Many people must have been sad when they heard the Queen Mother had died as hardly anyone could remember life without her.

She had been in the limelight for 80 years, ever since her marriage to the future king, and no one else has had a public career of that length.

However, few people have signed books of condolence set up for her at most town halls in Sussex.

Only 42 out of 250,000 people in Brighton and Hove signed them in the first day.

This compares with hundreds who signed similar books opened after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, and for the victims of the September 11 atrocities last year.

Those deaths were tragedies which shocked the nation. One was a princess who had called herself Queen of Hearts. The other was a terrible massacre of several thousand innocent people at work.

To an older generation who recalled the abdication, the Blitz and the death of George VI in 1952, the Queen Mother was part of the national fabric. But she meant less to anyone under 20 who recalled her, if at all, as simply an incredibly old lady.

Her death also comes at a time when there is less deference towards royalty than in the past and society is more egalitarian.

People respected the Queen Mother for performing her royal role so long and with so much dignity. But most of them have not been deeply moved by a death which was hardly unexpected.