BRITAIN: Rachel Donnelly, in London, joins the long queues giving expression to 'the nation's psyche'
In the cold, spring sunshine they come in their tens of thousands. Young and old, tourist and Londoner, they come to remember Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, who lived a long life, devoted to her country.
After a week of media outbursts about the lack of visible public grief in response to her death, the queue of people to pay their respects at her coffin grows longer by the hour.
There are mothers and fathers with their children who want them to be a part of history, grandmothers and grandfathers paying tribute to a woman who was their queen during the dark days of the second World War.
There are tourists out for the day, and in this multicultural Britain there are black and Asian faces also in the queue.
The mood is respectful, not mournful. But there is also laughter and banter.
A group of women proudly discuss their memories of Queen Elizabeth's coronation as they share out sandwiches; a middle-aged man with a black tie points out London landmarks to his children.
And people dash in and out of coffee shops along Albert Embankment on the south side of the Thames for snacks and drinks to keep warm.
Janet from Chelmsford, Essex, is paying tribute to the queen mother on behalf of her elderly mother who is too ill to make the journey.
Sue and Mark, who are both in their 30s, have brought their seven-year-old daughter, Laura, to "witness history" in Westminster Hall.
"I felt it was my duty to come," says Sue. "This is part of the nation's psyche. It is the way we do things in Britain, and I wanted Laura to have a special memory to tell her own children when she grows up."
Four hours later as we enter Westminster Hall the banter stops. A woman combs her hair, children stop chattering and new friends fall silent.
Silently we descend the steps into the vast medieval hall where, in the centre, four guardsmen of the Household Cavalry with their heads bowed stand guard at the four corners of the queen mother's tiny coffin.
And as the angels carved into the 900-year-old hammer-beam roof look down, an elderly woman stops beside the coffin and bows her head.
"This is much more British, quiet and respectful, than the mild hysteria when Diana died," says Pat Looker (62), who has travelled to London from Bracknell, Berkshire, with her daughter, Claire (29).
In the Sunday morning sunshine, they have just emerged from Westminster Hall.
"We always said we would do this because the Queen Mother's generation, especially during the war, had a certain quality," she says. "She was the last of the true royals."