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W. Empire pod UK.com. Hello and me, welcome to Empire with me Anita Arnans.

And me, William. Hello and welcome to Empire with me Anita Arnan and me William Durham

So we are recording this episode of Empire during a week of official mourning

here in Great Britain after the death of Queen Elizabeth the second the longest

reigning monarch in British history and it is I mean it's an extraordinary time

William and I think partly because most people haven't gone through this before because the very by very virtue of the fact she's been on the throne for such a long time.

Most people have never been through a state funeral or a position where they've lost somebody

who was so woven into the fabric of British life.

I believe that in both Houses of Parliament, in the upper house and the low house, there's only one

pier who was around when the last

monarch died so it's completely new even for the politicians this is a completely new

territory I mean speaking for ourselves both of us grew up Britain, every stamp we licked as a child, every coin

that we put into a slot machine or a parking meter, every note that we withdrew from our wallets from our earliest days all had her face on it and

it is an extraordinary change it's it's like the the sky changing color or something

it's the things we've always imagined to be there, are suddenly not.

I mean, just to give people who don't live in, I mean, I'm in London at the moment, and just an idea of what's happened to the capital city.

If you travel by Tube, as I do, you have to go up very, very long escalators and there are advertising screens all the way up.

And they always have different things that they want you to buy and every single one of them had a picture of the Queen

...