Reuters, September 2022
When she was a child growing up in Nigeria, Timie Ogunmola’s father used to show her black-and-white pictures of his trip to London in 1953 to attend Queen Elizabeth’s coronation as an official in what was then his country’s colonial administration.
Now a resident of Edinburgh in her 60s, Ogunmola was among thousands of mourners who filed past the queen’s coffin this week as it lay at rest in the city’s cathedral, eager to pay her respects to a monarch who has been a fixture in her life.
“We are from the Commonwealth countries, she is the queen of the Commonwealth for us,” said an emotional Ogunmola, shortly after exiting the cathedral. “We grew up seeing her.”