The funeral rites for the Queen are the nation’s formal farewell to the woman who reigned for an unprecedented 70 years.
The Queen carried out her duties up until her death at Balmoral in Scotland, having also juggled a family life relentlessly exposed to the scrutiny of the press and, unlike her predecessors, television.
She reigned from a period when the nation was still recovering from the Second World War and was going through a period of intense social change.
The Empire’s transformation into the Commonwealth had already started but continued under her reign.
The advent of the 1960s brought in an era of change, with laws on the death penalty, same-sex relationships and abortion all changed during that decade and an explosion in youth culture in what had been a more genteel nation.
The 1980s saw the Queen’s children take big steps in their personal lives, with the weddings of Charles and Diana, and Andrew and Sarah Ferguson.
Princess Anne had wed Captain Mark Phillips in the 1970s.
The Queen continued to make overseas tours, including to Russia, which was more monarchy-friendly than the previous Soviet Union.
The Queen addressed the nation during the coronavirus lockdown with a message of We’ll Meet Again – she observed the rules in a bubble and one of her few public duties was to emerge from Windsor Castle to knight Captain Sir Tom Moore, who had kept up the nation’s spirits with his fundraising.
She also continued to follow guidance at the funeral of her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, where she sat alone.
As the nation got back to normal, the feelgood factor returned with a Platinum Jubilee which saw the Queen joined on the royal balcony with three people also likely to occupy the throne, Charles, William and George.
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Her death at Balmoral at the age of 96 brought to an end a reign that had started as a young mother of 25, and a period of mourning ensued as her body travelled to Edinburgh and then London, with her journey ending in Windsor, where she will be laid to rest in a chapel alongside Philip, her parents and the ashes of her sister Margaret.
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