BRITISH royalty arrange their own funerals long before they die. For Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, plans were prepared well in advance of her death in 2002. They were coded ‘Operation Tay Bridge’. In 1997, however, the palace was caught off-guard by the sudden death of Diana, Princess of Wales. They dusted ‘Tay Bridge’ and used it for Diana instead.

Prince Philip’s funeral plans — ‘Opera­tion Forth Bridge’ — were put into motion when he died in 2021. His widow Queen Elizabeth II passed away a year later. Her funeral adhered meticulously to the much-rehearsed ‘Operation London Bridge’.

All three senior royals died of old age. Their deaths came as no surprise, unlike the murder of their kinsman Lord Louis Mountbatten, killed by the IRA in 1979. Mountbatten — a stickler for ceremony — made an elaborate programme (‘Operation Freeman’) which included one representative from every Indian regiment when he was the viceroy there. Prime minister Indira Gandhi scotched his grandiose ideas by reminding him that he was no longer viceroy of India.

Many recall the hastily arranged but dignified funeral of US president John F. Kennedy in 1961 and the heartbreaking image of three-year-old ‘John-John’, saluting his father’s casket. Western........

© Dawn