Granted Freedom of the City of London in 1993, I have often been asked whether I had ever exercised my right to herd sheep or cattle across London Bridge. This ancient privilege to bring animals into the City without payment of tolls had long since been abandoned when the livestock markets closed and in any case was of no special importance once the gates and a single river crossing were replaced by the modern landscape we all know today.

They came from far and wide to pay their respects to a woman who had come to the throne as a young mother at the age of twenty-five when her father, King George the Sixth, had died suddenly in his sleep at the age of fifty-six in 1952. George had become king in 1936 because his elder brother had abdicated to marry Wallis Simpson, an American woman who had been married and divorced twice and was not considered suitable as a royal consort.