It was a day we all knew must come, but somehow never quite believed it would.

Despite her advanced years and increasing signs of ill health, the Queen’s death still came as a shock. We had seen her only two days before, carrying out her constitutional role of asking Liz Truss to form a new government.

Although obviously frail, the smile on the face of the Queen led us to believe that she would be with us a while yet.

It is not difficult to understand why so many people have found it hard to believe she has gone.

Most people alive today have no memory of living under any other monarch. An early, and very fond, memory of people my age is the street party we went to as children to celebrate her Silver Jubilee forty-five years ago.

For seventy years she has been our head of state, a symbol of continuity in an ever-changing world.

Just the simple fact that there were fifteen different prime ministers during her reign emphasises the huge changes that have occurred in Britain and the world during her time on the throne.

It used to be the case that “ages” were named after our monarchs – Victorian, Georgian, Regency and so on – but the last time this meaningfully happened was the Edwardian Age at the start of the twentieth century.

The pace of change in the modern world is now so great that the reign of a monarch can no longer immediately conjure up a picture of what life was like in Britain. When you think of art, music, architecture, politics, technology – there is nothing that could be encapsulated in the term “Elizabethan”.

The only thing that remained constant during the last seventy years was the Queen herself, providing a lifetime of dedication and service to the country from the day she became Queen to the day she died.

She was always someone we could rely on and, even if we didn’t think of her every day, it was comforting to know she was there.

And because she fulfilled her constitutional role impeccably, keeping her personal views private in a way that most of us – and certainly politicians like myself! – would find impossible, she was able to unite the country in a way that no one else could.

There are no better examples than during Covid. Her broadcast to the country at the start of lockdown, urging us to keep going through difficult times but providing the hope that “we will meet again” struck exactly the right note.

The incredibly moving photo of the Queen sitting alone at the funeral of Prince Philip did more than anything to bring us together by showing that she was following the same rules and suffering the same personal cost as the rest of us.

It was both heart-breaking and inspiring in equal measure but the one thing it wasn’t was surprising – it is exactly what we would have expected the Queen to do.

It is said that we live in a much more selfish age and perhaps the Queen’s extraordinary lifetime of service is more than we can reasonably expect anyone else to live up to, but it is certainly something to be greatly admired and, at least in part, to be aspired to.

We now have a new monarch and for months we will be surprised by the small changes in things and phrases associated with the Queen that we always took for granted: the monarch’s head on our notes, coins and stamps will change to King Charles; our national anthem is now God Save The King; senior barristers are now Kings Counsel and criminals will be sent to prison to serve time “at His Majesty’s pleasure”; we will be paying our taxes to His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs.

But for those of us who lived through the longest reign in British history, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will always retain a special place in our hearts.