Grief cuts through class, race and religion – many will relate to how the Queen feels today

Her Majesty will mourn in the limited capacity in which so many have done during the pandemic, writes Harriet Hall

The Queen and her husband of 73 years, Prince Philip (AFP/Getty)

Disability activist Helen Keller distilled the collective power of grief into one sentence. “We bereaved are not alone,” she said. “We belong to the largest company in all the world – the company of those who have known suffering.”

During the pandemic, as 2.99 million people to date have died of Covid-19, and millions more mourn for them, catapulting grief out of private spaces and into the public, this quote feels ever more poignant.

Early suggestions that coronavirus may be a “great equaliser”, and videos of celebrities singing John Lennon in futile attempts to corral us into an all-in-it-together mentality, was a pandemic perspective we abandoned long ago. Since then, the reality that coronavirus has merely widened the gulf of inequality has become ever more apparent.