“WE JUST wanted to be here.” By far the most common response to reporters’ insistent demand to know what had drawn individuals, families, and groups together at Buckingham Palace and Balmoral, and to queue for hours down the Mall (rolling news coverage and bulletins, all channels, from Thursday of last week), was this inchoate sentiment, ironically undermining the very media thrusting them momentarily into the spotlight.

With the growth of instant global news coverage, the inexorable opening up of our world and lives to the camera, so that today anyone of the least celebrity, or any event of the least importance, is fully revealed to the gaze of all, has come the prediction that, now that you can on TV see everything in minutest close-up, no one will feel the need to leave the comfort of their homes to witness the actual event.

And the events surrounding the death of our monarch and the dawn of King Charles’s reign were particular points of anxiety: would anybody bother to turn up? Would the soldiers march, the fanfares echo, through empty streets? The evidence of recent days is, thank God, decisive. Vast numbers have proved that, however little they might see or hear, however little might be going on, the human urge to be present and to share that experience with others remains paramount.

Once they are there, though, there is a further twist to the rich ironies playing out: most people don’t seem to think that they are anywhere unless their smartphone can prove it. Many are so desperate to film the moment that a Martian might conclude that the throng is made up of a myriad of digital devices, faithfully supported by their flesh-and-blood minions. Camera shall speak peace unto camera.

Her Late Majesty’s wonderful reign is defined by the implacable development of television access: all the tribute programmes explored the paradox of how, while far more closely observed than any monarch in history, she maintained the mystery of the Crown, simultaneously more personally engaged with all she met while never revealing personal opinions.

Everyone could claim her as their own; no one could claim that she belonged to their party. Her profound Christian faith was far more acknowledged than we dare hope for nowadays. Programme after programme reminded us that, if she was the rock on which our nations and Commonwealth were founded, she was utterly clear that God, in Christ, was the rock on which all her strength and purpose was built.

And the main BBC news-bulletin coverage of the King’s Accession Speech featured centrally his statement that personal Christian faith would undergird his reign. TV brought to us all moments of national life previously witnessed by only a tiny elite: curiously, what the close-up pageantry and arcane ritual created was overwhelmingly personal, moving, and uniting.