Britons out in force to honour Queen Mum

LONDON - About 250,000 mourners, from pensioners to princes, paid tribute yesterday to Britain's Queen Mother in a show of pageantry not seen since the death of wartime leader Winston Churchill.

With her diamond-encrusted coronation crown glinting in the spring sunshine atop the coffin, the "Queen Mum" was borne through London on a horse-drawn gun carriage.

Police said 250,000 people packed the mile-long route, which took in many of the capital's tourist sights. Mourners scaled walls to gain a better view, holding cameras aloft to capture a piece of history.

"It's a shame this has to be for her death, but it's what she deserves. We put the P in pageantry," said Tim Aston, an electrician working on a building site overlooking the parade, whose likes have not been seen since Churchill's death in 1965.

On the coffin lay a white bouquet with the simple inscription "In Loving Memory." It was signed Lilibet, the Queen Mother's pet name for her daughter, Queen Elizabeth.

Just five years after following the coffin of their mother Princess Diana, the teenage princes William and Harry bowed their heads in grief, hands ramrod straight at their sides.

The princes, whose mother's death produced an outpouring of grief, were dressed in black morning coats, surrounded by a sea of red military jackets and tall bearskin hats.

It was an equally grueling ordeal for heir-to-the throne Prince Charles, the Queen Mum's favorite grandson, as he mourned a "gloriously unstoppable and magical" woman who became a wartime symbol of British defiance.

The royal family, accused of being cold and uncaring after Diana's death, turned out in force for the slow march: 14 members were led by the 80-year-old Prince Philip.

Princess Anne, the Queen Mother's 51-year-old granddaughter, broke with royal protocol to join the procession - normally public displays of regal mourning are for men only. She saluted her grandmother as the coffin was taken into Westminster hall.

Schoolchildren and pensioners turned out in casual summer outfits rather than the somber black that tradition dictates.

Many fervent royalists had camped out overnight to gain a front row seat for the 45-minute procession.

"It seemed she would carry on forever," said 75-year-old British pensioner Jacqueline Rayner, the same age as the queen.

Canadian Helen Reid said: "We love the royals as much as the English do. It is a sad day but somehow joyous too, with so much love and good feeling here to say goodbye."

In a well-oiled display of national mourning beamed to up to 200 million television viewers around the world, the gun carriage rolled to Westminster Hall, where "the nation's favorite grandmother" lies in state until Tuesday's funeral.

It was a day of double grief for Queen Elizabeth, who has in the past seven weeks lost her sister, Princess Margaret, younger by four years, and now her mother.

Both were bastions of support as the House of Windsor juggled scandal and divorce, its popularity punctured as the age of deference passed into history.

The coffin, flanked by 1,600 troops, passed by a statue of King George VI - the Queen Mum's beloved husband "Bertie," a stammering figure propelled on to the throne after his brother Edward's shock abdication in 1936.

After the piercing silence of the procession, crowds broke into spontaneous applause as Queen Elizabeth wound her way home.

- REUTERS

Feature: The Queen Mother 1900-2002