She landed at RAF Northolt shortly before 7pm under a heavy sky. The light was fading fast.
Seven decades ago, stepping out on to the tarmac of another west London airport just a few miles further south, it had been as a “young gleaming champion”, ushering in what Winston Churchill predicted would be a glorious second Elizabethan age.
Then, just 25, the new Queen had been returning from Kenya following the death of her father, George VI.
Today, for all the attributes of King Charles III or the judgments that may be made about the glory or otherwise of postwar Britain, the return of the Queen to England, accompanied by her daughter Anne, marked most clearly not the start of something but its end. A reminder too, if nothing else, that nothing lasts – all must pass.
The coffin had come from Edinburgh, where the mourners, eight to 10 abreast in places, had gathered in the early hours of Tuesday outside Saint Giles’ cathedral on the Royal Mile, halfway between Edinburgh Castle and the Palace of Holyroodhouse.
Those arriving at 6am had been apologetically informed that they faced a two hour wait to get inside – a warning that put off very few. Some would go on to uncomplainingly queue for five hours or more to take their place among the 33,000 who made the pilgrimage. The numbers would have been higher but due to a lack of sufficient time to get people through, the queue had to be prematurely closed.
Guarded by four green-garbed members of the Royal Company of Archers, each holding an upright bow, and four police officers wearing white gloves, the coffin under the church’s arched ceiling was draped by the Royal Standard of Scotland and topped with the ancient Crown of Scotland along with a wreath of white flowers freshly picked from the gardens at Balmoral.
Among them, said to be favourites of the late Queen, were sweet peas, the birth flower of April – the month of her real birthday – and symbolic of gratitude, kindness, and goodbyes. Some of those shuffling through the cathedral paused to reflect once by the coffin, others were a little tearful. All appeared glad to have taken the time.
Jo Williams, 41, a former police officer, who had driven 230 miles up from Manchester, was one of the first to arrive. She had made it for 5.30am before the official queueing arrangements had started despite hurriedly having to find a replacement electric wheelchair after her own broke down. But the effort, she said, had not been in vain.
“There was a lot of security of course but when you got inside it felt really calm and dignified”, she said. “I felt at rest but also emotional: it was like she was there.”
Then, shortly after 4pm, the moment came for the Queen to leave Scotland, the birthplace of her late mother, Queen Elizabeth, for the final time.
A lone piper played the Flowers of the Forest as the pall bearers – a subaltern officer, one Warrant Officer Class 2 and eight soldiers of the Royal Regiment of Scotland – emerged from the cathedral with the lead lined oak coffin and gently manoeuvred it into the waiting Mercedes hearse.
Two ranks of the Royal Company of Archers, the monarch’s honour guard in Scotland, saluted, with their standards lowered to the stone setts, or paving blocks, in the cathedral’s square.
Anne, the Princess Royal, who had been at Balmoral in Royal Deeside when the Queen died on Thursday afternoon and who has stayed by her side, emerged from the church to take her place in the Royal Bentley, one of five cars in a cortege following the hearse.
Earlier she had taken part in a short private service attended by Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, Alister Jack, the UK government’s Scotland secretary, and Alison Johnstone, the Scottish parliament’s presiding officer.
In a statement, the Queen’s daughter, 72, thanked those who had shared their sense of loss. “I was fortunate to share the last 24 hours of my dearest mother’s life”, she said. “It has been an honour and a privilege to accompany her on her final journeys. Witnessing the love and respect shown by so many on these journeys has been both humbling and uplifting”.
As the late Queen’s cortege moved slowly down the city’s cobbled streets, a gentle ripple of applause broke out. Rev Dr Iain Greenshields, the moderator of the Church of Scotland, who had spent the weekend with the Queen at Balmoral just before she died, said Scotland had shown its capacity for restrained spectacle.
Half an hour later, arriving at Edinburgh airport, the Queen’s coffin was met by a guard of honour of three officers and 101 soldiers from the Royal Regiment of Scotland along with a band with muffled and draped drums.
It was now the turn of the Royal Air Force. An aircraft bearer party from the Queen’s Colour Squadron tentatively lifted the coffin from the hearse and brought it to the back of the waiting RAF C-17 Globemaster bearing – for the final time – the callsign “Kittyhawk”, the official callsign used for any military flight with the Queen on board.
As the coffin was brought on board, all who saw it could only be struck by the scale of the plane, used recently in the evacuation of Kabul and the provision of arms to Ukraine and previously for the repatriation of fallen members of the British armed forces.
It taxied slowly, carefully, as if carrying fine china. Then the grey jet lifted off the tarmac with the sun low in the sky. The military band played a single verse of the national anthem before the plane disappeared.
The rain clouds were gathering over southern England but after an hour’s flight, Kittyhawk safely touched down on Northolt’s wet landing strip to silence and a guard of honour of three officers and 96 aviators from the Queen’s Colour Squadron of the Royal Air Force. Waiting in line among the military top brass was the late Queen’s 15th and final prime minister Liz Truss and the defence secretary, Ben Wallace.
There was no band, no music. Just the sounds of the presenting of arms. The King’s Colour for the Royal Air Force was lowered in salute and kept there until the Queen’s coffin was taken down the plane’s ramp by the bearer party and into a new state hearse designed with the Queen’s input to ensure the coffin could be seen clearly by all.
Anne made a deep curtsy and lowered her head as the vehicle carrying her mother was driven slowly away.
It was London’s turn now. Hours before the Queen’s landing on the damp airfield, the crowds had formed along the route to Buckingham Palace planned for the hearse despite the spitting rain. Every where the cortege went, three police motorcycle outriders ahead, people stood in silence, in heavier numbers as it moved at a steady pace deeper in the city as night fell. The hearse travelled past Marble Arch, along Park Lane and Constitution Hill, before arriving at Buckingham Palace, within view of St James Palace, where her son was proclaimed King on Saturday.
At Buckingham Palace, her heir, and all her children, their spouses and grandchildren waited for her. As the motorcade pulled up outside the gates, the motorbikes cut their engines and the crowd fell silent in the darkness. The hush continued as the brightly lit hearse slowly pulled in through the rain.
Only once the hearse was in the driveway did the crowd break out in applause and a round of three cheers. Inside, meanwhile, in the Palace’s red-carpeted Bow room, a private ceremony, a rare moment of intimacy in a very public passing, began ahead of the Queen being handed back to the nation for Monday’s state funeral and a show of thanks that perhaps even Churchill 71 years ago could hardly have imagined.
• This article was amended on 14 September 2022 because the route taken by the Queen’s coffin on Tuesday (13 September) was not past St James’s palace, down Horse Guards Parade and through Whitehall as an earlier version said. Once past Marble Arch, the hearse travelled along Park Lane and Constitution Hill before arriving at Buckingham Palace.
