Hundreds of thousands expected to pay respects to Queen

Enormous crowds of people are queuing up this morning (NZ time) to bid a final farewell to Queen Elizabeth II at London's Westminster Hall.

The British capital is preparing for one of the largest funerals in recent history after the Queen's death last week at age 96, with up to 1 million expected in London.

Queen Elizabeth is lying in state in London's Westminster Hall, after a ceremonial procession from her Buckingham Palace home.

RNZ's Corrin Dan reported the queues to see the Queen stretched 5km long.

King Charles and other royals followed a horse-drawn gun carriage carrying the coffin, draped in the Royal Standard on which lie her crown and sceptre.

New Zealand Minister Andrew Little is among those in the city, and told Morning Report it's an impressive occasion.

"We all feel a significance of the event, everybody here does. I managed to get to Buckingham Palace to lay some flowers and pay my respects."

Large crowds gather at Parliament Square for procession to Westminster Hall. Not much room left in viewing areas. Few hours to go yet pic.twitter.com/yC0Y9kavYA

— Corin Dann (@CorinDann) September 14, 2022

Prince William and Prince Harry walked together behind the Queen's coffin in the procession.

The brothers, along with the King, followed the coffin on foot from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Hall.

The procession left the palace at 1.22am (NZT). A service lasting about 20 minutes was led by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Members of the public were able to pay their respects to the Queen starting at 5pm local time (4am NZT).

Members of the public had queued and slept on the streets in the rain to be able to pay their final respects.

"This is a once-in-a-lifetime event to honour a once-in-a-lifetime woman," said Andrew Israels-Swenson from Minnesota, who said his 82-year-old British mother asked him to attend to "represent the family."

Jacqui D'Arcy, from Essex, eastern England, arrived at the queue at 6pm on Tuesday to pay her respects to the late monarch but also represent her elderly parents. "I still can't think that she's not with us," she said.

*Read: RNZ's timeline of Queen Elizabeth II's life and reign.

Diane travelled from Thetford Forest in Norfolk to wait in the queue to see the Queen lie in state.

She also came to the capital for the deaths of the Queen Mother and Princess Diana and says it is a "great honour" to be here now for the late Queen.

"If one is able, this is the moment to be here," she says.

"For those who can't make it, they mustn't feel sad. They can do their bit by listening and watching."

Teacher Loretta Barratt got on a train at 5:40am to represent her family, as well as staff and children at Dorrington Academy - and has been making friends already.

"It's a deep emotion to be here for me because I just loved her so much," she says.

"Children can relate to that too," she adds. "When I did assembly the morning after she died, you could not hear a pin drop in that hall of 800 people."

To pay her respects later she plans on curtsying and saying "thank you Your Majesty".

"I know she's not going to leave us and will be our guardian angel," Loretta added.

Everybody involved in this afternoon's procession of the Queen's coffin to Westminster Hall "feels the gravity of this very solemn day", says Captain Amy Cooper of the King's Troop Royal Horse Artillery.

Despite the pressure, her team is planning to pull off "the best parade of our lives", she tells the BBC.

She says she's "never seen such motivated and dedicated soldiers", some of whom were "up all night" cleaning the kit.

Thursday marks the first of four full days that the Queen's coffin will lie in state in Westminster Hall, where she will remain until the morning of the funeral on 19 September.

It is expected that hundreds of thousands of mourners will pay their respects in the 11th-Century building, the oldest part of the Palace of Westminster.

The last member of the Royal Family to lie in state in the hall was the Queen Mother in 2002, when more than 200,000 people queued to view her coffin.

Queen Elizabeth II's will be the first state funeral in the UK since 1965, for the former prime minister Sir Winston Churchill.

- BBC/Reuters with RNZ