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Queen Mum, Diana, Churchill: Big funeral services in London
Welsh Guards carry the coffin of Diana, Princess of Wales, draped in the royal standard. photo
© Johnny Eggitt/epa/dpa
Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral is a historic event – but not the first of its kind.
Opulent funeral ceremonies have a long tradition in Great Britain. Here are the three most important of the last 100 years:
queen mum
The funeral of the Queen Mother, who died at the age of 101, was reminiscent of the current state funeral for Queen Elizabeth. Queen Mum’s coffin was first laid out in Westminster Hall, where 200,000 people said goodbye to her. She chose the music that was played at her funeral service in Westminster Abbey on April 9, 2002.
On top of the coffin, also decorated with the royal standard and flowers, lay the Queen Mother’s crown with the world-famous Kohinoor diamond. When the car with the coffin then passed Buckingham Palace for the last time on the way to Windsor, two Spitfires and the only still airworthy Lancaster bomber from the Second World War flew over the city center – a last reminder of Queen Mum’s “finest hour” ( greatest hour) when she walked smiling through the bomb craters after the attacks of the German air force.
Princess Diana
The funeral service for the “Queen of Hearts” on September 6, 1997 was not an official state funeral, but met with unprecedented interest: it is estimated that around two and a half billion people around the world followed the funeral service in Westminster Abbey. In the funeral procession, Princes William and Harry walked in the first row behind the coffin of their mother who died in an accident – an iconic image.
As the coffin passed Buckingham Palace, Queen Elizabeth bowed. An unprecedented wave of criticism had swept over her in the days before because she had been accused of reacting too distantly to the accidental death. During the memorial service, Elton John sang a new-lyriced version of “Candle in the Wind,” which became an international hit. Diana’s brother Charles Spencer gave a speech with thinly veiled criticism of the royal house.
Winston Churchill
More than 300,000 people had pilgrimaged past Churchill’s coffin in Westminster Hall before it was pulled in a two-kilometer funeral procession to St. Paul’s Cathedral on January 30, 1965. After the service, the funeral procession continued through the City of London. At the Tower, the coffin was placed on a barge and taken across the Thames to Waterloo Station. From there he was taken by train to Oxfordshire, where the Premier was given a modest grave near his parents.
Two years later, the funeral of the first Federal Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, was based on this model in Germany. After the requiem in Cologne Cathedral, the German Navy transported the coffin by speedboat “Kondor” across the Rhine to Rhöndorf near Bonn, where the statesman was buried in the forest cemetery.