The last state funeral was Churchill’s. Queen Elizabeth II’s is a bigger event.
The queen lay in state for four days. In a metropolitan area whose population has nearly doubled in size since Churchill’s time, waiting time in the “queue to end all queues” reached 14 hours — so long that the government warned well-wishers to stay away on the last day. That didn’t deter the hundreds of thousands who braved it earlier. Millions more watched by live stream.
Churchill’s coffin was draped in the Union Jack, the queen’s in the Royal Standard. Churchill’s funeral — at St Paul’s Cathedral — saw delegations from just over 110 countries. The queen’s — taking place at Westminster Abbey in an era of more independent states — is more of a gathering of the global Who’s Who, and is being attended by representatives of nearly 200 countries and territories.
Among them are approximately 90 presidents and prime ministers, including President Biden. By comparison, Churchill’s had six presidents and 16 prime ministers. U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson, ill with a respiratory problem, stayed home at the time.
Six monarchs attended Churchill’s send-off. The front rows of the queen’s funeral will be lined by the members of 23 royal families. More than 1,000 police and security personnel stood watch over Churchill’s funeral. The queen’s is the biggest security operation in Britain since World War II, complete with snipers on rooftops, surveillance drones, 10,000 uniformed police officers and thousands more in plainclothes.
Churchill’s funeral saw at least 1 million people line the streets on a procession day so cold that some feared for the health of Churchill’s young descendants as one marched hatless behind the coffin. On a fortuitously mild September day, the queen could draw as many as 2 million.
Perhaps the biggest difference is the global audience. About 350 million watched Churchill’s funeral worldwide — a still-startling figure given the era, and considering 650 million watched the Apollo 11 moon landing four years later. Some observers predict the queen’s record-breaking global viewership, however, could top 4.1 million today.
Judging from the unyielding respect Churchill had for then-young Queen Elizabeth II, that sounds like the way Sir Winston would have wanted it.
“He saw Elizabeth and her dedication to public service as the future of the monarchy,” said Justin Reash, executive director of the International Churchill Society.