I have been watching a river run through London. Dark and silent and sombre and cold, it consists of people, trickling towards Westminster Hall. This is an improbable flood of folk, with an absence of the usual chatter and crisp packets and chocolate and cans of coke. It has thousands of guardians — the police constabularies of the Principality of Wales; the armed services in their naval dark blue, army khaki and air force light blue; the first aiders of the British Red Cross and St John’s Ambulance; sympathetic ears and carers from the Samaritans and Salvation Army; First Aid Nursing Yeomanry and Scouts — along with water stations, barriers and battalions of portaloos. The management of this tide has an unlikely codename, the much-rehearsed Operation Feather. 

Each private moment with their Sovereign takes around ten seconds

The moment is being repeated in miniature, with books of condolence in cathedrals and parish churches, town halls and civic buildings throughout the realm, and in British embassies and consulates afar. Perhaps to our surprise, Her Late Majesty is being commemorated as the Queen of the English-speaking world. Additionally, millions in the republics of Portugal and Brazil, France and America, Germany and Italy, with no monarch of their own, have gone into private mourning. Led by President Joe Biden, the world’s heads of state will gather as never before when she is laid to rest on Monday. Back in her capital, as the Thames-side stream became a torrent, it snaked back a mile, then two, afterwards three, along the southside of the river to Tower Bridge and beyond. Wise heads now talk of ten miles, bearing millions of people, stretching back to Southwark. 

Irresistible, the first human driftwood took four, then eight and twelve, then uncountable hours, to wash into the old Norman edifice at Westminster, commissioned by the son of the Conqueror in 1097. Once the largest room in Europe, its stones witnessed Henry VIII’s coronation banquet, the trials of Sir Thomas Moore, Guy Fawkes and Charles I, before surviving the Blitz. Now its ice-chill, six-foot-thick walls, hammer-beamed oaken roof and stained glass are witnessing another unique event.

From five pm on 14 September, down the ancient, smooth-worn steps the deluge of citizens cascaded. The surge will cease only at 6:30 am on Monday, 19 September, before Her Majesty’s state funeral begins. The head of the queue of the bereft, the shocked and the curious waited up to thirty hours for their two minutes in Westminster Hall. Inside, the process seamlessly becomes Operation Marquee. Many of the impeccable details were chosen by the late Queen herself. Closely ushered by white-tied, tail-coated Palace of Westminster doorkeepers, whose silver-gilt badges of office belie their tough-as-steel security training, the unstoppable surge of humanity divides in two. Either side of the catafalque, the current of mankind eddies and pauses. Here, all races, creeds and colours mingle. Each is adorned with splashes of yellow or blue, wristbands from their place in the queue. 

Collected in grief are the very young and the very old. Some are still able to recall the pulse of aircraft overhead, the crack of artillery, the burst of bombs. The disabled pushing strollers, leaning on canes, others in wheelchairs, more with baby buggies or babes in arms, join the queue. A squad of white-shirted policemen, led by a Chief Superintendent, march down, clutching helmets. Adorned with badges, scarf and woggle, Cubs and Girl Guides and Scouts in uniform follow.Later there are wide-eyed schoolchildren in blazers, city suits draped with their security badges, old soldiers with headgear and decorations. 

The muted lighting catches pearls and medals, handbags, backpacks, tailcoats, T-shirts and tattoos. Lip readers will catch a silent prayer or a choked “Thank you”. Most bow, some curtsey or cross themselves, a few brace up and ramrod-straight, salute. For each, their private moment with their Sovereign takes around ten seconds, but no one is impatient. Many dab ineffectively at moist eyes. With others, the tears flow uncontrollably, whilst more still bite lips. Everywhere are drawn faces, issuing concern, anxiety, distress. Twin canals of black skirts, black jackets and black ties. 

A tall candle of English beeswax burns at each corner of the royal bier. Atop the catafalque, glimmers the Imperial State Crown, lined with velvet and ermine, boasting 2,868 diamonds, 273 pearls, 17 sapphires, 11 emeralds and five rubies. Notable are St Edward’s sapphire, taken from the Confessor’s ring; the Black Prince’s ruby, worn by Henry V at Agincourt; and the Cullinan diamond, cut from the world’s largest precious stone. As the Governor of Edinburgh Castle, General Alastair Bruce, observed, “The Imperial State Crown is literally priceless. For its value, you might as well add as many zeros as there are diamonds on it”. The floral spray of sweet peas, dahlias, phlox, white roses, heather and pine fir, blooms gathered from Windsor and Balmoral, and the royal standard below, offer the only relief to the dark, dark colours and moods. 

Splendid are battle axe-bearing, white-swan-feather-hatted representatives

On guard in the 11th century hall, built over an earlier palace of the Danish King Cnut, military buttons and badges and brass helmets mirror the candlelight. Black bands worn on the left arm, burnished boots and polished belts add to the brilliance. Splendid are the two battle axe-bearing, white-swan-feather-hatted representatives of the Honourable Corps of the Gentlemen at Arms, created by Henry VIII in 1509. With them are four bearskinned, scarlet-and-gilt tunicked officers of the Foot Guards, who lean on their swords. Their regiments originated in the mid-17th century. They are joined by four hatted, ruffed and piked Yeomen of the Guard, founded in 1485 by Henry Tudor after Bosworth, and four helmeted constables of the Metropolitan Police, established by Sir Robert Peel in 1829. White-gloved, all are bemedalled; four, eight, twelve ribbons tell of service, bravery, campaigns, combat.

The fourteen heads of each escort are bowed for their twenty minute watch over the funeral bier. They will rest from their vigil for forty minutes, then return. When the watch changes, summoned by the click of a ceremonial battle axe on the floor, the thump of boots on mediaeval limestone will be the only sound. From the onlookers, no phones, no cameras, no branded clothing or political messages, no food, no drink, no whispers, no voices, no noise. The stone flags barely echo the human gush, who have never stood for so long, never been quite as silent, have rarely before switched off their phones or taken their hands out of their pockets. Outside, central London has been hushed, for even the usual police sirens, blare of horns and hum of distant traffic is absent.

Everywhere is an echo of that other great state funeral, which came after a life rich with service, also chosen by its distinguished recipient. The ceremonies that accompanied the deaths of Winston Churchill in 1965 and Elizabeth Windsor in our own time, and the sense of an era ending, will bookend many lives, probably including my own. Each occasion has been hallmarked by the very British “queue”, a concept little understood outside the British Isles — described as a single initial letter, with four more waiting silently behind. “I would go through all that queuing again for my private moment with my Queen,” said one mourner. 

In Westminster Hall, the unceasing twin rivers of subjects and strangers merge again, having swirled around the foot of the rock that was their Elizabeth the Great.