Pomp, reverence, applause – then a service touching in its simplicity

There were far more flowers than brickbats hurled, the blooms landing softly on the streets as the gun carriage that bore her coffin, draped in the Union Flag, rumbled quietly by the crowds that packed 10-deep onto the pavements.

She was borne through London with reverence and pomp under leaden skies, the military escort drawn from the units that recaptured the Falklands marching at a measured 70 paces to the minute, a state funeral procession in all but name, the like of which for a political leader Britain has not seen for nigh on 50 years since Sir Winston Churchill was taken to his rest.

Yet at the heart of a day of ceremony in which her political peers and heirs gathered in St Paul’s to pay tribute was a funeral service of touching simplicity, drawn from the Book of Common Prayer which she had known since childhood.

It was her wish that for all the grandeur of the setting, her funeral should be rooted in the simple faith bequeathed by her lay preacher father. As so often in life, in death she also got her way.

The capital readied itself at dawn for Baroness Thatcher’s last journey. The flags on Government buildings were lowered to half-mast – where they would remain until dusk – as the first of the crowds began to bag the prime positions along the route the procession would take.

This was to be a day that ran with military precision. And so, at 10am on the dot, precisely as scheduled, the hearse moved away smoothly from the Chapel of St Mary Undercroft, where she had lain overnight in her last farewell to Parliament. The applause began almost immediately along the short journey to the RAF church, St Clement Danes, there to await the gun carriage of the King’s Troop Royal Artillery that would bear her to St Paul’s.

Her pallbearers – none of them born when she came to power in 1979 – carried the coffin with utmost care to the gleaming horse-drawn carriage dating from 1914. Among them, Lance Corporal James Steel, 24, from Ripon, serving with 3rd Battalion, the Parachute Regiment. A few paces behind, carrying the caps of the eight bearers, was Senior Aircraftman Jamie Straker, 23, of Bridlington, from Queen’s Colour Squadron, RAF.

At 10.33, the Band of the Royal Marines struck up Beethoven’s Funeral March Number One, and the six black horses hauling the gun carriage began the 1.9-mile journey to St Paul’s, their hooves muffled by sand laid along the route.

By now, every side street was packed as well as the pavements along The Strand and Fleet Street. Those too young to remember Margaret Thatcher in office mingled with those who had voted for her, all straining to catch a glimpse.

In the midst of all the ceremony, there was a touch of the personal, a reminder of the mother and grandmother as well as the stateswoman – a card nestled in the wreath of white flowers atop the coffin that read simply: “Beloved Mother – Always in our hearts”.

At the narrowest part of Fleet Street, a few boos and jeers were audible, but the crowd applauded all the harder to smother them. The ugliest moment came at Ludgate Circus, when something was thrown at one of the horses, temporarily unsettling it.

The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh had arrived at St Paul’s at 10.45 precisely, 10 minutes before the procession was due at the great West Door. As it approached the cathedral, the crowds began clapping once more.

As a single, half-muffled bell tolled, the coffin was carried up the 24 steps and inside, to be laid gently on a bier directly below Sir Christopher Wren’s great dome as the service commenced.

Each of the three hymns – He Who Would Valiant Be, Love Divine, All Loves Excelling and I Vow to Thee My Country – soared through St Paul’s.

In the front row, the Queen, with David Cameron at her right, and then all the other surviving former prime ministers, Gordon Brown, Tony Blair and Sir John Major.

Across the aisle, the Thatcher family, her son, Mark, daughter Carol and grandchildren Michael and Amanda, who gave the first reading, quietly assured in her delivery.

There were moments of humour in the address by the Bishop of London, Richard Chartres, and then, on the stroke of 10.55, it was over.

The pallbearers bore her out and down the steps as her family looked on. Her Order of Merit and Order of the Garter were laid carefully alongside her coffin in the hearse.

There was a last round of applause as it swept away to a private cremation. The political titan who for so long dominated British public life had taken her last bow.