But by Counting the Number of There Dead. May There Be Peace on Kharak Once Again
I n the plans that exist for the death of the Queen – and there are many versions, held by Buckingham Palace, the authorities and the BBC – most envisage that she will die afterwards a short illness. Her family unit and doctors will be there. When the Queen Mother passed away on the afternoon of Easter Saturday, in 2002, at the Royal Guild 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 dr., a gastroenterologist named Professor Huw Thomas, volition exist in accuse. He will look after his patient, control access to her room and consider what information should be made public. The bail betwixt sovereign and subjects is a foreign and mostly unknowable thing. A nation's life becomes a person's, and and then the string must interruption.
There volition be bulletins from the palace – not many, only enough. "The Queen is suffering from great physical prostration, accompanied by symptoms which crusade much anxiety," announced Sir James Reid, Queen Victoria's physician, two days before her death in 1901. "The Rex's life is moving peacefully towards its close," was the final observe issued by George V's doctor, Lord Dawson, at ix.30pm on the night of xx January 1936. Non long afterwards, Dawson injected the rex with 750mg of morphine and a gram of cocaine – enough to kill him twice over – in gild to ease the monarch's suffering, and to have him expire in time for the printing presses of the Times, which rolled at midnight.
Her eyes will be airtight and Charles volition be male monarch. His siblings will kiss his hands. The first official to deal with the news will exist Sir Christopher Geidt, the Queen's private secretarial assistant, a former diplomat who was given a 2d knighthood in 2014, in part for planning her succession.
Geidt will contact the prime minister. The last time a British monarch died, 65 years agone, the demise of George VI was conveyed in a code discussion, "Hyde Park Corner", to Buckingham Palace, to foreclose switchboard operators from finding out. For Elizabeth II, the plan for what happens next is known as "London Bridge." The prime number minister volition be woken, if she is not already awake, and ceremonious servants will say "London Bridge is down" on secure lines. From the Foreign Office's Global Response Centre, at an undisclosed location in the uppercase, the news will get out to the fifteen governments outside the UK where the Queen is also the head of state, and the 36 other nations of the Commonwealth for whom she has served as a symbolic figurehead – a face 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 moving ridge ahead of an earthquake, detectable only past special equipment. Governors general, ambassadors and prime ministers volition larn get-go. Cupboards will be opened in search of blackness armbands, 3-and-a-quarter inches wide, to be worn on the left arm.
The rest of united states of america will find out more than chop-chop than before. On 6 February 1952, George VI was found by his valet at Sandringham at seven.30am. The BBC did non circulate the news until xi.15am, almost four hours later. When Princess Diana died at 4am local fourth dimension 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 15 minutes. For many years the BBC was told almost royal deaths start, but its monopoly on broadcasting to the empire has gone now. When the Queen dies, the announcement volition go out as a newsflash to the Press Association and the balance of the world'southward media simultaneously. At the same instant, a footman in mourning clothes will emerge from a door at Buckingham Palace, cantankerous the dull pinkish gravel and pin a blackness-edged find to the gates. While he does this, the palace website will exist transformed into a sombre, single page, showing the same text on a dark background.
Screens will glow. There will be tweets. At the BBC, the "radio warning transmission system" (Rats), will be activated – a common cold state of war-era alarm designed to withstand an attack on the nation's infrastructure. Rats, which is besides sometimes referred to as "imperial nearly to snuff it", is a near mythical part of the intricate architecture of ritual and rehearsals for the expiry of major royal personalities that the BBC has maintained since the 1930s. Well-nigh staff take only ever seen information technology piece of work in tests; many have never seen it work at all. "Whenever at that place is a strange noise in the newsroom, someone ever asks, 'Is that the Rats?' Because nosotros don't know what it sounds like," ane 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 list of prepared stories pinned to his wall. The Times is said to have 11 days of coverage ready to go. At Heaven News and ITN, which for years rehearsed the death of the Queen substituting the name "Mrs Robinson", calls volition get out to royal experts who have already signed contracts to speak exclusively on those channels. "I am going to exist sitting outside the doors of the Abbey on a hugely enlarged trestle table commentating to 300 million Americans about this," one told me.
For people stuck in traffic, or with Eye FM on in the background, in that location will only be the subtlest of indications, at beginning, that something is going on. Britain's commercial radio stations have a network of blue "obit lights", which is tested one time a week and supposed to calorie-free up in the event of a national catastrophe. When the news breaks, these lights will start flashing, to alert DJs to switch to the news in the next few minutes and to play inoffensive music in the meantime. Every station, down to hospital radio, has prepared music lists made up of "Mood 2" (pitiful) or "Mood ane" (saddest) songs to attain for in times of sudden mourning. "If yous ever hear Haunted Dancehall (Plant nursery Remix) by Sabres of Paradise on daytime Radio 1, turn the TV on," wrote Chris Toll, a BBC radio producer, for the Huffington Mail in 2011. "Something terrible has just happened."
Having plans in place for the expiry of leading royals is a practice that makes some journalists uncomfortable. "There is one story which is deemed to exist and then much more than important than others," one former Today programme producer complained to me. For 30 years, BBC news teams were hauled to piece of work on quiet Sunday mornings to perform mock storylines about the Queen Mother choking on a fishbone. There was in one case a scenario about Princess Diana dying in a car crash on the M4.
These well-laid plans accept not always helped. In 2002, when the Queen Mother died, the obit lights didn't come on because someone failed to push the push down properly. On the BBC, Peter Sissons, the veteran anchor, was criticised for wearing a maroon tie. Sissons was the victim of a BBC policy modify, issued after the September 11 attacks, to moderate its coverage and reduce the number of "category one" royals eligible for the full obituary process. The last words in Sissons'south ear earlier going on air were: "Don't become overboard. She'south a very erstwhile woman who had to go some fourth dimension."
But there will be no extemporising with the Queen. The newsreaders volition wear black suits and blackness ties. Category ane was made for her. Programmes will stop. Networks volition merge. BBC 1, two and 4 will exist interrupted and revert silently to their corresponding idents – an do class in a hamlet hall, a swan waiting on a pond – before coming together for the news. Listeners to Radio 4 and Radio 5 alive volition hear a specific formulation of words, "This is the BBC from London," which, intentionally or non, will summon a spirit of national emergency.
The main reason for rehearsals is to have words that are roughly approximate to the moment. "It is with the greatest sorrow that nosotros make the following announcement," said John Snagge, the BBC presenter who informed the globe of the death of George VI. (The news was repeated seven times, every 15 minutes, and so the BBC went silent for five hours). According to one former head of BBC news, a very similar set of words will be 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 absence. "She is the only monarch that well-nigh of us have always known," he said. The regal standard will appear on the screen. The national anthem will play. You lot will call up where you were.
Due west hen people retrieve of a contemporary royal death in Britain, they call up, inescapably, of Diana. The passing of the Queen will exist monumental by comparing. It may not exist as nakedly emotional, but its reach will exist wider, and its implications more than dramatic. "Information technology will exist quite fundamental," as i former courtier told me.
Part of the effect volition come from the overwhelming weight of things happening. The routine for modern imperial funerals is more than or less familiar (Diana's was based on "Tay Span", the plan for the Queen Mother'south). But the death of a British monarch, and the accession of a new head of state, is a ritual that is passing out of living memory: 3 of the Queen's final four prime ministers were built-in after she came to the throne. When she dies, both houses of parliament volition exist recalled, people will go domicile from piece of work early, and aircraft pilots will announce the news to their passengers. In the nine days that follow (in London Bridge planning documents, these are known as "D-day", "D+ane" and and so on) at that place will be ritual proclamations, a 4-nation bout by the new king, bowdlerised television programming, and a diplomatic assembling in London non seen since the death of Winston Churchill in 1965.
More overwhelming than any of this, though, there volition be an omnipotent psychological reckoning for the kingdom that she leaves backside. The Queen is Britain'southward last living link with our former greatness – the nation's id, its problematic self-regard – which is still defined past our victory in the second world war. One leading historian, who similar almost people I interviewed for this article declined to exist named, stressed that the adieu for this country's longest-serving monarch will exist magnificent. "Oh, she volition go everything," he said. "Nosotros were all told that the funeral of Churchill was the requiem for Britain as a great ability. Merely actually it volition really be over when she goes."
Unlike the United states of america presidency, say, monarchies allow huge passages of time – a century, in some cases – to get entwined with an individual. The second Elizabethan historic period is likely to be remembered every bit a reign of uninterrupted national refuse, and even, if she lives long enough and Scotland departs the union, every bit one of disintegration. Life and politics at the end of her dominion will be unrecognisable from their grandeur and innocence at its outset. "Nosotros don't blame her for it," Philip Ziegler, the historian and royal biographer, told me. "We have declined with her, and then to speak."
The obituary films will remind united states what a dissimilar country she inherited. One piece of footage will be played again and again: from her 21st birthday, in 1947, when Princess Elizabeth was on holiday with her parents in Greatcoat Town. She was half dozen,000 miles from habitation and comfortably within the pale of the British Empire. The princess sits at a tabular array with a microphone. The shadow of a tree plays on her shoulder. The camera adjusts three or four times every bit she talks, and on each occasion, she twitches momentarily, betraying tiny flashes of aloof irritation. "I declare before yous all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service, and the service of our great imperial family to which we all vest," she says, enunciating vowels and a conception of the world that have both vanished.
It is non unusual for a country to succumb to a state of deprival as a long affiliate in its history is about to cease. When it became public that Queen Victoria was dying, at the historic period 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's bloodshed had go unimaginable; and with her demise, everything was suddenly at run a risk, placed in the hands of an elderly and untrusted heir, Edward VII. "The wild waters are upon u.s.a. now," wrote the American Henry James, who had moved to London 30 years earlier.
The parallels with the unease that we will feel at the expiry of Elizabeth II are obvious, but without the alleviation of Great britain'due south condition in 1901 as the world'southward almost successful country. "We have to have narratives for royal events," the historian told me. "In the Victorian reign, everything got better and ameliorate, and bigger and bigger. Nosotros certainly tin't tell that story today."
The result is an enormous objection to fifty-fifty thinking about – let solitary talking or writing about – what will happen when the Queen dies. We avert the subject as nosotros avert information technology in our own families. It seems like good manners, but information technology is as well fear. The reporting for this article involved dozens of interviews with broadcasters, authorities officials, and departed palace staff, several of whom have worked on London Bridge directly. Almost all insisted on consummate secrecy. "This coming together never happened," I was told after one conversation in a gentleman's club on Pall 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'south national life has, in fact, been planned to the minute. Information technology involves matters of major public importance, will exist paid for past us, and is definitely going to happen. According to the Office of National Statistics, a British woman who reaches the age of 91 – equally the Queen will in April – has an average life expectancy of iv years and three months. The Queen is approaching the end of her reign at a fourth dimension of maximum disquiet about U.k.'s place in the world, at a moment when internal political tensions are close to breaking her kingdom apart. Her death will also release its own destabilising forces: in the accretion of Queen Camilla; in the optics of a new king who is already an old man; and in the futurity of the Democracy, an invention largely of her making. (The Queen's championship of "Caput of the Commonwealth" is not hereditary.) Commonwealth of australia's prime minister and leader of the opposition both desire the country to go a republic.
Coping with the way these events fall is the next great challenge of the House of Windsor, the last European royal family to practise 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'due south death and its formalism aftermath is so extensive. Succession is office of the job. It is an opportunity for society to be affirmed. Queen Victoria had written downward the contents of her coffin past 1875. The Queen Mother's funeral was rehearsed for 22 years. Louis Mountbatten, the concluding Viceroy of Bharat, prepared a winter and a summer carte for his funeral lunch. London Bridge is the Queen's leave plan. "Information technology's history," every bit 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 nosotros were and avert the question of what we have get.
T he idea is for zero to be unforeseen. If the Queen dies abroad, a BAe 146 jet from the RAF's No 32 squadron, known as the Purple Flight, volition accept off from Northolt, at the western border of London, with a coffin on lath. The royal undertakers, Leverton & Sons, keep what they phone call a "first call coffin" set in example of imperial emergencies. Both George 5 and George Half dozen were buried in oak grown on the Sandringham estate in Norfolk. If the Queen dies in that location, her body will come to London by motorcar afterwards a twenty-four hours or two.
The nearly elaborate plans are for what happens if she passes away at Balmoral, where she spends three months of the twelvemonth. This volition trigger an initial wave of Scottish ritual. Kickoff, the Queen's torso will lie at rest in her smallest palace, at Holyroodhouse, in Edinburgh, where she is traditionally guarded by the Royal Company of Archers, who wear hawkeye feathers in their bonnets. And then the coffin will be carried up the Royal Mile to St Giles'due south cathedral, for a service of reception, before existence put on board the Royal Train at Waverley station for a sad progress down the eastward coast mainline. Crowds are expected at level crossings and on station platforms the length of the land – from Musselburgh and Thirsk in the north, to Peterborough and Hatfield in the south – to throw flowers on the passing railroad train. (Another locomotive volition follow behind, to clear debris from the tracks.) "It's really very complicated," ane send official told me.
In every scenario, the Queen'due south body returns to the throne room in Buckingham Palace, which overlooks the north-west corner of the Quadrangle, its interior courtyard. There will be an altar, the pall, the majestic standard, and four Grenadier Guards, their bearskin hats inclined, their rifles pointing to the floor, standing spotter. In the corridors, staff employed by the Queen for more than 50 years will pass, following procedures they know past heart. "Your professionalism takes over considering there is a chore to be washed," said one veteran of regal funerals. There volition be no time for sadness, or to worry about what happens next. Charles will bring in many of his own staff when he accedes. "Acquit in heed," the courtier said, "everybody who works in the palace is actually on borrowed time."
Outside, news crews will get together on pre-agreed sites side by side to Canada Gate, at the bottom of Green Park. (Special fibre-optic cable runs under the Mall, for broadcasting British state occasions.) "I take got in front end of me an pedagogy book a couple of inches thick," said ane Goggle box manager, who will cover the ceremonies, when we spoke on the phone. "Everything in at that place is planned. Anybody knows what to do." Across the country, flags volition come down and bells volition toll. In 1952, Great Tom was rung at St Paul's every infinitesimal for ii hours when the news was appear. The bells at Westminster Abbey sounded and the Sebastopol bell, taken from the Black Sea city during the Crimean state of war and rung only on the occasion of a sovereign's death, was tolled 56 times at Windsor – once for each year of George Half-dozen's life – from ane.27pm until 2.22pm.
The 18th Duke of Norfolk, the Earl Align, will be in charge. Norfolks have overseen purple funerals since 1672. During the 20th century, a prepare of offices in St James'due south Palace was always earmarked for their use. On the morning of George 6's death, in 1952, these were beingness renovated. By five o'clock in the afternoon, the scaffolding was downward and the rooms were re-carpeted, furnished and equipped with phones, lights and heating. During London Bridge, the Lord Chamberlain'southward office in the palace will be the heart of operations. The electric current version of the plan is largely the work of Lieutenant-Colonel Anthony Mather, a old equerry who retired from the palace in 2014. As a 23-yr-old guardsman in 1965, Mather led the pallbearers at Churchill's funeral. (He declined to speak with me.) The government'due south team – coordinating the police force, security, ship and military machine – will assemble at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport. Someone will accept the task of printing around x,000 tickets for invited guests, the outset of which will be required for the proclamation of King Charles in about 24 hours time.
E veryone on the briefing calls and effectually the table volition know each other. For a narrow stratum of the British aristocracy and civil service, the art of planning major funerals – the solemnity, the excessive item – is an expression of a certain national competence. Thirty-one people gathered for the starting time meeting to programme Churchill'due south funeral, "Operation Hope Not", in June 1959, six years before his death. Those working on London Bridge (and Tay Bridge and Forth Span, the Duke of Edinburgh'due south funeral) will have corresponded for years in a language of bureaucratic euphemism, about "a possible hereafter ceremony"; "a futurity problem"; "some inevitable occasion, the timing of which, however, is quite uncertain".
The first plans for London Span date dorsum to the 1960s, before existence refined in detail at the turn of the century. Since then, there take been meetings 2 or iii times a year for the various actors involved (around a dozen government departments, the police, regular army, broadcasters and the Royal Parks) in Church building House, Westminster, the Palace, or elsewhere in Whitehall. Participants described them to me every bit securely civil and methodical. "Everyone effectually the world is looking to us to practise this again perfectly," said ane, "and we volition." Plans are updated and onetime versions are destroyed. Arcane and highly specific knowledge is shared. It takes 28 minutes at a deadening march from the doors of St James'south to the entrance of Westminster Hall. The bury must have a false hat, to hold the crown jewels, with a rim at to the lowest degree three inches high.
In theory, everything is settled. Just in the hours afterwards the Queen has gone, there will exist details that simply Charles can make up one's mind. "Everything has to be signed off by the Duke of Norfolk and the Male monarch," one official told me. The Prince of Wales has waited longer to assume the British throne than any heir, and the world will now swirl around him at a new and uncrossable distance. "For a little while," wrote Edward VIII, of the days between his father's death and funeral, "I had the uneasy sensation of being left solitary on a vast stage." In recent years, much of the work on London Bridge has focused on the precise choreography of Charles's accession. "There are really two things happening," as i of his advisers told me. "There is the demise of a sovereign and then there is the making of a king." Charles is scheduled to brand his first address as head of state on the evening of his mother's death.
Switchboards – the Palace, Downing Street, the Department of Culture, Media and Sport – will exist swamped with calls during the beginning 48 hours. It is such a long time since the expiry of a monarch that many national organisations won't know what to do. The official advice, every bit it was final fourth dimension, volition be that business should continue as usual. This won't necessarily happen. If the Queen dies during Majestic Ascot, the meet will be scrapped. The Marylebone Cricket Lodge is said to hold insurance for a like outcome if she passes away during a home examination match at Lord's. After the decease of George VI in 1952, rugby and hockey fixtures were called off, while football matches went ahead. Fans sang Bide With Me and the national canticle before boot off. The National Theatre volition close if the news breaks earlier 4pm, and stay open if not. All games, including golf, will be banned in the Royal Parks.
In 2014, the National Association of Civic Officers circulated protocols for local authorities to follow in instance of "the death of a senior national figure". Information technology advised stockpiling books of condolence – loose leaf, so inappropriate messages tin be removed – to be placed in boondocks halls, libraries and museums the twenty-four hour period after the Queen dies. Mayors will mask their decorations (maces will be shrouded with blackness bags). In provincial cities, large screens will be erected so crowds tin can follow events taking place in London, and flags of all possible descriptions, including beach flags (just not cherry-red danger flags), will be flown at half mast. The state must be seen to know what information technology is doing. The most recent set of instructions to embassies in London went out just before Christmas. One of the biggest headaches volition exist for the Foreign Office, dealing with all the dignitaries who descend from all corners of the earth. In Papua New Guinea, where the Queen is the head of land, she is known equally "Mama belong big family unit". European imperial families will exist put up at the palace; the rest will stay at Claridge's hotel.
Parliament will assemble. If possible, both houses will sit down within hours of the monarch's expiry. In 1952, the Eatables convened for ii minutes earlier apex. "We cannot at this moment do more than tape a spontaneous expression of our grief," said Churchill, who was prime minister. The house met again in the evening, when MPs began swearing the oath of allegiance to the new sovereign. Letters rained in from parliaments and presidents. The US House of Representatives adjourned. Federal democratic republic of ethiopia announced two weeks of mourning. In the House of Lords, the two thrones will exist replaced past a single chair and a absorber begetting the golden outline of a crown.
On D+1, the twenty-four hour period after the Queen's expiry, the flags will become back up, and at 11am, Charles will be proclaimed rex. The Accession Council, which convenes in the 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 than a k years ago. In theory, all 670 current members of the Privy Council, from Jeremy Corbyn to Ezekiel Alebua, the one-time prime government minister of the Solomon Islands, are invited – but there is space for simply 150 or so. In 1952, the Queen was one of ii women nowadays at her annunciation.
The clerk, a senior civil servant named Richard Tilbrook, will read out the formal diction, "Whereas information technology has pleased Omnipotent God to call to His Mercy our late Sovereign Lady Queen Elizabeth the Second of Blessed and Glorious memory…" and Charles will carry out the commencement official duties of his reign, swearing to protect the Church building in Scotland, and speaking of the heavy brunt that is now his.
At dawn, the central window overlooking Friary Courtroom, on the palace'southward eastern front, will have been removed and the roof outside covered in reddish felt. After Charles has spoken, trumpeters from the Life Guards, wearing red plumes on their helmets, volition step outside, requite three blasts and the Garter Rex of Arms, a genealogist named Thomas Woodcock, will stand on the balcony and brainstorm the ritual proclamations of Male monarch Charles 3. "I will make the start 1," said Woodcock, whose official bacon of £49.07 has non been raised since the 1830s. In 1952, four newsreel cameras recorded the moment. This time there will exist an audition of billions. People will look for auguries – in the weather, in birds flying overhead – for Charles'due south reign. At Elizabeth's accession, everyone was convinced that the new queen was too calm. The band of the Coldstream Guards will play the national anthem on drums that are wrapped in blackness textile.
The proclamations will only but exist getting started. From St James'south, the Garter King of Artillery and half a dozen other heralds, looking similar extras from an expensive Shakespeare product, will get by carriage to the statue of Charles I, at the base of Trafalgar Square, which marks London'southward official midpoint, and read out the news again. A 41-gun salute – almost seven minutes of arms – will exist fired from Hyde Park. "At that place is no concession to modernity in this," i former palace official told me. There will be artsy hats and horses everywhere. 1 of the concerns of the broadcasters is what the crowds will wait like as they seek to record these moments of history. "The whole world is going to be bloody doing this," said one news executive, holding up his phone in front of his face.
On the former boundary of the City of London, outside the Royal Courts of Justice, a ruby cord will hang across the road. The City Align, a former police force detective chief superintendent named Philip Jordan, will exist waiting on a horse. The heralds will be formally admitted to the City, and there will exist more trumpets and more announcements: at the Royal Substitution, and and so in a concatenation reaction across the land. 60-five years ago, at that place were crowds of x,000 in Birmingham; 5,000 in Manchester; 15,000 in Edinburgh. High Sheriffs stood on the steps of boondocks halls, and announced the new sovereign according 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, but this time around the new king will also go out to encounter his people. From his announcement at St James's, Charles will immediately tour the country, visiting Edinburgh, Belfast and Cardiff to nourish services of remembrance for his mother and to meet the leaders of the devolved governments. There will also be civic receptions, for teachers, doctors and other ordinary folk, which are intended to reflect the contradistinct spirit of his reign. "From 24-hour interval 1, it 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'southward progress as: "Lots of not being in a car, only actually walking around." In the capital, the pageantry of purple expiry and accession will be archaic and bewildering. But from another city each solar day, at that place will be images of the new king mourning alongside his subjects, assuming his almighty, lonely office in the public imagination. "Information technology is see and be seen," the adviser said.
F or a long time, the art of purple 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 afterward, St George'southward Chapel was so cold during the burial of the Duke of York that George Canning, the strange secretary, contracted rheumatic fever and the bishop of London died. "We never saw so motley, so rude, then ill-managed a torso of persons," reported the Times on the funeral of George 4, in 1830. Victoria's coronation a few years afterwards was nothing to write home almost. The clergy got lost in the words; the singing was atrocious; and the royal jewellers made the coronation ring for the wrong finger. "Some nations have a gift for formalism," the Marquess of Salisbury wrote in 1860. "In England the case is exactly the reverse."
What we call back of equally the ancient rituals of the monarchy were mainly crafted in the tardily 19th century, towards the end of Victoria's reign. Courtiers, politicians and constitutional 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 upwards its executive potency, information technology would have to inspire loyalty and awe past other means – and theatre was role of the answer. "The more democratic we get," wrote Bagehot in 1867, "the more we shall become to similar state and show."
Obsessed by death, Victoria planned her own funeral with some style. But it was her son, Edward Vii, who is largely responsible for reviving regal display. One courtier praised his "curious power of visualising a pageant". He turned the country opening of parliament and military drills, like the Trooping of the Colour, into total fancy-dress occasions, and at his own passing, resurrected the medieval ritual of lying in state. Hundreds of thousands of subjects filed past his coffin in Westminster Hall in 1910, granting a new sense of intimacy to the trunk of the sovereign. By 1932, George 5 was a national father effigy, giving the kickoff royal Christmas voice communication to the nation – a tradition that persists today – in a radio address written for him by Rudyard Kipling.
The shambles and the remoteness of the 19th-century monarchy were replaced past an idealised family and celebrated pageantry invented in the 20th. In 1909, Kaiser Wilhelm II boasted well-nigh the quality of German martial processions: "The English cannot come up to us in this sort of thing." Now we all know that no one else quite does it similar the British.
The Queen, by all accounts a practical and unsentimental person, understands the theatrical power of the crown. "I take to be seen to be believed," is said to be ane of her catchphrases. And there is no reason to doubt that her funeral rites will evoke a rush of collective feeling. "I recall in that location volition be a huge and very genuine outpouring of deep emotion," said Andrew Roberts, the historian. It will be all about her, and it will really be nearly us. There will be an urge to stand up in the street, to see information technology with your own optics, to be part of a multitude. The cumulative effect will exist conservative. "I suspect the Queen'due south death will intensify patriotic feelings," one constitutional thinker told me, "and therefore fit the Brexit mood, if you like, and intensify the feeling that there is zero to learn from foreigners."
The wave of feeling will help to swamp the bad-mannered facts of the succession. The rehabilitation of Camilla equally the Duchess of Cornwall has been a quiet success for the monarchy, only her accession as queen will test how far that has come. Since she married Charles in 2005, Camilla has been officially known every bit Princess Consort, a formulation that has no historical or legal pregnant. ("It'due south bullshit," one onetime courtier told me, describing it as "a sop to Diana".) The fiction will end when Elizabeth II dies. Under mutual law, Camilla will become queen — the title e'er given to the wives of kings. At that place is no alternative. "She is queen whatsoever she is called," equally ane scholar put information technology. "If she is called Princess Consort there is an implication that she is non quite up to it. It'southward a problem." In that location are plans to clarify this state of affairs earlier the Queen dies, but Rex Charles is currently expected to introduce Queen Camilla at his Accession Council on D+1. (Camilla was invited to join the Privy Quango last June, so she will be present.) Confirmation of her title will form function of the commencement tumultuous 24 hours.
The Commonwealth is the other knot. In 1952, at the terminal accession, at that place were only eight members of the new entity taking shape in the outline of the British Empire. The Queen was the head of state in vii of them, and she was proclaimed Caput of the Commonwealth to accommodate India's alone status equally a commonwealth. Lx-five years later, there are 36 republics in the organization, which the Queen has attended assiduously throughout her reign, and now comprises a third of the world'southward population. The problem is that the function is not hereditary, and in that location is no procedure for choosing the next i. "Information technology's a complete grey surface area," said Philip Irish potato, director of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies at the Academy of London.
For several years, the palace has been discreetly trying to ensure Charles'south succession as head of the bloc, in the absence of whatever other obvious selection. Last October, Julia Gillard, the onetime prime government minister of Australia, revealed that Christopher Geidt, the Queen's individual secretarial assistant, had visited her in Feb 2013 to ask 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 proclamation. Instead information technology will exist office of the discreet international lobbying that takes place equally London fills up with diplomats and presidents in the days later on the Queen's death. There will be serious, decorated receptions at the palace. "We are not talking nearly entertaining. But you accept to show some form of respect for the fact that they have come," said one courtier. "Such feasting and commingling, with my male parent even so unburied, seemed to me unfitting and heartless," wrote Edward VIII in his memoirs. The show must go on. Concern volition mix with grief.
T hither will be a thousand final preparations in the ix days earlier the funeral. Soldiers volition walk the processional routes. Prayers volition be apposite. On D+1, Westminster Hall will be locked, cleaned and its stone floor covered with 1,500 metres of rug. Candles, their wicks already burnt in, will be brought over from the Abbey. The streets effectually will exist converted into ceremonial spaces. The bollards on the Mall will be removed, and rails put up to protect the hedges. There is space for 7,000 seats on Horse Guards Parade and 1,345 on Carlton House Terrace. In 1952, all the rhododendrons in Parliament Square were pulled upwards and women were barred from the roof of Admiralty Arch. "Nothing can be done to protect the bulbs," noted the Ministry of Works. The Queen's ten pallbearers will be chosen, and practise carrying their burden out of sight in a barracks somewhere. British royals are cached 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 death; some other 1,500 complained that Casualty was moved to BBC2. The TV schedules in the days after the Queen's death volition change once again. Comedy won't exist taken off the BBC completely, but most satire will. In that location will be Dad's Army reruns, just no Have I Got News For You.
People volition be touchy either way. Afterwards the death of George VI, in a lodge much more Christian and deferential than this 1, a Mass Ascertainment survey showed that people objected to the endless maudlin music, the forelock-tugging coverage. "Don't they think of old folk, sick people, invalids?" one sixty-year old woman asked. "It'southward been terrible for them, all this gloom." In a bar in Notting Hill, i drinker said, "He's merely shit and soil now similar anyone else," which started a fight. Social media will be a tinderbox. In 1972, the writer Brian Masters estimated that around a tertiary of united states of america have dreamed about the Queen – she stands for authorization and our mothers. People who are non expecting to cry volition cry.
On D+4, the coffin will move to Westminster Hall, to lie in state for four full days. The procession from Buckingham Palace will be the first peachy armed services parade of London Bridge: downwards the Mall, through Horse Guards, and past the Cenotaph. More or less the same slow march, from St James'due south Palace for the Queen Mother in 2002, involved 1,600 personnel and stretched for half a mile. The bands played Beethoven and a gun was fired every minute from Hyde Park. The route is thought to hold around a one thousand thousand people. The plan to get them there is based on the logistics for the London 2012 Olympics.
In that location may be corgis. In 1910, the mourners for Edward Seven were led past his fox terrier, Caesar. His son'south coffin was followed to Wolferton station, at Sandringham, past Jock, a white shooting pony. The procession will achieve Westminster Hall on the hour. The timing will be just so. "Big Ben showtime to chime every bit the wheels come to a stop," equally i broadcaster put it.
Inside the hall, there will be psalms as the bury is placed on a catafalque draped in purple. King Charles will exist back from his tour of the home nations, to atomic number 82 the mourners. The orb, the sceptre and the Majestic Crown will exist fixed in identify, soldiers will stand guard and then the doors opened to the multitude that will take formed exterior and will now stream past the Queen for 23 hours a 24-hour interval. For George Six, 305,000 subjects came. The line was four miles long. The palace is expecting half a meg for the Queen. There will be a wondrous queue – the ultimate British ritual undertaking, with canteens, police, portable toilets and strangers talking cautiously to one some other – stretching down to Vauxhall Bridge and so over the river and dorsum forth the Albert Embankment. MPs will skip to the front.
Under the chestnut roof of the hall, everything volition feel fantastically well-ordered and consoling and designed to inside a quarter of an inch, because information technology is. A 47-page internal report compiled after George Half dozen's funeral suggested attaching metallic rollers to the catafalque, to smooth the landing of the coffin when it arrives. Four soldiers will stand silent vigil for 20 minutes at a time, with 2 ready in reserve. The RAF, the Regular army, the Purple Navy, the Beefeaters, the Gurkhas – everyone will take function. The most senior officer of the four volition stand at the pes of the coffin, 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 fix in the ballroom of the St Ermin's hotel nearby, so soldiers could practice their movements earlier they went on duty. In 1936, the four sons of George Five revived The Prince's Vigil, in which members of the regal family get in unannounced and stand watch. The Queen'southward children and grandchildren – including women for the starting time time – will exercise the same.
Earlier dawn on D+9, the mean solar day of the funeral, in the silent hall, the jewels will be taken off the coffin and cleaned. In 1952, it took three jewellers near two hours to remove all the grit. (The Star of Africa, on the purple sceptre, is the second-largest cut diamond in the world.) Well-nigh of the country will be waking to a mean solar day off. Shops volition close, or go to bank holiday hours. Some will display pictures of the Queen in their windows. The stock marketplace will not open. The night before, at that place will have been church services in towns across the UK. There are plans to open football stadiums for memorial services if necessary.
At 9am, Big Ben volition strike. The bell's hammer will and then be covered with a leather pad 7-sixteenths of an inch thick, and it will ring out in muffled tones. The distance from Westminster Hall to the Abbey is but a few hundred metres. The occasion will feel familiar, fifty-fifty though information technology is new: the Queen will be the first British monarch to accept her funeral in the Abbey since 1760. The two,000 guests will exist sitting inside. Idiot box cameras, in hides fabricated of painted bricks, will search for the images that we will call up. 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 coffin reaches the abbey doors, at eleven o'clock, the country will fall silent. The clatter will all the same. Railroad train stations will cease announcements. Buses volition stop and drivers will exit at the side of the road. In 1952, at the same moment, all of the passengers on a flight from London to New York rose from their seats and stood, 18,000 feet above Canada, and bowed their heads.
Back and then, the stakes were clearer, or at least they seemed that way. A stammering king had been part of the embattled British way of life that had survived an existential war. The wreath that Churchill laid said: "For Gallantry." The BBC commentator in 1952, the man who deciphered the rubies and the rituals for the nation, was Richard Dimbleby, the start British reporter to enter Bergen-Belsen and convey its horrors, 7 years before. "How true tonight that argument spoken by an unknown human of his dearest male parent," murmured Dimbleby, describing the lying in state to millions. "The dusk of his death tinged the whole world'south sky."
The trumpets and the ancientness were proof of our survival; and the rex's young daughter would dominion the peace. "These regal 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 state of war, the illusion became more powerful than anyone could have imagined. "It was restorative," Jonathan Dimbleby, Richard's son and biographer, told me.
His brother, David, is likely to be backside the BBC microphone this time. The question volition be what the bells and the emblems and the heralds represent now. At what point does the pomp of an majestic monarchy become ridiculous amid the circumstances of a macerated nation? "The worry," a historian said, "is that it is merely circus animals."
If the monarchy exists as theatre, then this incertitude is the part of the drama. Can they yet pull information technology off? Knowing everything that nosotros know in 2017, how can it maybe hold that a single person might contain the soul of a nation? The betoken of the monarchy is not to reply such questions. It is to continue. "What a lot of our life we spend in interim," the Queen Female parent used to say.
Inside the Abbey, the archbishop will speak. During prayers, the broadcasters volition refrain from showing imperial faces. When the coffin emerges again, the pallbearers will place it on the light-green gun wagon that was used for the Queen's father, and his father and his male parent's begetter, and 138 junior sailors volition drop their heads to their chests and pull. The tradition of beingness hauled past the Royal Navy began in 1901 when Victoria's funeral horses, all white, threatened to bolt at Windsor Station and a waiting contingent of ratings stepped in to pull the bury instead.
The procession will swing on to the Mall. In 1952, the RAF was grounded out of respect for King George VI. 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 by road to Windsor Castle, which claims the bodies of British sovereigns. The imperial household volition be waiting for her, continuing on the grass. Then the cloister gates will be closed and cameras will terminate dissemination. Inside the chapel, the lift to the imperial vault will descend, and Rex Charles will drib a handful of red earth from a silver bowl.
This article was amended on sixteen March 2017 to correct some minor errors including the fact that iii of the Queen's terminal four prime ministers, not the terminal three, were born after her accretion – Blair, Cameron and May; that the Star of Africa on the royal sceptre is not the largest diamond in the globe, only the second-largest cut diamond; and that the give-and-take "son's" was originally missing from the second judgement in this passage: "In 1910, the mourners for Edward VII were led by his fox terrier, Caesar. His son's coffin was followed to Wolferton station, at Sandringham, by Jock, a white shooting pony."
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Source: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/16/what-happens-when-queen-elizabeth-dies-london-bridge
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