It had to come to an end sometime. After days of pomp and pageantry, of waving flags and rousing music, the boats have been moored, the ceremonial uniforms set aside and the bunting taken down.

The Diamond Jubilee is over, and we find ourselves back in a grimmer, grayer world — a place of government U-turns and double-dip recessions rather than street parties and good cheer.

So what, as memories start to fade, will we remember about the Jubilee?

The most obvious lessons are twofold. First, that Britain can still put on a show, no matter what obstacles the elements may put in its way. Second, and more profoundly, that millions of the Queen’s subjects wanted to take the chance, as the Prince of Wales said at the Jubilee concert, to say “thank you” — to assure her not just of their loyalty, but their gratitude for her 60 years of service.

Above all, the Diamond Jubilee was a celebration of the grandest and oldest of those institutions: the monarchy itself. The Queen — unusually in this egocentric age — “sees herself as the custodian of her own line and its special calling much more than as an individual with personal goals and needs.”

The Diamond Jubilee was a celebration of her person, and her reign, but it was also a celebration of that dynastic line, and the continuity it embodies. Indeed, the illness of the Duke of Edinburgh, unfortunate though it was, reminded us that we are ruled not by impersonal constitutional drones, but by a living, breathing family, one in whose triumphs and misfortunes the nation has long shared.

— The Telegraph, London, June 6