the river and back along the Albert Beach. MPs will skip to the front.
Under the chestnut roof of the hall, everything will experience fantastically well-ordered and consoling and designed to within a quarter of an inch, considering information technology is. A 47-folio internal report compiled afterwards George VI'south funeral suggested attaching metallic rollers to the catafalque, to smooth the landing of the bury when it arrives. Four soldiers will stand silent vigil for twenty minutes at a time, with ii prepare in reserve. The RAF, the Army, the Royal Navy, the Beefeaters, the Gurkhas – anybody will take part. The most senior officeholder of the four volition stand at the foot of the bury, the about junior at the head. The wreaths on the coffin will be renewed every day. For Churchill's lying in state in 1965, a replica of the hall was set up in the ballroom of the St Ermin's hotel nearby, so soldiers could practise their movements before they went on duty. In 1936, the iv sons of George 5 revived The Prince'due south Vigil, in which members of the regal family arrive unannounced and stand spotter. The Queen'southward children and grandchildren – including women for the first fourth dimension – will do the same.
Earlier dawn on D+nine, the day of the funeral, in the silent hall, the jewels will exist taken off the coffin and cleaned. In 1952, it took three jewellers almost two hours to remove all the dust. (The Star of Africa, on the royal sceptre, is the second-largest cut diamond in the globe.) Most of the state will be waking to a solar day off. Shops will close, or go to depository financial institution holiday hours. Some will display pictures of the Queen in their windows. The stock market will not open. The night before, there will take been church building services in towns across the UK. There are plans to open football stadiums for memorial services if necessary.
At 9am, Big Ben will strike. The bell'south hammer will so be covered with a leather pad vii-sixteenths of an inch thick, and it volition ring out in deadened tones. The distance from Westminster Hall to the Abbey is only a few hundred metres. The occasion will feel familiar, fifty-fifty though it is new: the Queen will be the kickoff British monarch to take her funeral in the Abbey since 1760. The 2,000 guests volition exist sitting inside. Television cameras, in hides made of painted bricks, will search for the images that we will call back. In 1965, the dockers dipped their cranes for Churchill. In 1997, it was the word "Mummy" on the flowers for Diana from her sons.
When the bury reaches the abbey doors, at 11 o'clock, the land will autumn silent. The clatter volition however. Train stations will cease announcements. Buses volition stop and drivers will become out at the side of the road. In 1952, at the aforementioned moment, all of the passengers on a flight from London to New York rose from their seats and stood, xviii,000 feet above Canada, and bowed their heads.
Back then, the stakes were clearer, or at least they seemed that mode. A stammering male monarch had been role of the embattled British fashion of life that had survived an existential war. The wreath that Churchill laid said: "For Gallantry." The BBC commentator in 1952, the human being who deciphered the rubies and the rituals for the nation, was Richard Dimbleby, the commencement British reporter to enter Bergen-Belsen and convey its horrors, seven years before. "How true this night that statement spoken by an unknown man of his beloved father," murmured Dimbleby, describing the lying in state to millions. "The sunset of his death tinged the whole world's sky."
The trumpets and the ancientness were proof of our survival; and the rex's young girl would dominion the peace. "These majestic ceremonies represented decency, tradition, and public duty, in contradiction to the ghastliness of Nazism," as one historian told me. The monarchy had traded power for theatre, and in the backwash of war, the illusion became more powerful than anyone could have imagined. "It was restorative," Jonathan Dimbleby, Richard'southward son and biographer, told me.
His brother, David, is likely to be behind the BBC microphone this time. The question will be what the bells and the emblems and the heralds stand for now. At what point does the pomp of an imperial monarchy become ridiculous amid the circumstances of a macerated nation? "The worry," a historian said, "is that information technology is just circus animals."
If the monarchy exists every bit theatre, then this doubt is the part of the drama. Tin can they still pull it off? Knowing everything that we know in 2017, how can it peradventure concur that a single person might contain the soul of a nation? The signal of the monarchy is non to answer such questions. It is to continue. "What a lot of our life we spend in acting," the Queen Mother used to say.
Inside the Abbey, the archbishop will speak. During prayers, the broadcasters will refrain from showing royal faces. When the coffin emerges again, the pallbearers will place it on the green gun wagon that was used for the Queen's father, and his begetter and his father's father, and 138 junior sailors will drop their heads to their chests and pull. The tradition of existence hauled by the Royal Navy began in 1901 when Victoria's funeral horses, all white, threatened to commodities at Windsor Station and a waiting contingent of ratings stepped in to pull the coffin instead.
The procession volition swing on to the Mall. In 1952, the RAF was grounded out of respect for King George Half dozen. In 2002, at 12.45pm, a Lancaster bomber and two Spitfires flew over the cortege for his wife and dipped their wings. The crowds will be deep for the Queen. She will get everything. From Hyde Park Corner, the hearse will go 23 miles past road to Windsor Castle, which claims the bodies of British sovereigns. The purple household volition be waiting for her, standing on the grass. So the cloister gates will be closed and cameras will terminate broadcasting. Inside the chapel, the lift to the royal vault will descend, and Rex Charles volition drib a handful of red earth from a silver bowl.
This commodity was amended on 16 March 2017 to right some minor errors including the fact that three of the Queen'due south concluding iv prime ministers, non the last three, were built-in afterwards her accession – Blair, Cameron and May; that the Star of Africa on the purple sceptre is non the largest diamond in the globe, just the second-largest cutting diamond; and that the word "son'southward" was originally missing from the second sentence in this passage: "In 1910, the mourners for Edward VII were led by his fox terrier, Caesar. His son's bury was followed to Wolferton station, at Sandringham, by Jock, a white shooting pony."
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/16/what-happens-when-queen-elizabeth-dies-london-bridge
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