BRITAIN: People waited for hours to view the coffin of the woman who epitomised war-time London's spirit of defiance, writes Frank Millar
Tens of thousands of people have queued through a third consecutive night to view the Queen Mother's lying-in-state, confounding those who predicted an apathetic response to her death.
Hundreds were turned away at 5 a.m. yesterday when Westminster Hall had to close for three hours for the dawn rehearsal of tomorrow's funeral at Westminster Abbey.
By lunchtime, however, Palace of Westminster authorities said some 70,000 people had already filed past the purple-draped catafalque. By mid-afternoon police said the same number again were lining the Thames to pay their respects.
As they faced waiting times of up to six hours, the British Red Cross was putting a round-the-clock operation in place to monitor the crowds overnight, while the palace authorities confirmed the lying-in-state could continue until 6 a.m. tomorrow morning, just five hours before the start of the funeral.
It emerged yesterday that 10 Downing Street originally queried Buckingham Palace's proposal for a four-day lying-in-state, fearing embarrassment for Queen Elizabeth and the royal family if insufficient numbers of mourners turned out to pay their respects.
In the end, however, Queen Elizabeth has been "deeply touched" by the tidal wave of public affection for her mother, although the Duke of York, Prince Andrew, still appeared surprised by the numbers when he and his daughters met members of the public heading the queue at Victoria Gardens, close by Westminster Hall, yesterday afternoon.
Later today Prince Andrew and the Queen Mother's other three grandsons - Prince Charles, Prince Edward and the Viscount Linley - will take up one of the vigils on the four points of the catafalque in an echo of the tribute paid to her husband, George VI, when he lay in state in the same place 50 years ago.
And tomorrow's highly traditional service at Westminster Abbey - marked by the Queen Mother's favourite hymns and Bible readings - will also end with a deeply personal tribute to George VI.
While the order of service opens with an anonymous poem in which the Queen Mother enjoins the British nation to celebrate her life rather than grieve her death, it ends with the poem read by George VI in his Christmas address of 1939 after the outbreak of the second World War:
I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year,
'Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.'
And he replied, 'Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God.
That shall be to you Better than light
And safer than a known way!
So I went forth And finding the Hand of God
Trod gladly into the night.
Cathedrals and churches yesterday held special services in thanksgiving for the life of the Queen Mother, a woman of strong and simple religious faith for whom, as the Archbishop of Canterbury has remarked, "death was not the last word".
Westminster Abbey will tomorrow reverberate to the strains of her two favourite hymns, Immortal, invisible, God only wise and Guide Me, O thou great Redeemer. Some 25 foreign royals will join Queen Elizabeth and 34 other members of the British royal family in a 2,000-strong congregation which will bring personal friends and members of all the Queen Mother's household staffs together with the US First Lady, Mrs Laura Bush, and Commonwealth leaders including three prime ministers, as well as the leaders of the devolved administrations of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and the President, Mrs McAleese.
Mrs Camilla Parker Bowles, Prince Charles's companion, will also be in the congregation as a long-standing friend of the Queen Mother.
The abbey's Tenor Bell will be tolled every minute for 101 minutes, echoing the years of the Queen Mother's life, before 198 pipers and drummers lead the funeral procession the 300 yards from Westminster Hall to the abbey's Great West Door. As the coffin is taken on its last journey to Windsor, where the Queen Mother's body will be interred, the Battle of Britain memorial flight will fly over Buckingham Palace and the Mall in final tribute to the woman who came to epitomise London's war-time spirit of defiance and resilience.