The Queen

 I usually watch the press preview at 10.30pm or 11.30pm on the BBC news channel. It like to see how the papers plan to cover the different stories the next day.

 

On the day Prince Philip died, there was one story that dominated every front page. Of all the many striking front pages, the one I liked most was the Daily Mirror's.

 

What I most like about their front page, in addition to the beautiful picture, is the way that they focus in on what is surely the heart of the story: an extraordinary loving partnership of more than 73 years that has now come to an end.

 

Constitutional monarchy brings the events of family life that matter to us all, births, deaths, and marriages, into the very heart of our common life as a nation. 

 

A nation mourns. A world even mourns. But at Windsor, a wife mourns, and she steps out on the next stage of her life's journey without the man who has walked beside her (or was it two paces behind?) unfailingly and reliably for so long.

 

So, yes, God save the Queen, but also God bless the Queen, and, most of all,  God comfort the Queen.