In 2002 I attended the lying-in-state of the Queen Mother. I did it as part of the grand old British tradition of faintly annoying all your left-wing friends. I also thought it might be an interesting dollop of history-in-the-making.
How right I was. Along the South Bank, round midnight, I joined the queue – quite drunk, I admit, but I was hardly alone in this. For two hours the jolly, chatty queue: a BBC screenwriter’s ideal mix of creeds, ethnicities, ages, jobs, disabilities, achievements, motivations, politics. A surprising number were definitely socialists. We swapped jokes, advice, stories; we shared sweet royal anecdotes, filthy royal gossip, pleasant ham sandwiches. And a couple of hot toddies.
Then, at about 2am, we finally reached the much-trodden threshold of venerable Westminster Hall, and we were allowed inside, and all jollity and chattiness fell instantly away. Because there she was. The Queen Mum, the nation’s granny. And the last Empress of India. Her crown glittered magnificently on top of the silken drapes, covering her poignantly small casket, balanced on its mighty catafalque – just the word catafalque gives me a shiver. And all this was protected at each corner by those four lofty, scarlet guardsmen, stiff and proud in the half dark, with their heads bowed in absolute, reverent silence. You could have heard a silver Roman pin drop.
The spectacle is bewildering, sobering, heartening, and mesmerising. Here is all human comedy
The setting, of course, made it all the more impressive. Here we were, with the dead Queen-Empress and her richly jewelled crown, in Westminster Hall. Rufus’ Roaring Hall. The mighty national room built by the son of William the Conqueror – a direct ancestor of the Queen – and where Oliver Cromwell sent Charles I – a direct ancestor of the Queen – to the axeman. And this enacted on ground first made sacred by the Anglo Saxon kings – also, direct ancestors of the Queen. 1300 years of peerless history in 30 tremendous seconds.
Above us, the watchful angels of that grand, exhilaratingly improbable hammer-beam roof stared down. One of the wonders of the Middle Ages, yet still miraculously intact after so many centuries: like the British Monarchy itself.
I have, of course, been thinking about all this as we’ve watched the last few days of National Mourning. I’ve been marvelling at the beautiful ritual, the inch-perfect ceremonial. The British royal family has survived partly because they get this stuff right. They know it is a hugely important part of the job: the spectacle. The royal family provides what many people crave, a mass shared experience, and they do it elegantly and sumptuously. It is Old Skool Religion for an unsure and agnostic age.
The queue for the lying-in-state is itself a medieval pilgrimage. The long painful queue is fundamental to the experience. There is no emotional gain from getting a taxi to Santiago de Compostela. You need to suffer to get the spiritual reward.
This time around, however, there is one remarkable, unexpected innovation which has startled me. And again it is part of the lying-in-state: I’m talking about the way the TV companies are videoing the thousands and thousands of mourners as they slowly and mutely shuffle past the catafalque bearing Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. In particular, when the cameras decide to do close-ups, the effect is utterly compelling.
I confess I have watched hours of this stuff (which might make my anti-royalist friends question my sanity, not just mock my fealty). But I reckon I am not alone. The spectacle is bewildering, sobering, heartening, and mesmerising. Here is all human comedy. Here are ten thousand tiny Renaissance portraits, each of an individual, with their different reactions.
The mind speeds with questions as you watch them. Why has the guy with his lunchbox showed up with a scowl? What’s the point? Why is that very young woman crying so hard? Who is the dude in the green tee who apparently doesn’t care, but then suddenly bows, deeply?
My favourite cameo – of the hours I watched – was the middle aged daughter wheeling in – it seemed – her very elderly mother in a wheelchair. They stopped in front of the dead queen. The mother shut her eyes. The daughter brushed away a single tear. Then the daughter quietly kissed her mother. And off they went.
I confess I nearly brushed away a tear of my own. It was and is inexplicably moving. Something of the mighty human power of monarchy is detailed here, something pagan yet Christian, something primitive in its ritual, yet 21st century in its technology. I haven’t quite processed what it all means, yet. But I suspect it means at least this: my left-wing republican friends will be irritated for decades to come, because a monarchy that can accomplish this is in no mood to quit the grand, sparkling, troubling, uplifting, exquisitely ritualised stage-set of British history.
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