This Morning’s Holly Willoughby shared how she broke the Queen’s death to her children and revealed their heart-warming responses to the news, on Monday’s show.
The presenter spoke about how she and her children, Harry, 13, Belle, 11, and Chester, seven, visited Buckingham Palace to pay their respects to the late monarch on Saturday.
Speaking to her co-host Phillip Schofield, the 42-year-old said how “emotional” she was after hearing of Her Majesty’s passing and revealed that her children penned letters to cope with their grief.
The TV star shared: “She was just consistently there for so many of us. So many of us never knew anything different.
“On Saturday, I wanted to take the children down because I think you're trying to explain it to young people and almost trying to understand it yourself. I found it quite helpful; as I was talking to them, it was kind of sinking in for myself.”
When asked how the children took the news, Willoughby said: “For me, explaining it to Chester somewhat, I was trying to explain that whatever her passions and love, from being a little girl, this is where she was destined to go and destined to do.
“All of her own passions had to be put on the backburner for her country.”
She added: “The last time I was outside Buckingham Palace was in June, for the Jubilee and the pageant. It was the last time we saw the Queen walk out onto the balcony.
“And then suddenly, three months later, to be there placing flowers in her memory was just... it was difficult. It was very, very emotional.”
The presenter later read out her children’s personal tributes as she and Phil were joined on the sofa by fellow This Morning hosts Alison Hammond and Dermot O’Leary for a special episode to commemorate the life of Queen Elizabeth II.
While sharing their heartfelt sentiments, O’Leary asked Willoughby how she didn’t get emotional reading them, to which admitted she was “a right state” when she first saw them.
Queen Elizabeth II passed away peacefully on Thursday (September 8), at Balmoral Castle in Scotland, aged 96.
Her Majesty’s oak coffin was seen in public for the first time at 10am Sunday (September 11), as it began its six-hour journey from the Queen’s summer sanctuary in the Highlands to Edinburgh, draped with the Royal Standard of Scotland with a wreath of Balmoral flowers on top.
The coffin was carried to the hearse by six Balmoral estate gamekeepers tasked with the symbolic gesture after her body had been at rest in the ballroom, so the Queen’s estate workers could say their goodbyes.
Along the 180-mile route, crowds broke into applause after the cortege passed.
Her body lay at rest in the royal residence overnight, before being taken to St Giles’s Cathedral, in Edinburgh, for a service of prayer and reflection on Monday.
The public will also get the chance to see her coffin there, before it it is taken to Edinburgh Airport for the journey down to London.
