More than 250,000 people waited for hours, queuing for several miles, to pay their respects to Queen Elizabeth II’s coffin in the days before her funeral in London, the British government said on Tuesday.
Exposed night and day for five days
Before a grandiose state funeral on Monday in London, then a private burial in the chapel of Windsor Castle, the coffin of the sovereign who died on September 8 at the age of 96, including 70 years of reign, had been exposed day and night for five days to the public in Westminster Hall, the oldest part of Parliament.
“More than 250,000 (people) have passed through Parliament, it’s an approximate figure at the moment,” Culture Minister Michelle Donelan told Sky News. Asked about the cost of the funeral to the taxpayer, she said she did not know, but said that in her opinion the British would consider that “it was money well spent”.
“The glue that held our society together”
“Thousands of people were seen ‘showing up for the funeral’ and I don’t think anyone can suggest that our late monarch didn’t deserve this farewell, given the duty and selfless service to which she had pledged herself for more than 70 years,” she added. “I always saw our late monarch as the glue that held our society together,” she said.
The United Kingdom resumed on Tuesday the course of its life which had been suspended for 12 days by the emotion and the commemorations linked to Elizabeth II. If the sovereign still dominates the front page of all the British press on Tuesday, the cost of living crisis and social movements should quickly return to the fore.