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Hello and welcome to Spectator Out Loud.

Each week we choose three pieces from The Spectator and ask their writers to read them aloud.

I'm Oscar Edmonton and on the podcast this week.

After the sad passing of the longest serving monarch in British history, the great Queen Elizabeth II,

Melanie McDonough reads her poignant piece on how Britain, as a nation, will be lesser without her.

Then, turning to politics, and as we look ahead to a period of suspension of Parliament as the nation mourns,

Katie Balls gives us an update on how Liz Truss is shaking up Downing Street.

And finally, Nigel Richardson, author of the new book The Accidental Detectorist,

tells us how metal detecting has captured his imagination.

First, Melanie McDonough.

The loneliest thing about being as long lived as the Queen at 96 is that you have few or no contemporaries.

Few people reach her age. Indeed, not that many people remember the time before she became Queen in 1952, 70 years ago. She has been, simply by living for as long as she did,

the one element of continuity in the life of the nation.

In the 70 years of our reign, everything changed.

Britain isn't the country it was then, for better and worse, but the Queen was a

constant. Her presence in Parliament, at great events, on the BBC on Christmas Day, on stamps

and currency, gave Britain an extraordinary psychological stability during a period of upheaval.

She was, in her contained and dignified way, a carapace over the nation, an unseen and taken for granted protective presence.

It's something you only notice when it's taken away.

...