Show only key events Please enable JavaScript to use this feature Here are some more of those stunning photos (see last post) of rehearsals held early Tuesday morning in London for the Queen’s casket funeral at Westminster Hall scheduled for Wednesday. Members of the King’s Life Guards undertake a rehearsal on Tuesday morning for the procession of the Queen’s coffin. Photo: James Manning/PAKing Guards practice for the funeral procession outside Buckingham Palace on Tuesday morning. Photo: James Manning/PAGuards Rehearsal for the funeral. Photo: Danny Lawson/PA
What is happening today with the Queen’s coffin
Back in Edinburgh, the Queen’s coffin will lie at St Giles’ until 5pm, when it will be taken by hearse to Edinburgh Airport and flown to RAF Northolt in west London, accompanied by the Queen’s daughter, the Princess Royal.
The RAF Globemaster C-17 flight will depart at 6pm. will land at RAF Northolt at 6:55pm. from where the coffin will be taken to Buckingham Palace via the A40, Eastbourne Terrace, Lancaster Gate, Bayswater Road, Marble Arch, Park Lane, Hyde Park Corner and Constitution Hill.
Rehearsal for the procession of Queen Elizabeth’s coffin taking place early Tuesday morning outside Buckingham Palace. Photo: James Manning/PA
Waiting to receive the coffin at the Palace will be the King and Queen Consort, who will have returned from Northern Ireland having attended a service of thanksgiving for the Queen in Belfast and strolled through Writers’ Square.
One of the main events on Tuesday will be the visit of King Charles and the Queen Consort to Northern Ireland. The royal couple will leave Edinburgh this morning and fly to Belfast where they will travel to Hillsborough Castle for an exhibition about the late Queen’s affinity with Northern Ireland. They will then attend a reception with Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris and civic leaders, including republicans such as Michelle O’Neill, the Sinn Fein leader who is the party’s first ministerial candidate and Sinn Fein’s first mayor of Belfast, Alex Muskie. The Norroy and Ulster King of Arms reads the proclamation of King Charles III at Hillsborough Castle on Sunday. Photo: Charles McQuillan/Getty Images Our Ireland correspondent Rory Carroll filed an article this morning about the curious incongruity of these official events where the King will be greeted by members of the one-time political wing of the terrorist group that blew up his beloved uncle, Lord Mountbatten, in 1979. “Maskey, an ex-IRA prisoner who is now Speaker of Stormont, will embody the discrepancy. As the first Sinn Féin mayor of Belfast, he is an old republican and was for many years a hate figure for unionists, but he falls to to deliver Northern Ireland’s official message of condolence to the King in the throne room at Hillsborough Castle.
“An extraordinary burst of respect” – Lords deputy speaker
Lord Ian Duncan, the deputy speaker of the House of Lords, said the sight of so many people queuing in Edinburgh was “an extraordinary outpouring of respect, sadness, celebration of an extraordinary woman”. He said crowds along the Royal Mile in the Scottish capital were “into ten”. “The sheer number of people moving into Edinburgh today [indicates] that there will be many tens – perhaps hundreds – of thousands of people who will wish to pay their respects to the late queen,” Lord Duncan told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on Tuesday morning. Mourners queue in Edinburgh through the night. Photo: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian “By all means, it was ten deep. They had to stop people trying to get there because it would have become dangerous. Crowds are expected to gather this morning and people can wait up to 12 hours compared to those who queued overnight and said their waiting time was five or six hours. Updated at 06:00 BST
Thousands queue overnight in Edinburgh to see Queen’s coffin
Thousands of people have lined the streets of Edinburgh overnight to see the Queen’s coffin in repose at St Giles Cathedral. People enter St Giles through the west door. Photo: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian A long line of people milled around the city’s Old Town as they waited five to seven hours for their turn to walk past the late monarch’s oak coffin. The queue outside McGonagall’s on George IV Bridge. Photo: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian The queue stretches around Parliament Square, across George IV Bridge, along Chambers Street. Potter Row? around George Square and onto the Meadows where it has doubled along the footpaths. People line up at the Meadows. Photo: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian Hello, I’m Martin Farrer and I’ll be here for the next couple of hours covering the developments following the death of Queen Elizabeth. The main events today include King Charles flying into Belfast later this morning with Camilla, the Queen Consort, for various official functions, the Queen’s coffin remaining in repose in Edinburgh before being flown to London at around 6pm. for four days. The main points:
Thousands of people paid their respects to the Queen throughout the night as her coffin continued to lie in repose at St Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh. Members of the public queued for hours to walk silently past the oak casket as the Queen’s children held vigil. Civil liberties campaigners and MPs criticized police for “shocking” treatment of anti-monarchy protesters after a series of incidents at events surrounding the Queen’s death. A 22-year-old man was arrested in Edinburgh on Monday for allegedly abusing Prince Andrew. The King will leave Edinburgh on Tuesday morning and fly to Belfast with the Queen Consort. He will attend an exhibition about the late Queen’s connection with Northern Ireland at Hillsborough Castle before a reception with the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Chris Heaton-Harris, and civic leaders. He will also receive the official condolences of the people of Northern Ireland from the city’s Sinn Féin mayor, Alex Muskie. The coffin will be flown from Edinburgh Airport to London at 6pm on Tuesday, accompanied by the Queen’s daughter, Princess Royal. The RAF Globemaster C-17 flight will land at RAF Northolt from where the coffin will be taken to Buckingham Palace. People are already lining up to pay their respects to the Queen when her coffin is taken to Westminster Hall on Wednesday, where she will lie in state until 6.30am on Monday. A massive logistics and security operation is underway to deal with the hundreds of thousands of people expected to join the queues. Preparations are playing havoc with this week’s football matches as police are pulled from normal duties to supervise the gathering at the funeral in London. Manchester United’s home game against Leeds at the weekend and Liverpool’s visit to Chelsea will be played later. Arsenal’s Europa League tie at home to PSV on Thursday is also away. Simon Armitage, the poet laureate, has composed a poem to mark the death of Queen Elizabeth. Floral Tribute is a double acrostic poem that spells out the Queen’s name in two nine-line stanzas, which Armitage says tries to “encode” her name. Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand’s prime minister, has said she expects the country to one day become a democracy, but that it was “not on the agenda any time soon”. He said: “I think that’s where New Zealand will go in time…”.
Updated at 05.40 BST
