Why everyone in society can benefit from this period of national mourning

Speeding towards London this week to report on the build up to the Queen’s funeral, I began reading Impermanence, a collection of essays by Irish writers published in June. Sitting in comfort while travelling at 550mph some 35,000 feet above Britain, I read the words of the Derry writer Brian McGilloway who recalled his father getting the family into their car to go for “a run” (which he noted actually involved driving rather than running).