Newspaper headlines: 'A life in service' and 'we loved you ma'am'
- Published
Newspapers across the country ran historic front pages to commemorate the Queen
The UK's newspapers have published their first editions since the Queen's death. Here are their historic front pages.
The Times, the Guardian, the i, and the Daily Star all mark the moment with the same colourised portrait from the Queen's coronation in 1953.
The Guardian lets the striking picture of the newly-crowned monarch stand alone, external - other than her name and dates of her reign - while the Times adds the words: "A life in service."
The Times' back cover carries a quotation from the Queen's Christmas broadcast in 1957, the first to be televised: "I cannot lead you into battle. I do not give you laws or administer justice but I can do something else: I can give you my heart and my devotion to all these old islands, and to all the peoples of our brotherhood of nations."
In its lead story, external, reporter Valentine Low says "history will deliver its verdict in the fullness of time but it is hard to conceive of her being remembered as anything other than one of the greatest monarchs in our history".
Elsewhere, external, Low recalls how the Queen - "with a twinkle in her eye" - once advised a local dignitary "during some tour or other" not to talk to the Times' royal correspondent: he was from the Times, she said, and would only put him in the paper.
The Sun reminds readers just how different the world was 70 years ago, external - it was just seven years after World War Two, Britain still had an empire, and the Beatles were five years away from even meeting, it says.
Its front page carries a black and white portrait of the Queen in her later years with a still, gentle smile. "We loved you ma'am," the caption reads.
The Daily Express strips the colour from its front page and declares: "Our beloved Queen is dead".
Its editorial says, external while some question the institution of the monarchy, almost everyone could admire how she "harnessed the grandeur of the Crown to elevate the country's unsung heroes".
The Guardian points out, external that her reign saw some of the greatest changes in industrial, economic, technical and social development of any era. It says, therefore, that it is difficult to see her name being bestowed, as Queen Victoria's was to the Victorians, as the "defining symbol of an age".
"Instead she played, largely impeccably, the part of a modern constitutional monarch, a symbolic figurehead with a right to be consulted and to advise and warn political leaders privately," it says.
The Daily Star recasts its red masthead in black and says in its frank editorial, external: "You may have noticed that we are traditionally not a royalist newspaper and there are plenty in the family we're not so fond of. But you couldn't help admire how the Queen did her duty, got on with her job and never complained."
The Daily Mirror decides against a headline, instead simply saying: "Thank you". The paper's Paul Routledge, external remembers the joy of the Queen's coronation in 1953, with bunting strung across the houses and food that had just stopped being rationed.
"We didn't see it on the telly, even though this was the first time it had been televised," he says - no one in his street had a TV yet.
The Financial Times abandons business news , externalfor its front page, dedicating it almost entirely to a beaming Queen. It describes her death as a "watershed moment in the life of the nation".
"Our hearts are broken," the Daily Mail says. It chooses a photograph of then-Princess Elizabeth, taken in 1952, looking straight into the camera with a determined gaze.
Recounting the moments before her death was announced, the paper says, external the mood on-screen on the BBC was "as solemn as a Bible".
"Auntie was slipping into full fig funeral mode," the paper's Jan Moir writes.
"He [Huw Edwards] was speaking very, very slowly, but with exactly the layer of gravelly Welsh gravitas the occasion demanded. And then, in the most simple and perfectly judged moment after he relayed the sad details, the National Anthem was played as an official portrait of the young Queen filled the screen."
Written by Dulcie Lee.