HOW do you report on such a momentous event as the death of a monarch, especially one who has reigned over us all for the last 70 years? That was the question we faced at The Herald yesterday.

Up until 6.30pm, we were writing and planning for a paper that was reporting that the Queen was gravely ill and her family were rushing to her bedside. Then, suddenly, it was announced she had died. We all knew she was a 96-year-old, in poor health, but it was still a shock.

Our website heraldscotland.com had every breaking news line, from matters of great constitutional importance to the more mundane – such as whether the weekend’s football would be cancelled.

This was a story that everyone would know by the time their daily paper arrived through the letter box or was picked up at the shop. So what could we add in the online era of 24-hour news? The answer, as always, was context, analysis and a distinctive Scottish perspective.

Our first thought was to look out our 32-page commemorative tribute. Most papers have pullouts of this nature pre-prepared for the deaths of major figures. I’ve worked in newspapers for three decades and everywhere I’ve been has had a Queen supplement over all those years.

In the past, when we produced newspapers by, basically, gluing stories and pictures to paper pages, these completed ‘books’ were kept in someone’s drawer. Today, they live in our computer system in the mysterious ‘cloud’.

We spoke to the team at our printing press in Cambuslang who told us we had 45 minutes to get it to them, as it would be printed separately from the paper. We quickly updated our supplement, to include pictures and details of the Platinum Jubilee and her recent roles, such as officially inviting Liz Truss to form a government earlier this week.

Then it was back to the main paper. First up, how many pages would we do? We decided pages 1-7 and identified the most relevant ‘lines’. Then we decided to remove all the adverts from those pages as a mark of respect. Our reporters and specialists were briefed while those involved in design began to think about the front page.

Matters of tone and taste were upmost in our thoughts. There was no need, we felt, for dramatic headlines on the front page. Nor even for any words where our traditional ‘splash’ would be. The words The Queen and her date of birth and death would suffice.

Pictures are key. Should we use the Queen as a young woman, setting out in life, or a more recent picture. What about one of her with Philip?

One thing we knew we wanted was a photo that illustrated her connection with Scotland. We tried one from the Platinum Jubilee with Scots soldiers at Holyrood House but it wasn’t quite right. Then we discovered a striking photograph by Julian Calder of the Queen on the heather-clad hills around Balmoral.

We think that’s how she would like to have been remembered.