Dutch MPs have held a short ceremony to remember Britain’s queen Elizabeth who died last week at the age of 96.

Parliamentary chairwoman Vera Bergkamp described the queen as a constant factor in a changing world and that her death marked ‘the end of an era’.

She praised the queen’s work ethic and said she had worked on until ‘literally almost her last breath’, referring to Elizabeth’s meeting with the new British prime minister Liz Truss shortly before she died.

Finance minister Sigrid Kaag said the queen’s life ‘read like a history book’. It was a book, she said, that covered the reconstruction after the war, the 1960s, the IRA terrorist threat, the Falklands war, the rise of the Labour party and Thatcherism.

The queen had visited the Netherlands four times and this ‘showed her interest in the long-lasting historical ties between our countries,’ Kaag said.

Dutch king Willem-Alexander, queen Maxima and former queen, now princess, Beatrix, are among dozens of members of Europe’s royal families who are attending next Monday’s state funeral at Westminister Abbey in London.