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THE SUN SAYS
Rest in peace, Ma’am. A light has gone out on our lives
A LIGHT has gone out on our lives.
The day Britain and much of the world dreaded is upon us. She is gone.
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The mother of our nation. The most famous, most loved, most respected woman on Earth. The longest-reigning Monarch in our history. Britain’s backbone.
The one constant, the one source of stability for us all throughout eight decades of tumult and change unimaginable to the world of 1952 when she came to the throne.
Our Head of State. Our Queen. Elizabeth II.
It is, quite simply, hard to think of British life without her presence.
Not many alive today have experienced it and what memories do remain of the years before her reign are dimming.
Hers is the head on our coins and banknotes. The picture on the walls of offices, factories and homes.
Hers was the voice of measured calm in the annual TV address on Christmas Day.
“God Save The Queen” is a phrase embedded in the consciousness of Britons of all ages and hundreds of millions worldwide.
The new world will seem strange.
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Our hearts go out to her children, her grandchildren and her great-grandchildren who loved her. To the staff who did too.
To the 14 Commonwealth realms for whom she was also monarch — and to the other Commonwealth countries too.
To the countless charities she championed. To all those people — billions over the decades — whose lives she touched in some way.
When she became Queen, Britain still had an empire
And to the legion of fans of our Royal Family, here and abroad, whose support for this ancient and sometimes controversial institution has been kept aloft by her lifelong devotion to duty and her stoicism . . . no matter what fate threw at her — and it threw plenty.
She was not just a figure of immense importance to the Britain of the last 70 years but to history — as the longest-serving of all our monarchs going back to Alfred the Great.
Her reign was so long as to boggle the mind. When she became Queen, just seven years after World War Two, Britain still had an empire. Some food was still rationed as the long aftermath of the war dragged on.
Elvis Presley was still at school, yet to sing a recorded note. The Beatles were five years away from even meeting.
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TV was in its infancy — Britain had one channel, the BBC Television Service. We were still 20 years away from ditching shillings and pence.
The tabloid Sun was 17 years away from launching, let alone becoming Britain’s biggest-selling paper.
The internet was 40-plus years in the future — smartphones nearly 60.
The Queen reigned through the administrations of 15 Prime Ministers from Winston Churchill to Liz Truss, whom she greeted at Balmoral three days ago, plus 14 US Presidents from Harry Truman to Joe Biden — meeting all of the latter bar one.
Her time took in extraordinary events. The end of our Empire. The assassination of John F Kennedy in 1963.
The Swinging Sixties, England’s 1966 World Cup victory, the Moon landing, the Vietnam War. Britain joined the Common Market. We suffered a dark decade of industrial strife, with power cuts.
The murderous “Troubles” in Northern Ireland were a nightly horror story on our TV news. The Queen’s own cousin Lord Mountbatten fell prey to the IRA.
Her son Charles married Diana Spencer. Margaret Thatcher held power for 11 years. Her second son Andrew joined the Task Force sent to repel the invading Argentines from the Falklands in 1982.
The Queen saw apartheid dismantled and communism implode. She saw Windsor Castle engulfed by fire and three of her children divorce.
She saw Britain help repel Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi forces from Kuwait.
Then came Diana’s death, 9/11, war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the marriage of her grandson and heir William and her hilarious, self-aware turn with James Bond at the opening of the 2012 Olympics which sent her popularity soaring further.
She watched bitter divisions erupt in her country. First with the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, then with the 2016 Brexit vote and its long repercussions and, briefly at least, with the seemingly real prospect of our first Marxist Government being elected.
Throughout it all her great love Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, remained her rock, her counsel and a sobering presence. Then in April 2021 he was gone.
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The mark of her greatness is that throughout it all, she barely put a foot wrong.
Through all the state openings of Parliament, the hundreds of Royal tours, the thousands upon thousands of speeches, official functions and State Visits.
She celebrated her Silver, Golden and Diamond Jubilees with her popularity rock-steady.
By the time of her Platinum Jubilee in June this year, she was too frail to take part in many of the celebrations, but wellwishers packed the streets throughout the four-day extravaganza.
When Her Majesty made a surprise appearance on the balcony of Buckingham Palace on the final day, it electrified the crowds below and delighted the millions watching at home.
Her dedication to her role and her country never wavered. And she never — well, almost never — revealed her true feelings.
She had an image of unfailing unflappability and a tendency towards coldness.
The latter is a misconception. She was never a humourless slave to her role.
Her life was full of joy. She loved her family, she loved horses and racing — at Ascot especially — she loved her corgis, her retreat at Balmoral in Scotland. She loved chocolate and gin.
Unstinting devotion to duty, with absolute conviction.
She has been a model monarch. Charles and after him William will have different styles — more populist and, perhaps, more activist.
But they would do well to learn from her unstinting devotion to duty and her absolute conviction that the position she inherited could never be a platform for advancing her personal views or promoting politically tinged causes.
She knew that the monarchy’s future and continued popularity rest on that essential understanding with the British people which fund it.
Arrangements for her state funeral have of course been in place for years. It will be the greatest of our lifetimes and one of the biggest TV events in history.
And while it is impossible here to capture fully what the Queen has meant to Britain and the world over nearly 70 years, let us finally say just this:
She did her country proud. Her epic reign has set a stellar example to all future monarchs.
Rest in peace, Ma’am. The Sun and our readers loved you. We are proud you were our Queen.
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And to Charles III . . . good luck, Sir.
God Save The King.
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