Queen Mother's funeral to be held April 9

11.50am - By MATTHEW BEARD and MARIE WOOLF

LONDON - Buckingham Palace has announced the Queen Mother's funeral will take place at Westminster Abbey next Tuesday following a week of public mourning.

Flags are being flown at half-mast on palaces and public buildings and Parliament has been recalled to allow MPs and peers to pay their respects.

Downing Street has also issued guidelines to an array of institutions – from art galleries to football grounds - to show their respect by cancelling events planned for the day of the funeral, by observing a period of silence and playing the national anthem.

The protocol for the funeral – a state occasion in all but name - has not been followed since the passing in 1952 of King George VI, the Queen Mother's husband.

As members of the Royal Family gathered for a private church service in Windsor last night, courtiers were putting the finishing touches to Operation Marquee, a plan which has evolved over ten years.

The Queen mother's coffin, currently at Windsor, will be driven to the Queen's Chapel at St James's Palace tomorrow before being moved to Westminster Hall where it will lie in state for three days - an event last deemed appropriate for the passing in 1965 of Sir Winton Churchill.

Courtiers predict that the occasion will attract more than 400,000 mourners – compared to 380,000 who paid their respects to Churchill and more than ten times as many as her late husband.

Members of the public will be able to file past the Queen Mother's coffin, which will sit on a 2m high platform surrounded by floral tributes at the centre of Parliament's oldest hall, built in the 12th century.

As they wait, people will be served tea by volunteers from the Women's Royal Volunteer Service before passing through an x-ray machine to pay their respects.

After difficult negotiations with Westminster officials, Buckingham Palace has given permission for cameras to record the Queen and the rest of the Royal Family as the Archbishop of Canterbury leads the service on Friday.

However the footage will only show the royal mourners from the back – to spare the Queen the discomfort of her private grief being portrayed to millions of viewers.

The funeral will take place in the adjacent Westminster Abbey at 11.30am on Tuesday in a service conducted by The Dean of Westminster. Schools have been urged to rearrange timetables to allow pupils and teachers to follow the service on television.

Yesterday in churches across the country tributes were paid to the Queen Mother and Easter Sunday congregations queued to sign books of condolence.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr George Carey, gave thanks for the Queen Mother's life in his traditional Easter address at Canterbury Cathedral.

He said: "As the nation mourns we give thanks to God for a life not only of great longevity but also of one lived to the full. Our thoughts and prayers this morning are with the Queen, who has lost first a sister and now a much-loved parent in a matter of weeks."

The Archbishop, who retires later this year, also recalled the strength of the Queen mother's Christian faith. British troops in Afghanistan held a service in memory of the Queen Mother. Padre Rory MacLeod told troops gathered at the Bagram airbase that she would be remembered for helping to raise morale at crucial times in the country's history.

It also emerged that Prince Charles, who went straight to Windsor with his two sons after returning from his skiing holiday yesterday, may move into the Queen Mother's stately London home, Clarence House.

At present Charles, lives in nearby St James's Palace but royal sources speculated that he may prefer to move with his two sons to the more spacious, three-storey Clarence House, built in the 19th century.

- INDEPENDENT

Feature: The Queen Mother 1900-2002