The time has come for me to disappear.
I knew that when the Queen died, the game was over for me. As a small boy (back in 1959), I attached myself to her coat-tails by a long, invisible, metaphorical thread and flew happily behind her for decades.
Occasionally I flew alongside her, and those moments were special. Her death on 8th September was like the sounding of the Last Post.
Until this May, the Coronation needed to be explained – an arrogant statement, but few had studied the ritual and few remembered the last great service in 1953. I had written a book about
