I confess, reading all the news this morning, that I have had a quiet little cry.
She has been there all my life. My own mother was only 19 when Elizabeth ascended the throne, 11 years before I was born….
It feels quite strange that I am sat in a hotel room in Limerick, chairing a conference in Tokyo, in the small hours of the morning, reading The Guardian and the royal.uk websites, shedding a few tears…
I shall not mourn having left the UK. Life in Ireland has proven to be wonderful – and moving probably the best thing I ever did. But something that had somehow continued to make the UK home has now gone, and leaves with the country in turmoil and seemingly irrevocable decline …