Queen’s funeral: crowds gather ahead of Westminster Abbey service – latest updates | Queen Elizabeth II

The Abbey has opened to the congregation attending the Queen’s funeral.

The King’s Guards trooped through the gates of Abbey, with two soldiers stationed at the metal gates awaiting the start of proceedings.

The funeral, which will be one of the largest gathering of heads of states and royalty the UK has hosted in decades, will include European royal families and world leaders.

Dignitaries began to arrive at the Royal Hospital Chelsea in diplomatic cars with dark windows shortly after 7.30am.

Emily Dugan

Outside Buckingham Palace, the superfans who have camped out for days are desperately trying to hold on to their spots in the front row.

Railings have kept people away from the area directly outside the palace but at dawn The Mall was already lined with people.

Cara Jennings, 52, from Minster in Kent, was wrapped in a blanket after her fifth night camping by Green Park.

With her mobility scooter parked beside her pop-up blue tent, she tried to guard her spot at the front row of the railing on The Mall. “I just wanted to get a perfect spot to pay my respects to a lovely woman,” she said. “People are really trying to push in now.”

Jennings said her grandmother and great-grandmother used to work for the Queen as cleaners and that her five children thought it was “brilliant” that she had made the pilgrimage.

Not everyone up at this hour is an ardent fan. Antonis Manvelides, 24, and Jess Nash, 24, have come to The Mall on their fourth date.

Leaning against a tree as the sun came up, they said they had walked from Nash’s flat in Pimlico, south-west London, at 4am to be there.

“I forced him to come,” Nash, who works for a tech startup, said. “We just wanted to see and be with the UK and be part of the atmosphere.”

Erica Butler, 50, a construction worker from Darlington, got here on Sunday night to wait. Dressed in uniform with a chest full of service medals for work in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan, she retired from the army in 2017 after 24 years service as a driver. Her reasons for being here are simple: “I want to say goodbye to the boss,” she said.

She is one of a group of veterans in prime position at the top of The Mall nearest Buckingham Palace.

Geoffrey York, 68, from Wellington in Surrey, was a lance corporal in the Blues and Royals Household Cavalry. He has been by the palace since Friday night. “This is the first thing like this I’ve ever done. All we’ve ever known is the Queen.”

Peter Walker

Peter Walker, the Guardian’s political correspondent, is now outside Westminster Abbey:

One of the elements of the funeral arrangements that I didn’t fully realise before arriving here is how the public are, for the most part, being kept well away from the funeral area, perhaps inevitable given the sheer number of world leaders and heads of state attending.

Parliament Square is empty but for crowds allowed on the far edge, next to the junction with Whitehall. The rest is empty but for security, with the square itself dusted with sand to ease the passage of the gun carriage taking the coffin.

Even parliamentary staff and journalists have been told to keep away from the estate this morning.

The main means for people to pay respects will, instead, be after the funeral, when the cortege travels through central London and to Windsor.

Peter Walker

I’m in Parliament Square, the centre of which is notably empty after the last week of packed scenes, with people moved to the sides ahead of the passage of the gun carriage taking the Queen’s coffin from Westminster Hall to Westminster Abbey in a few hours.

Anyone without a media or security pass is behind a double layer of barriers, with the crowds now up to half a dozen deep. There are two distinct groups: those who have arrived overnight, with coats and bags but little more, and the long-termers with their camping chairs, sleeping bags and supplies of snacks.

Near the corner of Whitehall and Westminster Bridge, Mary Foster, from Petersfield in Hampshire, and her friend Bill Powell, who has come from Toronto in Canada, were swiftly identified by fellow gatherers as the longest-serving, having arrived on Friday afternoon. The pair, sitting by large bags containing camping gear and a small tent, initially set up opposite Westminster Abbey, but were moved on when security plans changed.

“They were very good to us,” said Foster. “They knew we had been here the longer so they made sure we had the best spot here as well.”

Powell said the pair had not endured much poor weather: “Some light drizzle at night,” he said. “But nothing a Canadian can’t handle.”

Archie Bland

The US president will not, despite much speculation last week, be travelling to Westminster Abbey today on a bus – but everyone else will be ferried from the Royal Hospital Chelsea two miles away.

The 500 international dignitaries include King Felipe and Queen Letizia of Spain and Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako of Japan, as well as Emmanuel Macron, Jacinda Ardern, Justin Trudeau, and Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska. Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro is attending (and has been criticised for using the occasion as an “election soapbox”), but there will be no official representatives from Russia, Belarus, Myanmar, Venezuela, Syria, or Afghanistan. Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is no longer expected to attend. And after some controversy, the Chinese vice-president, Wang Qishan, will be there.

Meanwhile, Liz Truss, Keir Starmer and Nicola Sturgeon will be joined by every living British former prime minister and many other politicians. Holders of the Victoria Cross and George Cross from across the Commonwealth will be among the guests, as will nearly 200 people who were recognised this year in the Queen’s birthday honours – and the royal family and members of the household.

After 10 days of official mourning, the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II takes place in London today.

The Queen’s lying in state finished earlier this morning, bringing to an end a queue that went on for days and stretched up to 5 miles (8km), winding along the Thames. The last people to pay their respects left Westminster Hall just before 6.30am. At 8am Westminster Abbey will open to the congregation attending the funeral. Then, at 10.30am, the coffin will be carried by the gun carriage from Westminster Hall.

Here is a full schedule for today’s events:

The Queen’s lying in state is now over. The last people who queued to see her coffin passed through early this morning. At 6.29am, Black Rod, a senior officer in the House of Lords, bowed once to the coffin and walked to the end of Westminster Hall.

The government announced the queue had been closed just after 10.30pm last night. An estimated 300,000 people have queued to pay their respects, with the wait time reaching an estimated 17 hours.

Later this morning, the Queen’s coffin will be carried on the state funeral gun carriage from Westminster Hall to the Westminster Abbey, towed by 142 sailors from the Royal Navy.

Archie Bland

Further up Whitehall, Christina Burrows is sitting against a bollard. She met the Queen once in her thirties, at a charity event in 1992, but “I’ve always seen her as a beacon,” she says. “During lockdown, when she said ‘We’ll meet again’, that was wonderful. It gave me a lot of hope. So I wanted to be here for her like she was for us.” She sighs and claps her hands to her cheeks. “I don’t know how I’ll feel when she goes past,” she says. “Oh god, I can’t believe it. There’ll never be another day like this in our lives.”