FE Soundbite is the weekly e-newsletter and e-journal brought to you by the team at FE News. This is edition 661.

I was in two minds to write and send FE Soundbite this week.

If I am honest, I am still processing the news from this week... but then I had a bit of a think and I thought it was right to send Soundbite, but only focus on two things on the intro and leave the rest of the articles below (we had some incredibly good articles this week). I particularly thought the comments would be helpful to people on the news of the passing of her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

Passing of an Era

This week is one of those that you know will go down in history and is a time of mourning for the country.

I feel sad that it is not just the passing of our Queen, sadness for the Royal Family... but also a passing of an era. We have lost the longest reigning monarch in our nation's history and with that there will be an inevitable culture change, I am all up for looking for solutions for the future, but somehow the passing of the Queen highlighted something that was always there in our lifetime... and is now gone... our national culture will also change... our currency, will eventually change, stamps and things that have ingrained into our culture for decades will change. She was an iconic lady, even the side profile of her head was iconic from notes and coins, to punk t-shirts, to being on the opener of Olympics ... and now... that has passed.

I don't know if this has ever happened in our history either... but we have had a change of our two heads of state in literally 48 hours... a new Prime Minister and a new Monarch. That feels significant and historic. So this is why I wanted to publish a different format to Soundbite this week.

I was really moved by some of the comments from the sector when they responded to the announcement of the passing of her Majesty the Queen. If you haven't read it already, I would recommend it. Personally, I was really moved by Tom Bewick's comments in the above sector response article and by this article by Saf: A GREAT oak has fallen from the landscape of our lives.

We are in a time of national mourning and I hope you, your family and your team is okay, if it hasn't dawned on them yet, it no doubt will do that this is a very significant week for our nation.

I hope you enjoy the articles below.