NEARLY 100 presidents and heads of government will be arriving in London from today to attend the funeral of Queen Elizabeth.
US president Joe Biden and his wife Jill are expected to pay respects to the late sovereign in Westminster Hall, sign an official condolence book and attend a reception hosted by King Charles.
However, a meeting between Prime Minister Liz Truss and Biden, which was also due to take place today, has been cancelled. They will instead attend a “full bilateral meeting” at the UN General Assembly on Wednesday.
Truss will still meet Irish Taoiseach Micheal Martin, Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau and Polish president Andrzej Duda in Downing Street today.
No 10 would not give any further details on why the meeting with Biden was cancelled.
It comes after Truss met the Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese and New Zealand’s prime minister Jacinda Ardern at the Government’s Chevening country residence yesterday.
In advance of her talks with Truss, Ardern said the Queen’s death and new King would be the “focus of conversation”, and they were also likely to discuss Ukraine and the UK’s free trade agreement with New Zealand.
French president Emmanuel Macron will also be among the 2000 people gathered inside Westminster Abbey, and the leaders of most Commonwealth countries are expected to attend.
Germany’s president Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Italy’s president Sergio Mattarella and Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro are among those attending, along with the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen. King Felipe of Spain and his wife, Queen Letizia, are among the European royals who will attend the funeral.
The Queen’s funeral will begin tomorrow, with her coffin carried on a State Gun Carriage from New Palace Yard to Westminster Abbey by way of Parliament Square, Broad Sanctuary and the Sanctuary.
The funeral service will take place at 11am and is expected to last one hour, with the royal family then walking in procession with the coffin to Wellington Arch, Hyde Park Corner, arriving at 1pm.
The Very Reverend Dr David Hoyle (pictured), who will lead the ceremony, said the scale of the service was almost unprecedented, even for Westminster Abbey – the scene of so many royal milestones throughout history.
The Queen’s is the first funeral of a reigning king or queen to be held in Westminster Abbey since George II’s in 1760. It is also where she married the Duke of Edinburgh in 1947 and was the place of her coronation in 1953.
“It’s on a scale that even Westminster Abbey doesn’t often do,” Hoyle said, adding it would be a “wonderful mixture of great ceremony and some very profound but very ordinary words”.
Hundreds of people have been involved in the preparations inside the church, working through the night as they put in 19 and 20-hour shifts to stage the historic ceremony.
After the arrival at Hyde Park, the state hearse and royal family will travel to Windsor where a committal service will take place at 4pm in St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle, with a congregation made up of the Queen’s household past and present, including personal staff who work, or who have worked, on the private estates.
The Queen will be buried with the Duke of Edinburgh at the King George VI Memorial Chapel in a private service at 7.30pm attended by the King and the royal family.
Today will also see a service of reflection for the Queen at the Kelpies sculptures near Falkirk, with 96 lanterns, one for each year of her life, being lowered into the pool of reflection at the foot of the Queen Elizabeth II Canal, before wreaths are placed into the water.
Members of the public are also being invited to observe a nationwide one-minute silence at 8pm to remember the Queen
