The making
telegraph.co.ukThe King’s lying-in-state at Westminster Hall attracted huge crowds. On the first day, 12 February 1952, close on 80,000 filed past the catafalque.
Many had waited in queues the entire night. In the hours before dawn those without blankets stamped on the frosty pavement to keep warm.
It was originally intended to close the doors at 10pm but such was the crush, it was 2am before the doors on the northern exit were shut behind the last of the mourners.In all, over three days, some 300,000 people attended the lying-in-state.
For those who were not eyewitnesses, a memorable account was provided by the radio commentary of Richard Dimbleby, an avuncular figure with a seductive delivery of carefully-modulated diction, whose mellifluous tones and overly reverential manner were thought to give royalty the required lustre. ‘They are passing, in their thousands,’ he said, ‘through the hall of history while history is being made.’Two days later, on a cloudy and misty morning, a mile-long cortege began its journey fromWestminster Hall to Paddington Station.
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