Wednesday 14 September 2022 01:38 AM When the Queen lies in State, we won't have seen anything like it since ... trends now
January 28, 1965
Two rivers run silently through London tonight, and one is made of people. Dark and quiet as the night-time Thames itself, it flows through Westminster Hall, eddying about the foot of the rock called Churchill.
And for all the tears and the stiff, awkward movements of Englishmen ashamed to give in to mourning, the first day of the lying-in-state of Sir Winston Churchill is ending on a note well removed from grief.
If you could distil the emotion that has flowed through England's most venerable hall today into a sound the heart would recognise, it would never fit the plaintive oboe.
You would have to play it bravely, distantly, on a bugle made for war.
People grieving give up something of themselves. The people who came back to Churchill today seemed, on the contrary, to be drawing some intangible strength from him.
Cold in his coffin, he was no less an inspiration.
It showed itself in many ways as the true tapestry of England — not the braided, glinting highlights of ceremonial, but the rough and ready weave of the people — went by.
Vigil: Guards at the catafalque in Westminster Hall as crowds pass Sir Winston's coffin in January 1965
And for all the tears and the stiff, awkward movements of Englishmen ashamed to give in to mourning, the first day of the lying-in-state of Sir Winston Churchill is ending on a note well removed from grief. The cortege at the state funeral of Sir Winston Churchill, makes its way down Whitehall on January 30 1965
There was no form, scarcely any precedent, so people did the best they knew, out of a rich diversity of background and breeding.
Soldierly men came to the sort of attention which must have hurt their old backs and, without breaking the smooth pace of those pressing behind, bowed their heads in a clipped, military way.
And there were some, even, who managed to fall on both knees as they passed the catafalque and immediately rise without ostensibly embarrassing those behind.
Some blessed themselves with the Sign of the Cross. Some shook their heads as though impatient with death for taking him away. Some even seemed to walk by without looking up at the coffin.
But all looked back.
Before they left, some instinct of history made them pause, turn, and take a last look at the scene.
The incredibly patient queue grew and shrank with the passing hours. But for most of the day it stretched two or three deep, from the St Stephen's entrance to the House of Commons, along Millbank, across Lambeth Bridge, and turned back on itself along the South Bank of the Thames almost to St. Thomas' Hospital, forming three sides of an oblong.
They went into the Palace of Westminster by the route many a commoner has gone to see the MP who lay there tonight.
But instead
