AN EX-ATHLETE and youth champion from Buckinghamshire was asked to attend the historical funeral service in person.

Connie Henry MBE, the founder of the youth charity Track Academy, was among 200 honours recipients invited to the funeral ceremony of Queen Elizabeth II in London.

Around 2,000 guests, including world leaders like US President Joe Biden, joined the members of the Royal Family at the funeral ceremony in Westminster Abbey yesterday.  

Connie Henry, who lives in Chesham and received the MBE as part of Queen's Birthday Honours, said: “It was a great honour. It was spectacular, and I feel very privileged to be in that position. It was an incredible day.

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"And certainly when you were there, it wasn’t about the pageantry. You very much felt a loved person had passed away, and it felt very personal.

“The Royal Family were visibly moved when they arrived and left. It really was a moment that I will never forget.

The invitation came “out of the blue”, when she received a call from the Cabinet Office inviting her as a recipient of the MBE to attend the funeral.

She said: “They were very matter of fact about it.

“They went through the list of Do’s and Don’ts, and that was it really. An official letter arrived the following Saturday, so it was quite close to the mark by the time the official letter arrived.

The fact that she was one of only a couple of thousand of guests dawned on her at the Abbey, making the invitation even more of an honour.

In addition to the beautiful architecture of Westminster Abbey, it’s acoustic was “fantastic,” she said.

“When the choir were at full voice and the organ was at full voice, the whole Abbey reverberated.

Because of the nature of invitation, many of the guests were there by themselves, and quickly became acquainted with each other in the queue, she said.

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“Different cultures, different backgrounds, wonderfully diverse, and everybody was there for one reason – to say goodbye, and grief. Tears were shed. It was a very moving moment, especially when the coffin came past.”

Despite the difficult job of a monarch, the Queen never “put a foot wrong,” Ms Henry said.

She added: “She was a woman, and a working woman, and I certainly know the pressures of how that feels and what that brings.

“And then you add the pressures of being a mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, and wife. And if all of that pressure isn’t enough, then you add the Crown.

“I firmly believe she deserves our admiration and respect.

“They spoke about selflessness in the service, and about service and sacrifice, and it’s very easy to be dismissive and say ‘she’s the Queen and she had all this privilege’, but actually the reality of it is that as a woman in that position – especially when she came to the throne – it was an incredibly difficult thing to do.

“And she never said ‘I’ve had enough of this’.

“In our lifetime, we’ll never see another Queen. It’s an incredible thought.”