Let us pay our last respects without excessive fuss, as Prince Philip would have wanted

Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, would have scoffed at the fuss being made over him, we are told. And yet he made quite a fuss about himself, apparently taking a keen interest in the details of his funeral, helping to ensure that the event was planned with precision – “military precision”, inevitably – right down to the long-wheelbase Land Rover arriving at the steps of St George’s Chapel, Windsor, at 2.53pm.

It is quite right that the nation should pay its last respects in this way. Even The Independent, with its healthy scepticism of pomp and ceremony, recognises that we should pay tribute, with a proper sense of the occasion, to a life of public service well lived. We hope that the media will show restraint in not turning the televised funeral into a soap opera. Tomorrow will be a day in which to remember and celebrate the life of the prince, not to gawp at the body language between his grandsons.

On the other hand, the broadcasters, and particularly the national broadcaster, the BBC, should realise that, while the overwhelming majority of the British people want the funeral to be observed with dignity and respect, most of them would agree with their mental image of the prince expressing his impatience with excessive deference. It seems that the BBC misjudged the national mood slightly over the past week in shutting down all normal broadcasting.

The government, too, overreacted by cancelling the Downing Street coronavirus briefings and all ministerial media appearances. Life must go on, and it seems a little patronising and old-fashioned to assume that people cannot decide for themselves whether they want to watch nothing but assessments of the prince’s life on television.

So tomorrow, the whole nation will no doubt want to take part in the minute’s silence at 3pm, as a mark of its respect. Other than that, though, it should be up to individuals whether they want to watch the entire service and all its associated programmes, or whether they will watch part or none of it while doing other things.

This funeral will be different, of course, in that the royal family, in a welcome symbol of its solidarity with the people, will be bound by the same limit set by coronavirus regulations as any other grieving family in the country. The rules also mean that people will not be able to observe any part of the ceremony in person, which makes the television coverage more important.

More important, but not all-encompassing. Let us, as a nation, give thanks for the prince’s life with as much or as little elaboration as we see fit. Let us say farewell to someone who was an important symbol of our national unity with all due respect, but, as he would have wanted, without excessive fuss.