But Her Majesty’s mission was also an unprecedented global society. Five hundred heads of state and other foreign dignitaries came to the UK. Billions of people around the world, from Japan to Jamaica, are estimated to have watched the events – broadcast live in everything from converted cinemas to British-themed tea shops. The 50-strong crowds that lined the procession route booed, threw red roses and snapped pictures of the cortege on their phones. For one last time, Queen Elizabeth left the world in awe. The weather was poetic – a crisp and bright September day that sat on the threshold between summer and autumn. The mood was somber but determined. The staggering logistics were pulled off with military precision. A world leader in death as well as in life, the spiritual message was a message of hope that will have global significance. Hymns included My Soul, There is a Country, based on words by Henry Vaughan, a 17th-century poet who found solace in Jesus Christ and the metaphysical beauty of the Welsh landscape amid the darkness of the English Civil War. It was a powerful reminder that our monarch drew strength from her own ‘He who is permanent’ – and he, to her, was God. Justin Welby ended his sermon fittingly with the affirmation: “Service in life, hope in death.” Such a message could only be reassuring to the late queen’s many fans around the world who worry that her light being extinguished somehow heralds a new era of uncertainty and darkness. Somehow, though, everything has changed and nothing has changed. At the late Queen’s coronation nearly 70 years ago, the country did not know whether to await a new Elizabethan Age full of dynamism or prepare for national decline. In the end, the crowd agreed to feel “very proud of it all and the fact that we put on a pretty good show.” Today, the country can once again feel proud of its ability to hold a major royal event. But more than that, our country has, in its own way, proved to be a model for the world to follow. Read the copious reports in the foreign press and it is clear that other nations have spotted in Britain something they admire and wish they could emulate. Not necessarily the pomp and grandeur of ancient institutions and customs. Rather, an elegant confidence and quiet resilience that can only come from finding a balance between modernity and tradition. It is true that monarchies are in decline around the world, with 7.6 percent of the world’s population living under such institutions compared with more than a third in the 1950s. Global attitudes toward Britain are undoubtedly differentiated. A crowd awestruck by the grandeur of the ceremony has also hotly debated our country’s colonial heritage. However, with a few ignoble exceptions, the death of Queen Elizabeth has been an unprecedented global unification. Friends and foes alike have looked to Britain longingly for something they lack. Consider the United States. If the country’s media is any guide, the avatar of modernity in the world is fascinated not just by the fact that we are in touch with our traditions, but that we are one step further – a nation living in history. They have marveled that people were happy to queue for hours to catch a glimpse of the Queen as she was in state. They have looked at the audience’s deep and instinctive connection to the past, as well as the historical present. In contrast, Americans may not have an emotional connection to the story. As a forward-looking nation since its founding, the country has been driven by a drive towards the American Dream. And yet, faced with fears of her decline and the pressure to confront her own historical sins, attitudes change. As one Wall Street Journal columnist put it, Americans found in Britain the reassurance that “there’s nothing wrong with telling the story, putting it out there for the world to see… Respect the past and respect your memory.” . One wonders if some in China have a similar epiphany. A media that tends to dismiss Britain as a fading empire has expressed a wistful admiration for the late queen as an embodiment of duty and dignity, a force that “never changed”. In a country that is steadily beginning to question its own mania for modernity, this is perhaps not surprising. A small but powerful school of Chinese thinkers is increasingly despairing of the price their country must pay for its relentless pursuit of progress – rootlessness, boredom and “elimination of all appreciation of the divine”. He has speculated on whether China made a disastrous mistake in the 20th century by seeking to emulate the French revolutionary model rather than the English reformist one. In France itself – where there has been wall-to-wall coverage – there are similar traces of grief. Take the renowned academic, Christian Monjou, who has suggested that France mourns not just the queen, but a continuity missing from its own presidential system, due to the “barbaric syllabification” in its history, the French Revolution. Even former colonies have shown a deep, complicated admiration for the Queen. Nigerians have in recent days been particularly fascinated with her legacy. In her they saw a leader who embodied the middle-class values of the time and yet charmed the world “in the original African sense of keeping people spellbound”. Paradoxically, even our enemies see something in Britain that they have lost. Russians seem to have felt genuinely hurt when their leaders were excluded from the funeral, to the point where they condemned it as “blasphemy”. Strange as it may sound, many see in the British royal family the miraculous preservation of mystical values that they believe have been trampled elsewhere in the West over the years. The Russian press has admired the divine “secret” of monarchical power and the late queen’s ability to make the royal family more open “without destroying the veil of secrecy.” In short, almost every country is tormented by the same question: how to reconcile tradition and modernity. And in Britain, many can see the tantalizing glimmers of an answer. This is not a perfect country. But we can be proud that, in the late Queen, we were blessed with something that eludes much of the rest of the world – a rock, a lodestar, an unchanging logo in an ever-changing world. May she rest in peace.
