A year ago today.

 The first anniversary of Her Majesty the Queen's death.

Exactly a year ago today we mourned the loss of the greatest monarch Britain had ever seen. Today 12 months ago the good people of Great Britain bid farewell to Her Majesty the Queen. She died peacefully with all of her adoring family around her, paying the warmest of homages to the one member of the royal family who had given unstinting dedication to duty to both Britain and the Commonwealth. She provided us with continuity, sacrifice and undying love to all and sundry regardless of class, religion, background or any country who had held her in such high esteem. 

But make no mistake Her Majesty the Queen was quite the most extraordinary of all public figures. For just over 70 years she put the interests of the public before everything else and never flinched from the most demanding tasks. She did so because she was unfailingly polite, courteous, meticulous to the tips of her fingers, rarely forgetful if  somebody had missed an important appointment, punctilious as you would expect of any member of the royal family and of course immensely gracious but that goes without saying.

And so a year after Her Majesty the Queen's passing we still cast our minds back to the day and the memorable news broadcast that first announced the official date of Her Majesty's death. We can still remember switching on the BBC News and finding newsreader Hugh Edwards in formal attire of dark navy suit, immaculately ironed white shirt and tie and then the sad tidings which followed. It would be a day like none other, a notably significant 24 hours that we knew we'd live through but never thought it would take place on this day rather than any other day of the year.

It was a dramatic day, tragic in the extreme, heavily overlaid with gravity and solemnity, a day that would be etched indelibly on our consciousness. And yet there was no great sense of suddenness rather a grim inevitability about it all but then again our emotions had found a safety net, moments of consolation and fond reminiscence. Of course we were heartbroken if only because although we could find no identification with her privileged lifestyle, there was a feeling, affinity, a sentimental attachment to a woman who could fully understood our problems, our troubles, our family and all that came with the human condition.

From the moment Her Majesty died, Britain, the Commonwealth and the whole world converged on Buckingham Palace rather like a visit from the Pope. For at least a week both TV and radio gave us chapter and verse, elaborate detail, information of the most poignant kind and then the moving commentaries from eminent historians or seasoned royal watchers. It was history in the making and the seamless passage of another generation. Hitherto the Prince of Wales was now born to be King and within a couple of hours he would now be referred to King Charles the Third accompanied by his wife Camilla who would be crowned as Queen Camilla.

Now there follows a lengthy period of re-adjustment, rediscovery, reinvention and a certain renaissance because royalty somehow lends itself to periods of transition. For one day last year it felt as if the whole world had lost a much loved and revered member of our family and couldn't quite put into words which would adequately describe our feelings, the legendary legacy Her Majesty had left behind her and the majesty she'd graced us with.

So we queued and filed into Westminster Hall in an orderly fashion and bowed respectfully before Her Majesty's coffin and thought about that gleaming smile that had endorsed Paddington's jar of marmalade. We remembered the easy, gentle and deferential wave at royal weddings, her dignified restraint when the pressure would probably have overwhelmed her had everything  just got too much for her. We acknowledged the huge and sterling contribution she'd made to both the Commonwealth and the world, her enduring respect for the underdogs and downtrodden and admirable sense of humour.

We had seen her horrific struggles with the terrible death of the Princess Diana and the stunned shock that had reduced Her Majesty to silence and almost interminable grief. We saw her precious Windsor Castle burnt to the ground, the frightening disintegration of her family into the darkest of holes. But then we celebrated her Jubilees, both Silver, Diamond and Platinum with back street parties. We admired her dignity and decorum at the yearly Trooping of the Colour, her much loved horses jangling with resplendent gold and silver. And then the stately marching of her regiments and squadrons with busbies and plumed hats, the glitteringly colourful tableau that never disappointed.

But then you tried to imagine what it must have been like on Her Majesty the Queen's Coronation day of June 1953 hard on the heels of Mount Everest's conquest and everything the occasion represented to her doting public. They'd camped out on the streets of the Mall, eaten their rationed sandwiches, drunk from a million Thermos flasks of tea and coffee and could hardly have imagined that 70 years later, a tea and coffee shop called Costa, Nero and Pret A Manger would charge a second mortgage for their daily caffeine taste.

Throughout the decades that followed 1953, the Queen would witness a Britain about to undergo a radical revolution in the world of fashion, a whirlpool of bewildering change, the White Heat of Technology, all four of her children's weddings and then the dramas, the tragedies, the soul destroying calamities that almost led to the downfall of the Royal Family. We didn't think the royal family would ever bounce back from adversity, fully recovering the most painful of all ordeals but they did and so did we.

 But a year later we will think about Her Majesty of the Queen today because Queen Elizabeth the Second was the one Queen who never wavered in her unstinting commitment to her Britain and the Commonwealth, who always believed that anything was possible, a remarkably charming lady who always toasted our health with a glass of something neat and refreshing and the Christmas Day TV speech that was always highly topical and appropriate. Her Royal Majesty the Queen Elizabeth. You will always be in our hearts and minds.