From New York Times, I'm Michael Bavaro. This is a Daily.

When Queen Elizabeth is laid to rest today, it will mark the end not just of her 70-year

reign over the United Kingdom. As my colleague Mark Landler explains, it may mark the end

of the United Kingdom as we know it. It's Monday, September 19th.

Mark, you are in London where the Queen's funeral is being held today. I'm curious what

the feel is in that city right now if you could set the scene for us a little bit.

Well, Michael, it's truly going to be one of the extraordinary public spectacles of the

last several decades in this country. It's the first state funeral since one for Winston

Churchill in 1965, so the year I was born. It's also the culmination of 10 days of collective

national mourning and tributes to Queen Elizabeth, some of which have been really quite striking

and poignant. From across the United Kingdom and around the globe, they came and they waited

and they queued. There have been lines of people some six or eight miles long snaking

across the River Thames. Why did you decide that you had to do this? That it was important

enough to stand up all night long? What did the woman do? She gave us her life and we

can't get with this. One day out of my life, for her lifetime of commitment. Waiting to

go in and pass by her coffin, which is lying in state. I thought to myself, I'll never

see her again. So, it's too much. People crying, saluting, bowing, blessing themselves.

It's a teaching moving, solemn, emotion. It was a very special moment.

So there's been this kind of extraordinary national outpouring of sadness, of reverence,

of respect. All of that will sort of come to a symbolic climax today. But with the end

of all of this ceremony, actually comes the beginning of a kind of a more uncertain

period where I think a lot of Britons will begin perhaps a long delayed conversation about

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