Born in to a life of expectation, ceremony... and as it turns out servitude for an entire country - she rose to the challenge exceptionally and defined the role of head of state.
My favourite quotation I have heard this evening is that she saw her role as 'Easing the passage of change for the British people'. Which sounds about right - a famous example being she beat almost all of us to the internet sending her first email on the ARPANET in 1976...
Like many Britons I have never known an era outside of the Second Elizabethan, and I'm sure I will really never know the actual effect her guiding hand may have had on the country as it traversed uncertain waters over the last seven decades - the details of the conversations in her weekly meetings with the Prime Ministers during her reign, all 15 of them, remaining a closely guarded secret.
A persons passing is terribly sad, but as was pointed out on the radio as I drive home, this monarch maybe more than any who had come before her is notable as not just having been closely known across the country, not just being known across the commonwealth, but known across the world.
Farewell, Big Liz.
