The front of Wednesday’s Mirror features a dramatic image of the hearse sweeping towards the brilliantly lit palace as crowds formed a roadside guard of honour. “Drive home by the lights of love,” reads the headline. The front page of the Guardian shows the hearse moments later as it passes through the palace gates and also hints at angry stories about some members of King Charles’ staff being sacked and how queues could be stretched to see the queen reclining. for five miles. It does, however, lead to “Johnson’s junk food rules under threat as Truss targets read tape”. The Telegraph’s headline is “The final homecoming” and says the royal family will be “allowed to mourn in private” as the coffin rests overnight at the palace. “Welcome home, lady,” says Sun, who still uses a royal purple on her mast instead of the usual red. “Home to her family,” says the Mail, while columnist Robert Hardman says he has been warning for years that “millions – tens of millions” of people will want to pay their respects to the Queen, with current plans to view her coffin “deep . insufficient”. The Express goes with “Home… for one last time”. ‘We’ll walk with Gran’ – the Tube says William and Harry will follow the Queen’s coffin with King Charles as it is carried to Westminster. The Times has ‘A last night at the palace’ and it shows the coffin being carried by troops of the Queen’s Color Squadron at RAF Northolt, with an outer wrap of the palace scenes. In i is “The Queen Comes Home.” Her final journey of course started in Scotland and the newspapers north of the border are saying goodbye to her. The Scotsman has a wraparound front cover with the scene at Edinburgh Airport: ‘The Last Goodbye’ The Daily Record taps into the big guns – Scotland’s national bard, Robert Burns – using the title of one of his poems, ‘Ae fond kiss’, to bid farewell to the monarch. And the FT has a picture of the funeral rehearsals on its front, but leads with “Businesses face delays to access £150bn energy support package”.
