Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, is now lying-in-state in Westminster Hall following yesterday's spectacular royal procession reflecting her love of great pageantry and ceremonial.
A rising tide of public affection forced the Palace of Westminster authorities to keep the Hall open late last night after unexpectedly large crowds queued to pay their respects ahead of next Tuesday's funeral at Westminster Abbey.
That popular sentiment was reflected, too, in the burst of restrained applause which carried a grieving Queen Elizabeth back to Buckingham Palace after the she had received her mother's coffin before the representative ranks of church and state.
First estimates suggested a quarter of a million people had lined the route along the Mall to the Palace of Westminster as Britain began its farewell to the last Queen Empress. However, that figure was revised upward to some 400,000 as at least 20,000 people formed their own processional queue, by early afternoon stretching 2½ miles across the Thames at Westminster and Lambeth Bridges to offer their personal goodbyes.
Originally due to close its doors at 6 p.m., it was promptly confirmed that Westminster Hall would remain open for as long as people wished to pay their respects and sign the books of condolence.
The lying-in-state will continue through the weekend until Monday evening, when the Queen Mother's four grandsons - Prince Charles, Prince Andrew, the Earl of Wessex (Prince Edward) and Viscount Linley, son of Princess Margaret - will keep one of the final vigils at the four points of the purple-draped catafalque in the chill medieval splendour of the Hall in which her husband, King George VI, also lay in state, in 1952.
During yesterday's simple ceremony the Cross of Westminster was placed at the foot of the coffin bearing the Queen Mother's personal royal standard after a bearer party of the Irish Guards had placed it on the catafalque. It was surmounted by the crown she had worn first to her husband's coronation in 1937, and then to her daughter's in 1953. A single wreath bore a simple tribute from the queen, fashioned after the name by which she is affectionately known by her family: "In loving memory, Lilibet."
Before that, some 1,500 service men and women had preceded the coffin - borne on a gun carriage of the King's Troop, Royal House Artillery, through the Queen Mother's "home streets" in a display of pomp and circumstance unseen since Winston Churchill's state funeral in 1965.
It was a day of pride as well as profound sadness for Queen Elizabeth, who has lost her sister and mother within seven weeks. It was also a day of contrasts which saw the smiling faces of children enjoying the military spectacle and music accompanied by parents and grandparents mourning the loss of the woman who, following the Abdication Crisis of 1936, played a decisive role in restoring the British monarchy.
It was patently an ordeal, too, for Prince Charles, his face etched with grief at the loss of the grandmother to whom he was devoted. Among the watching public there was particular concern for Prince William and Prince Harry as they marched behind their great grandmother's coffin along the same route that had taken them to the funeral of their mother Diana, Princess of Wales almost five years before.
In a break with tradition, and by consent of the queen, the Princess Royal, joined her three brothers on either side of the Duke of Edinburgh behind the coffin. Princess Anne was the only woman in an 18-strong party from the House of Windsor and the Queen Mother's Bowes Lyon family. They were followed by members of the Queen Mother's household staff, including Captain Sir Alistair Aird, her private secretary of more than 40 years, and Mr William Tallon, the page often seen by her side who entered the royal service almost 50 years ago, aged 16.
For many among the millions watching the ceremonial the morning's most poignant moment may have come as the Queen Mother's personal standard was lowered over her London home, Clarence House, for the last time. Mounted police led the procession into the Mall and past many of the landmarks of a royal life which had survived and outlived the 20th century.
From nearby Green Park the minute guns of the King's Troop Royal Artillery accompanied the Queen Mother on each of the 29 minutes of her final journey to Westminster: past the memorial statue of her beloved "Bertie", and across Horseguards, where she had attended the official birthdays of her husband and her daughter, and which had witnessed the pageant in celebration of her own 100th Birthday in August 2000. Onward, by the Cenotaph, where each November she would remember the fallen of two world wars, including her brother Fergus, and where, on the day of her wedding in 1923, she had placed her bouquet on the tomb of the Unknown Warrior.
Then finally into Parliament Square, past the guard of honour of Grenadier Guards, to the steady beat of the drum as the bands fell silent and the queen received her mother's coffin at the North Door of Westminster Hall, where - in a ceremony as moving as it was brief - the Archbishop of Canterbury offered a simple prayer for a life of "faithful duty and unweary service".