It's surprising how often we use this phrase, end of an era, to talk about really insubstantial, insignificant things.

This is, this moment is, the end of an actual era.

It's the end of the Elizabethan age, the reign of Queen Elizabeth II.

And suddenly it feels enormous.

She has been this monarch of stability and continuity in all our lives,

and is probably the most famous woman in the world.

And a rain that stretches from just after the Second World War through to today when the announcement of her death comes on Twitter.

That's the first sign of it, in this digital age.

And yet she was there through decades when people would gather around a wireless set to hear what the news was.

And obviously, the place of convergence this evening is Buckingham Palace.

Thousands and thousands of people who are coming in silence with the rain pouring down

and central London.

I covered the death of Pope John Paul II and then I was in Rome and you saw thousands

and thousands of people like a cup final descending on St Peter Square in silence and there was

something that made the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.

There's so many odd new phrases, Lewis, that we're going to have to get used to.

The king? The king. Long live the king. The king. The sense that all the images of the queen that

we used to, the money, the stamps, the things that we take for granted that have just been

part of the fabric of this country.

Yeah, and actually for me, that came almost instantly because I saw the tweet of all things,

the tweet from the royal family, and it said a statement from His Majesty, the King.

That is a phrase that has not been uttered in Britain for 70 years.

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