Nine days after Queen Elizabeth II’s death, London is still convulsed by the rituals of national mourning, the scale of which is unparalleled and may never be repeated. Tomorrow’s state funeral, which has been planned and refined for decades, will be a spectacular requiem not just for Britain’s longest-reigning monarch, but for a past which had incrementally slipped away over the course of her mammoth reign. Even mammon will pause for the occasion. The London Stock Exchange will be shut, Big Ben’s hammer will be covered in leather to muffle its famous chimes, and there will be an assembly of...