Back in the capital, the Queen drove straight to Buckingham Palace and, with Prince Philip at her side, left the safety of her own forecourt and went out to mingle with the heaving throng gathered beyond the flower-covered railings. It proved to be a disconcerting experience for the 71-year-old sovereign. A chasm had opened between the governed and their governors, and instead of the respect and polite applause which had been her due all her life, she was surrounded by people whose animosity was blatant. ‘About bloody time, too,’ someone said. ‘That gave the Queen quite a turn,’ one of her staff remarked later.

With the composure that comes with a lifetime’s training, the Queen managed her walkabout with grace and dignity, stopping to chat, asking the right questions, giving the appropriate answers. It was a sterling performance, and to look at her – and the people who came within touching distance looked at her very closely indeed – it was hard to see any chink in her self-possession. It was quite clear to those who knew her, however, that she had been very alarmed by the reception she had received. She could not comprehend why people had been so hostile.

‘What do they want me to do?’ she asked. No one could remember ever seeing the Queen so agitated, so unsure of herself.

She was more her usual self by the time she went on television that evening to deliver her valedictory to her dead daughter-in-law. Sitting against an open window of the palace, with the crowds on the street providing the backdrop, she spoke simply and movingly in a voice an octave lower than the cut-glass tinkle of her youth and in an accent which had been stripped of some of its upper-class resonance. It was a speech loaded with subtly coded messages.

It offered an explanation for what to many had seemed the royal family’s indifference to the death of a young woman who was being elevated to secular sainthood. ‘We have all been trying in our different ways to cope,’ the Queen said, adding, by way of apology: ‘It is not easy to express a sense of loss, since the initial shock is often succeeded by a mixture of other feelings: disbelief, incomprehension, anger and concern for all who remain. We have all felt those emotions in these last few days. So what I have to say to you now, as your Queen and as a grandmother, I say from my heart.’