Lying in State

Watch the continuous live stream from Westminster Hall without commentary
via Sky News here.

In accordance with royal tradition, on Wednesday afternoon the coffin of Her Majesty the Queen, with the Imperial State Crown glittering on top, was brought from Buckingham Palace on a Royal Navy gun carriage to lie in state at Westminster Hall, erected by order of her ancestor, King William II, nearly a thousand years ago.  

The Queen was accompanied in the procession by a scarlet-coated guard of honor, followed on foot by the King, his brothers, sons, and other male relatives.  The Princess Royal walked next to her brother the King.  The rest of the royal ladies, including the Queen Consort and the Princess of Wales, were brought to the Hall by limousines via a different route.

After a short service of prayers by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Dean of Westminster Abbey (directly across the street from the Hall), and a couple of musical offerings by the Choir of the Chapel Royal, a guard of honor took up positions around the casket, beginning the first of many vigil shifts that will go on continuously until Monday morning, the day of her state funeral.  

The Royal Family having departed, the doors were opened to a miles-long queue of what used to be called Her Majesty's loyal subjects (a taboo word now) and others from the Commonwealth and around the world.  Hundreds of thousands are expected to pay their respects in the next several days. 

The procession:

 

The service:

 

The BBC provides a helpful guide to events during the period of lying in state.

Here follow tributes to Her late Majesty by the former Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom. 

Former Conservative Prime Minister (1990-1997) Sir John Major, a very fine man:

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Former Labour Prime Minister (1997-2007) Sir Tony Blair:

 

Former Conservative Prime Minister (2010-2016) David Cameron:

 

Former Labour Prime Minister (2007-2010) Gordon Brown:

 

Former Conservative Prime Minister (2019-2022) Boris Johnson brilliantly delineates the qualities that made Elizabeth II a great monarch:

 

And former Conservative Prime Minister (2016-2019) Theresa May has the last laugh:

 

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Theresa May on Absolutism and Tribalism

As a foreigner, I will forbear to judge Mrs. May's tenure at the head of the British government; but in one of her last speeches as Prime Minister, she has some things to say about the corrosion of democracy in Britain that are just as applicable to the American scene.




As Mrs. May observes, the disintegration of democracy, civility, and fraternity seems to be happening all over the world -- and with alarming speed, is what I say. Until just a couple of years ago, it was still possible to believe that sanity and good sense would somehow prevail among the peoples of the world and here at home; now I am not so sure.

But there this weary old man must leave you to make your own reflections.

Brexit: A Comedy of Errors

Longtime readers of this blog will know that your Head Trucker is a thoroughgoing Anglophile who takes a continuing friendly interest in the scepter'd isle and its people, our not-so-distant cousins linked to us in all manner of ways, including law, language, literature, and custom, with amusing variations on both sides.  Not to mention all those fascinating BBC historical dramas we have loved so much over the years.

In just the last few weeks, I have become - most unexpectedly - engrossed in their newest historical drama, broadcast in real time, and it's a doozy.  I tell you what.  Not even ol' Will the Bard himself could touch this for intrigue, passion, plot twists, comic foils, drama queens, and bitter tragedy.  I won't spoil the plot for you - I can't, really, because there isn't one - but CBS Sunday Morning offers this helpful summary up through last weekend:



However, be advised that this summary is already clean out of date, events having moved so quickly over there in just the last four days. To give just one example: the well-starched Jacob Rees-Mogg, portrayed as one of the sternest champions of Brexit, has now done a complete 180 and is voting in Parliament for what he swore he never would, and encouraging others to do the same, whilst his boss, the embattled Theresa May, has promised (sort of) to step down as Prime Minister if only Parliament will pass her deal. Fascinating. This beats "Who Shot J.R.?" all to slap.  I tell you what.

The dizzying cast of characters and shifts of allegiances back and forth, and side to side, are guaranteed to keep you on the edge of your seat. Of course, it's hard to tell the players without a scorecard, but I can offer you this clue: it does seem to your Head Trucker that the Leave people are very like our current Republicans (Make America Britain Great Again); whilst the Remainers are rather like our current Democrats, and about as well organized, but great at coming up with clever posters and fun protest marches. Enuff said.

Although billed as a comedy, I do very much fear that it will all end in tears, and eventually, the collapse of Western civilization on both sides of the Atlantic, not just ours.  (Some people in Britain are stockpiling their closets with food and other essentials in case it all goes awry.)  But what do I know?

Perhaps you should just tune in and decide for yourself.  If you poke around in the Politics sections of the Guardian and the BBC, you will often find live broadcasts or blogs of the goings-on in Parliament, while Sky News usually has updates on the half-hour.  I offer these particular links simply because they are free and require no subscription to access; there are of course many other news sources in Britain that you can google up on your own.  The three I just mentioned are generally pro-Remain, neutral, and pro-Leave, respectively.

And for those few, those very few, of my fellow Americans who would like to hear a reasoned, impartial analysis of the Brexit mess, I recommend this lecture given two weeks ago by historian Vernon Bogdanor, one of Britain's foremost constitutional scholars, for your edification:

That British Show

Doubtless I am not alone amongst my truckbuddies in having spent the last three weeks breathlessly watching every twist and turn of the plot in this soap-opera-to-end-all-soap-operas, studying every nuance of detail, and gasping as one after another leading character gets killed off in the most unlikely ways.

But now, in what may be the season finale before the summer hiatus, we learn that "Brexit means Brexit" after all, and the new matriarch of the clan has set to work with pail and swab, busily mopping up the blood in the dimly-lit corridors and claiming the head seat in the boardroom, promising a "better Britain" - mais oui, what else could anyone promise at this point?

But every good soap must end the season with a shockeroo, and this one is no exception to the rule: guess who has been resurrected from the political graveyard and propelled straightaway into the third-highest post in the land? Why, good old Boris, that's who! Silly-willy-nilly-all-stuffed-with-fluff Boris.  You know, you can't ever really kill off a popular character like that, no matter how annoying or devious.  Whenever the plot starts to drag a little, they have to be revived in one ingenious way or another to keep the audience hooked.

Yes, Boris to the Foreign Office - ah, those Brits with their inscrutable humor! This plot has more dead bodies and red herrings than any country-house whodunit. I'm sure somewhere Shakespeare is chuckling softly to himself and saying, "'Zounds, why didn't I think of that?"

The Telegraph summarizes today's episode in a nutshell, just in case you forgot to set your TiVo:




Of course as everyone knows, the US of A takes the palm for edge-of-your-seat thrillers. I just hope our own national drama doesn't turn out to be Nightmare on Pennsylvania Avenue. Oh please God, no.