Queen Elizabeth’s funeral: It’s the people’s turn to mourn now
As world leaders begin flying into London for the Queen’s funeral, the people of Britain are paying their respects. Britons have formed a queue that stretches for kilometres alongside The Thames to say goodbye.
After a week of mourning the loss of their mother and grandmother, the royal family on Thursday (AEST) handed the late Queen Elizabeth II over to the British people.
As world leaders begin flying into London for the Queen’s funeral on Monday, it is the nation’s turn to pay its respects.
Britons have formed a queue that stretches for kilometres alongside The Thames to say goodbye to Her Majesty, whose casket was carried in a sorrowful 38-minute gun-carriage procession from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Hall on Wednesday night.
William, the Prince of Wales, and his brother Harry, Duke of Sussex, were stoic, despite the haunting memories of a similar journey 25 years ago at the funeral of their mother Diana, the Princess of Wales.
A quarter of a million people crammed the central London route, to see seven black horses draw Her Majesty’s coffin in the slow march to the beat of drums and the minute tolling of a muffled Big Ben, leading organisers to shut off access routes and redivert mourners to Hyde Park.
Britons are ignoring warnings of 30-hour delays to join a queue of fellow mourners to pay respects.
One courtier said: “The coffin is passing from the family, to the state, to the nation.”
It is also about to pass to the world.
In the early hours of the morning the lying in state queue length, identified on a live website tracker, showed the end point was still more than 3km away from Westminster Hall, stretching back past Blackfriars Bridge.
Officials believe about 350,000 people will be able to view the coffin as its sits raised in the middle of the ancient hall until just hours before the state funeral next Monday. Tens of thousands more have been glued to the live feed from inside the hall.
Lords and parliamentarians are considering a proposal to give the late Queen a new title “Queen Elizabeth the Faithful” to acknowledge her 70 years of steadfast service and her Christian beliefs.
Michael Farmer, a member of the House of Lords, has led the campaign to change the title under the 1953 Royal Titles Act to formally recognise Her Majesty’s lifetime of contribution, as well as disassociate her from more than 110 monarchs who have been designated “Great”, some of whose reigns have not withstood historic scrutiny.
The pace of the past week since the Queen’s death on September 8 has been so intense and exhausting that on Thursday King Charles retreated to his Highgrove home, the Queen Consort Camilla went to her favourite house in Wiltshire, and the Prince and Princess of Wales to their country home, Anmer Hall in Norfolk, to take a short break before rounds of audiences and receptions with world leaders.
Some have already arrived in the capital. The plane carrying Anthony Albanese, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and other Pacific leaders will arrive on Friday.
On Thursday morning in central London a full dress rehearsal was conducted for the state funeral, which will be the first since 1965 when the wartime prime minister Winston Churchill was laid to rest.
More than 100 countries are believed to have accepted invitations from the Foreign Office to send heads of state or ambassadors to the biggest peacetime gathering in a generation.
The funeral will involve a short procession of the Queen’s coffin from the Palace of Westminster across the road to Westminster Abbey, where the service will take place.
The Foreign Office has issued funeral invitations to all countries Britain has diplomatic ties with, except for Russia, Belarus, Myanmar, Syria, Venezuela and Afghanistan.
Most countries accepted the invitation well before Thursday’s RSVP cut-off and more than 500 VIPs and dignitaries including European royalty will attend the funeral leading to unprecedented security preparations throughout the capital.
All holders of the Victoria Cross or George Cross have been invited. Controversial Australian VC recipient Ben Roberts-Smith boarded a plane in Brisbane on Thursday for the journey to London.
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