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Live Updates: Queen Elizabeth II Funeral
CityNews Nigeria brings you Live Updates of Queen Elizabeth II’s Funeral.
This is the summary of what you need to know as Queen Elizabeth II’s coffin arrives at Windsor for service and burial…
- Queen Elizabeth’s coffin is on its final journey to Windsor Castle, with huge crowds lining the route
- It is being driven in the state hearse up the Long Walk after an elaborate and sombre procession though London
- Involving 3,000 military personnel, it passed many of the capital’s most famous landmarks
- Earlier, a funeral service was held at Westminster Abbey – the building in which the Queen was married, and crowned
- During his sermon, the Archbishop of Canterbury said the late Queen touched “a multitude of lives” during her 70-year reign
- Hundreds of dignitaries were there, including the Queen’s former prime ministers as well as US President Biden and French President Macron
Mourners fought back tears as the procession passed Horse Guards Road. The mood which had been jovial until the radio broadcast of the service at 11am, turned even more sombre by the end of the procession.
Marion King had been in high spirits in the morning, celebrating her 59th birthday with her sister, Carol Argent.
The pair had been camping since Saturday and had come prepared with sleeping bags, a gas stove, cans of chilli and curry, and bottles of wine.
They had befriended the other royal friends beside them and had drunk three bottles of wine over the weekend.
“We’ve brought a gas stove, tea and coffee and three bottles of wine which has already run out but there’s a Tesco over the road so if we do need something we’ll go there. We want to keep having fun,” the mother-of-two, from Ashford, Kent, said in the morning.
We’ve been here since Saturday evening at 9pm to find this spot and get the atmosphere. We’ve been doing this since we were children, since the age of 10, I used to be a girl guide.
We’ve brought a tent and sleeping bags. And we’ve met loads of nice people – Kiwis, South Africans and Canadians – and we’ve all joined a WhatsApp group and we’re going to meet again for the coronation.
So first our group was just the UK and now we have got the whole Commonwealth around us cheering.
But Marion appeared more subdued after the procession, saying she had been “crying buckets”.
It was fabulous and respectful,” said Marion, who is a carer for her disabled daughter. “It was quite light and jovial when we arrived on Saturday, but we were all crying during the service, we cried buckets.
We were emotional when the children went past in the cars on the way to Westminster and when we listened to the service over the speakers.
There was not a sound in the two minutes’ silence, you couldn’t hear a pin drop over here. Everybody round here joined in with the Lord’s Prayer and the anthem, but we were actually singing ‘God save the Queen’ and had to change it half way through.
We all clapped when the soldier who fell over was better. When he put his hat back on he applauded. We also applauded at the end of the ceremony.
We had the odd few moaning at the start because they wanted to come through to the front. We’re now going to go to Hyde park to watch the Windsor part, and then I’m going to have a double vodka when I get home.
Last Updated: 15:18 Monday, 19 September 2022
9m ago
Last Updated: 15:15 Monday, 19 September 2022
16m ago
Queen’s coffin arrives at Windsor
The convoy with the hearse carrying the Queen’s coffin has arrived at Shaw Farm Gate in Albert Road, Windsor.
It will now join a funeral procession already formed and ready to head up the Long Walk to Windsor Castle for a committal service at St George’s Chapel.
After accompanying the hearse on the road journey of about 90 minutes, the Princess Royal and her husband V Adm Sir Tim Laurence headed for the castle’s Home Park to proceed to the Quadrangle.
Members of the armed services joined police in standing guard along the route.
Thousands of mourners have lined the Long Walk up to the castle, with the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead warning that the route is now closed and access cannot be given to any more visitors.
The state hearse is minutes away from Windsor where tens of thousands of royal supporters have gathered behind barriers along the Long Walk in Windsor Great Park to pay their respects to the late monarch.
Earlier, the crowd sang “God Save the King” in unison with the Westminster Abbey service that was was broadcast on big screens.
Marching bands proceeded from the castle down the Long Walk to Shaw Farm Gate, followed by cheers and applause from the crowds.
The royal standard has been raised above Windsor Castle, signifying that King Charles has arrived before the committal service for the Queen.
Loui Glasse, 62, from Steyning, Sussex, travelled to Windsor to meet with her friend Susie Macmillan to watch the procession.
“I wanted to pay my respects to the Queen and the monarchy,” Glasse said. “She meant stability. She was like a member of your own family, a mother, a grandmother. She represented a positive future.”
Last Updated: 15:18 Monday, 19 September 2022
32m ago
The Windsors may, unsurprisingly, have been the focus for most people watching the Queen’s funeral today, but the presence in Westminster Abbey of another royal family did not go unnoticed or unremarked in Spain.
For the first time in more than two years, Spain’s scandal-mired former king Juan Carlos was pictured alongside his wife, Queen Sofía, his son, King Felipe, and his daughter-in-law, Queen Letizia.
Juan Carlos, who abdicated in 2014 amid waning popularity, has suffered an inexorable fall from grace in recent years.
He left Spain for Abu Dhabi in August 2020 after a series of damaging allegations were made about his business dealings that further dented his already battered reputation and embarrassed King Felipe.
In March 2020, Felipe stripped Juan Carlos of his annual stipend and renounced his own personal inheritance from his father after reports that he was in line to receive millions of euros from a secret offshore fund with ties to Saudi Arabia.
Although prosecutors have now shelved three separate investigations into the former king’s financial affairs, the high court in London has ruled that Juan Carlos does not have sovereign immunity in the case brought against him by an ex-lover who has accused the royal of using Spain’s national intelligence agency to harass and threaten her after they broke up.
The awkward family reunion – the first time all four royals have been pictured together in public since the funeral of Juan Carlos’s elder sister in January 2020 – drew comment from Spain’s press and politicians.
Writing in El País, Luz Sánchez-Mellado said Queen Elizabeth’s ability to get “all four of those crestfallen faces together in one place” would have counted as a posthumous miracle and a step towards sainthood had the late monarch been Catholic.
She added:
A father repudiated by his son and heir because of his recklessness. An old man bent on redemption and recognition. A wife humiliated before the entire planet grinning and bearing it for the umpteenth time in her life for her son, for her kingdom, for herself. And a dumbfounded daughter-in-law split between two worlds, perfectly aware of being the centre of the news.
In Windsor, Avana Chan, 44, is waiting to pay her respects to the Queen. She moved to the UK a year ago from her home of Hong Kong and was able to enter the country on a special fast-track visa introduced by the UK after China imposed a new security law in the former Commonwealth territory.
“She has always been there since I was small, a child,” she said. “She sacrificed her life in service to the Commonwealth. She is an amazing woman.”
Last Updated: 14:54 Monday, 19 September 2022
49m ago
The Queen’s great-grandchildren Prince George, nine, and Princess Charlotte, seven,joined other members of the royal family at the state funeral of the Queen.
The two eldest children of the heir to the throne, Prince William, and the Princess of Wales accompanied their parents to the service at Westminster Abbey.
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