The loneliest thing about being as long-lived as the Queen, at 96, is that you have few or no contemporaries. Few people reach her age; indeed, not that many people remember the time before she became Queen in 1952, 70 years ago. She has been, simply by living for as long as she did, the one element of continuity in the life of the nation.

In the 70 years of her reign everything changed – Britain just isn’t the country it was then, for better and worse – but the Queen was a constant. Her presence in parliament, at great events, on the BBC on Christmas Day – even on our stamps and currency – gave Britain an extraordinary psychological stability during a period of upheaval.

She was, in her contained and dignified way, a carapace over the nation, an unseen and taken-for-granted, protective presence. It’s something you only notice when it’s taken away. It would be trite to call her the nation’s grandmother, but she fulfilled something of the same function as the oldest member of a family, someone who makes everyone else feel more secure for being rooted in the same soil.

Like I say, this psychological carapace is only noticed when it’s gone. And what’s surprising is the extent of the shock and grief people have registered – even those you supposed were immune from respect of persons or positions. It’s terrifying in a family when its oldest member dies; it’s the same with the life of a nation when the head of state who has been present in the background of national life for so long, is no more.

‘The King is dead; long live the King!’ sums up the essence of hereditary monarchy: the present incumbent dies, the institution remains. In this case, ‘The Queen is Dead, Long Live the King!’ is not quite as resonant, because something of the institution dies with her: the respect that people gave the monarchy because she was at its head.

It’s difficult to be Queen: the carefully judged words, the perpetual restraint, the essential shyness, constantly conquered, the judgment honed over decades. Yet this impossible role was one Queen Elizabeth aced and made her own. She had views of her own because sometimes she let them slip, but she managed, somehow, to contain them, and to be Queen for the country. Quite what a feat that dignity and restraint was will be seen when we compare her with Prince Charles, who isn’t shy about sharing his opinions and giving way to the promptings of his heart. I’d always thought that she ought, with modern medicine, to outstrip the age of the Queen Mother, or at least make it to 100. Sadly, I was wrong.

As a Vatican spokesman put it not long ago, she was arguably the last Christian monarch, more orthodox in her beliefs than most of the bishops of the Church of which she was Supreme Governor. She never wavered in her faith in the traditional tenets of the Church of England and she never lost a chance of conveying them. Her Christmas messages always conveyed something about the sacred nature of the feast; with equal fidelity, the BBC toned down any reference to it in its summary of the message. Who now represents Christianity to a nation summed up in that dispiriting phrase, ‘of all faiths and none’? She was a woman of faith; and this faithful servant has now gone to her reward.

Britain will be a lesser nation without the Queen. The country could stand taller because this very small woman was its monarch.

It’s ridiculous, isn’t it, to cry when someone you don’t know dies. Yet I cried when I heard the news about the Queen. And the funny thing is, a lot of other people did too.

Requiescat in pace.