On the morning of Her Majesty the Queen’s funeral, on one of those September days in London when shafts of golden sunlight glint through the clouds and fall on the city’s browning greens, I made my way to Hyde Park with friends to join the crowds and take it in.
It felt, as everyone noted, like living history. People were hushed but alive with the promise of the experience, as they gathered round large screens or inched as close as they could to the barricades by the funeral procession. Whatever your view of monarchy – having been born in a former colony and lived the immigrant experience first-hand, my own opinion is nuanced – it was extraordinary to see. There was so much beauty and pageantry. It felt like a farewell to a Britain of the past. Some people were ready for that, and yet that was the thing about the Queen: for most, there was always something to like. Personally, I responded to her steadiness, her dependable, joy-filled fashion choices, her kind but no-nonsense manners, her tireless devotion to others.
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She was, like all those who endure, curious and conscientious to the end.
In the weeks since her death was announced, the country has felt different. Granted it is neither a great surprise nor even a misfortune to die at a grand old age after an extraordinarily full life. Her passing did not contain the electric shock of Diana, Princess of Wales’s tragic death in 1997, but there has been a shift in its wake. A constant thread through our collective lives, throughout her 70-year reign she served not only her mission but as an almost touchable link to the fabric of history itself. Now she has gone and with her so many of our own memories – of our childhoods, of our parents and their childhoods – seem to have drifted a little further into the mist. As has been noted, with the Queen’s passing it is as though the long tail of the 20th century has finally wagged its last.
British Vogue itself was already 10 years old when the Queen was born in 1926. Despite her record-breaking reign, she was, by the time of her Coronation in 1953, the fourth monarch in this magazine’s life. In rare tribute, royal purple envelopes this month’s special commemorative cover for the first time since 1952. On page 170, the worlds of fashion, culture and politics share their fondest memories of Her Majesty, while on page 164 we look at the special bonds that run through the generations of women who precede and succeed her, as captured in the magazine through the decades. On page 180, former press secretary Colleen Harris writes exclusively on the approaching reign of His Majesty King Charles III, a man she long worked with.
For Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, it is a farewell from Vogue. More than that, it is a thank you.
