Missed everything because of being at work.
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I would have too if my students (I’m guessing) hadn’t given me covid! Energy level about 10% so was in sofa all day!
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Watched on bbc, listened on various (including FranceInfo).
Thought ABC’s sermon was great.
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Thought some on SF might appreciate this NY Times’ perspective on the day:-
Her Majesty’s Last Broadcast
The long reign of Queen Elizabeth II began on television, and on Monday a global audience watched her coffin reach its final resting place, at St. George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle.
The long reign of Queen Elizabeth II began on television, and on Monday a global audience watched her coffin reach its final resting place, at St. George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle.
Television introduced Queen Elizabeth II to the world. It was only fitting that television should see her out of it.
The queen’s seven-decade reign almost exactly spanned the modern TV era. Her coronation in 1953 began the age of global video spectacles. Her funeral on Monday was a full-color pageant accessible to billions.
It was a final display of the force of two institutions: the concentrated grandeur of the British monarchy and the power amassed by television to bring viewers to every corner of the world.
“I have to be seen to be believed,” Elizabeth once reportedly said. It was less a boast than an acknowledgment of a modern duty. One had to be seen , whether one liked it or not. It was her source of authority at a time when the crown’s power no longer came through fleets of ships. It was how she provided her country reassurance and projected stability.
The last funeral service for a British monarch, King George VI, was not televised. For one last time, Elizabeth was the first. She entered the world stage, through the new magic of broadcasting, as a resolute young face. She departed it as a bejeweled crown on a purple cushion, transmuted finally into pure visual symbol.
Americans who woke up early Monday (or stayed up, in some time zones) saw striking images aplenty, on every news network. The breathtaking God’s-eye view from above the coffin in Westminster Abbey. The continuous stream of world leaders. The thick crowds along the procession to Windsor, flinging flowers at the motorcade. The corgis.
Viewers also saw and heard something unusual in the TV news environment: long stretches of unnarrated live action — the speaking of prayers, the clop of horse hooves — and moments of stillness. This was notable in the golf-whisper coverage on BBC World News, which let scenes like the loading of the coffin onto a gun carriage play out in silence, its screen bare of the usual lower-thirds captions.
The commercial American networks, being the distant relations at this service, filled in the gaps with chattery bits of history and analysis. News departments called in the Brits. (On Fox News, the reality-TV fixtures Piers Morgan and Sharon Osbourne critiqued Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s media ventures.) “Royal commentators” broke down points of protocol and inventoried the materials and symbolism of the crown, scepter and orb like auction appraisers.
But even American TV fell still during the funeral ceremony. The cameras drank in the Gothic arches of Westminster Abbey, bathed in the hymns of the choirs, goggled at the royal jewels, lingered on the solemn face of Charles III during the performance of — it still sounds strange — “God Save the King.” Finally, we watched from above as bearers carried the coffin step by step across the black-and-white-diamond floor like an ornate chess piece.
The quiet spectating was a gesture of respect but also a kind of tourist’s awe. We had come all this way; of course we wanted to take in the sights.
Elizabeth’s reign was marked by unprecedented visibility, for better or worse. Her coronation in 1953 spurred the British to buy television sets, bringing the country into the TV age and inviting the public into an event once reserved for the upper crust.
This changed something essential in the relation of the masses to the monarchy. The coronation, with its vestments and blessings, signified the exclusive connection of the monarch to God. Once that was no longer exclusive, everything else in the relationship between the ruler and the public was up for negotiation.
The young queen resisted letting in the cameras. The prime minister Winston Churchill worried about making the ritual into a “theatrical performance.” But Elizabeth could no more stop the force of media than her forebear King Canute could halt the tide.
TV undercut the mystique of royalty but spread its image, expanding the queen’s virtual reach even as the colonial empire diminished. There were other surviving monarchies in the world, but the Windsors were the default royals of TV-dom, the main characters in a generational reality-TV soap opera. They became global celebrities, through scandals, weddings, deaths and “The Crown.”
The coronation had worldwide effects too. It began the age when TV would bring the world into your living room live — or at least close to it. In 1953, with live trans-Atlantic broadcasts still not yet possible, CBS and NBC raced to fly the kinescopes of the event across the ocean in airplanes with their seats removed to fit in editing equipment. (They both lost to Canada’s CBC, which got its footage home first.)
The next day’s Times as the “birth of international television,” marveling that American viewers “probably saw more than the peers and peeresses in their seats in the transept.” Boy, did they: NBC’s “Today” show coverage, which carried a radio feed of the coronation, [included an appearance]
The one limit on cameras at Elizabeth’s coronation was to deny them a view of the ritual anointment of the new queen. By 2022, viewers take divine omniscience for granted. If we can think of it, we should be able to see it.
The hearse was designed to allow spectators to see the coffin as it passed by.
So after Elizabeth’s death, you could monitor the convoy from Balmoral Castle in Scotland to London, with a glassy hearse designed and lit to make the coffin visible. You could watch the queen’s lying-in-state in Westminster Hall on live video feeds, from numerous angles, the silence broken only by the occasional cry of a baby or cough of a guard. The faces came and went, including the queen’s grandchildren joining the tribute, but the camera’s vigil was constant.
After 70 years, however, television has lost its exclusive empire as well. Even as it broadcast what was described — plausibly but vaguely — as the most-watched event in history, traditional TV shared the funeral audience with the internet and social media.
Elizabeth and the medium that defined her reign were both unifiers of a kind that we might not see again. Though not all of the British support the monarchy, the queen offered her fractious country a sense of constancy. TV brought together disparate populations in the communal experience of seeing the same thing at once.
Now what? Tina Brown, the writer, editor and royal-watcher, asked on CBS, “Will anyone be loved by the nation so much again?” You could also ask: Will Charles’s coronation next year be nearly as big a global media event? Will anything? (You could also ask whether an event like this should be so all-consuming. While American TV news was wall-to-wall with an overseas funeral, Puerto Rico was flooded and without power from Hurricane Fiona.)
Monday’s services felt like a capstone to two eras. For one day, we saw a display of the pageantry that the crown can command and the global audience that TV can.
American TV spent its full morning with the queen. (Well, almost: CBS aired the season premiere of “The Price Is Right.”) The day’s pomp built toward one more never-before-broadcast ceremony, the removal of scepter, orb and crown from the coffin, which was lowered into the vault at St. George’s Chapel in Windsor. Then followed something almost unimaginable: A private burial service, with no TV cameras.
Television got one final spectacle out of Elizabeth’s reign. And the queen had one final moment out of the public eye.
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My mother was born in 1926 like the late Queen.
My mother died 40 years ago in 1982 after a long battle with cancer.
She hung on long enough to hold our first child.
Our 4 children never knew my mother.
Our children are all royalists like their parents.
Like us they all watched todays proceedings.
They loved the Queen who was in some way the grandmother they didn’t have.
The Queen has reigned through my entire life.
I wish my mother had reigned just a little longer😪
Rest in peace both of you.
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Oh bless her 
. My nan was also born the same year as the queen. I was blessed with 46 years of having her in my life. She passed just in April. Mum is here for the first time in 4 years so lots of tears and memories and lovely to share today with her on the sofa. Covid for the first time for both of us turned out to have a silver lining this week as I can’t go to work we can be together, she flys out Sunday.
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At the 7.30pm ceremomy at least the family will have been able to cry. Instead of the formality of the day. And I’m guessing that Philip will have been moved to join her before everything is then closed.
A sad, sad day. For those of us in the Commonwealth she was our mother.
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To be absolutely honest we got tired of the whole thing. It just went on, and on and on. My wife is sympathetic towards the monarchy. I’m no great fan of the House of Windsor but I guess that, had we been in the UK and within easy distance to one of the routes, we would have gone along to watch the procession.
But now it’s time to get back to reality. The Brits have some huge problems to face and it’s time to bite the bullet.
Gus
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Little things stick in your mind.
Soon after the service began in Westminster Abbey the camera was fixed on the coffin and the various robed clergy stood close by. As one of these chappies opened his order of service a large note fell from it and fluttered to the floor landing within touching distance of the coffin and in clear sight.
Almost immediately the camera shot changed but for a short while the note was still visible. We watched in fascination to see if the chappie would pick it up who by now would surely be red faced and extremely embarrassed but if he were to bend over to pick it up then surely his head gear would have fallen off.
Within a few minutes the congregation burst into song and low and behold when the camera returned to the coffin the littering note was gone.
I wonder who picked it up.
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I was waiting to see if any of the crown jewels would be dropped, that poor man with one in each hand must have been practising hard with bags of sugar. Apparently the coffin weighed around 500 lbs with all that lead inside. My son said it must have been horrible for the pallbearers to feel the body rocking about and he was upset by it when he carried his granddad five years ago into the crem with his cousins.
I completely missed theWestminster Abbey service, and then left the TV on so only saw bits and pieces as I did other things. (One piece was Emma the pony which was touching).
I had in my head that I could always watch on replay with my coffee this morning. However I realise that I have zero interest in doing that; the event only had meaning to me watching in real time. Otherwise could just be some glossy fictional show. Strange.
It was a fictional show ,done to manipulate the masses ,it worked but that is my opinion of course.
It was a period of transition that’s extended over decades from Suez to Brexit, distilled into a day of ceremonial ritual. A sort of socio-historical/cultural full-stop.
This is a wickedly funny take on the media circus that some may enjoy reading. Spoiler Alert - irreverent.
“ oh f**k, here comes Nicholas Witchell“
It was exactly what I thought about the whole thing and no I don’t have any respect😃
Thanks, I might even get the opportunity to reread it in print before my subscription expires.
This is because I’ve just cancelled my longstanding subscription to the LRB as (unlike the NY RB) in recent years the content seems to have become increasingly Anglo, sorry London centric and increasingly irrelevant to my life outside the UK.
Ha! Ha!
I don’t subscribe to any blog, other than SF, this article just popped up while I was fact checking if it was Ian Hislop who coined the term “floral facism” in 1997. It made me laugh so I thought others might enjoy it too.