As the nation comes to a standstill for the Queen Mother's final journey today, Nick Morrison looks at the history of royal funerals.

As the nation comes to a standstill for the Queen Mother's final journey today NICK MORRISON looks at the history of royal funerals

AS the Queen Mother's body is laid to rest amid the Gothic splendour of St George's Chapel at Windsor just after 6pm this evening, the occasion will be witnessed by a handful of members of the Royal Family. The simple committal service, reuniting the last Empress with her husband George VI in the family chapel, will mark the end of the extraordinary final journey of a woman who has been at the heart of national life for more than 70 years.

But this private ceremony follows a very public display of splendour. By the time the funeral cortege leaves London, an estimated half a million people are expected to have paid their respects: lining the procession from Windsor into Westminster Hall on Friday; queuing for up to eight hours to view the coffin, and watching today's final leg of the journey. Millions more around the world will watch the funeral on television, in what is predicted to be the biggest televised event since the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997.

Not since the state funeral of Sir Winston Churchill in 1965 has there been an occasion of comparable grandeur and pomp. The last commoner to be accorded a state funeral, an honour in the personal gift of the Queen, the wartime prime minister's coffin was borne on the same gun carriage which will be used for the Queen Mother today.

More than 300,000 people had filed past Churchill's coffin as he lay in state for three days at Westminster Hall, before it was taken to St Paul's Cathedral for the funeral service. The military procession included the royal families of Europe and representatives of 110 nations.

The 13-ton bell of Big Ben struck at 9.45am before falling silent for the rest of the day, as the city came to a standstill, with just the noise of the 90-gun salute at the Tower of London and the rhythmical march of the 7,000 servicemen involved in the procession. An estimated 350m people watched the proceedings on television, about a tenth of the world's population.

After the service, the coffin was taken on board the Port of London Authority launch Havengore from Tower Pier upriver to the Royal Festival Hall pier and then to Waterloo Station, as the band of the Royal Marines played Rule Britannia and RAF jets flew overhead in salute, before being taken to Bladon in Oxfordshire for a private burial.

But while today's ceremonials will rival Sir Winston's for grandeur, the concept of Royal funerals becoming imposing state occasions is a relatively recent one. Before Queen Victoria's death in 1901, they were private affairs, often carried out in the evening and with no public pageantry.

It was Queen Victoria herself who decreed that her passing should be marked by a military spectacle, setting a precedent for future Royal funerals.

She said that, as head of the Army and Navy, she wished her funeral to have a martial character. She became the first sovereign whose coffin was borne on a gun carriage, which was made in 1880.

Her body was taken by train to Victoria and then straight to Paddington through streets lined by 30,000 troops, before she was buried with her husband Prince Albert at Frogmore, in the grounds of Windsor Castle.

Royal biographer Christopher Warwick says: ''In general, royal funerals took place at night. They were really private affairs and the public were not expected to see much of it or participate. When Queen Victoria died, we had the first kind of public spectacle. Queen Victoria, like the Queen Mother, had become an institution. Few people had known any other monarch as her reign had lasted almost 64 years.

''The public wouldn't have wanted her to have a private funeral in the way her husband did. The trend of evening funerals had to be broken once and for all. It set the tradition for the kind of military funeral we see today.''

Queen Victoria's funeral saw another first in the presence of a newsreel camera, when the medium was in its infancy. As the procession turned a corner on the route from Westminster Hall to Paddington Station, Edward VII noticed the camera and came to a standstill, so the cameraman could capture the historic sequence.

But one of the most important precedents was set at Queen Victoria's funeral by accident. The roads had been made slippery by the rainy January weather, making it difficult for the horses pulling the gun carriage bearing the coffin to keep their grip. The Navy personnel responsible for the carriage decided that, instead of the horses, they would draw the carriage themselves. Although horses will pull the Queen Mother's gun carriage, for state funerals, it is pulled by Navy personnel.

Dominic Maguire, of the National Association of Funeral Directors, says today's funeral will have been rehearsed long in advance and planned with military precision.

''It would have been planned for around 30 years. The funeral had been rehearsed in different stages whenever the Queen Mother was away on holiday. That was a fairly closely-guarded secret,'' he says.

More than 200,000 people are expected to have viewed the Queen Mother's coffin by the time Westminster Hall closed to the public at 6am today. Whereas Queen Victoria's may have been the first public funeral, it was Edward VII who was the first monarch to lie in state. While the public were able to see the body at one stage, now the coffin is kept closed.

Mr Maguire says: "Lying in state gives an opportunity for people to see that the person has died. It is a way of enabling people to see the physical manifestation of death. It also gives people the opportunity to come out and pay their respects for the deceased and for the family."

The role of the services in a royal funeral is hugely important, according to Professor Ben Pimlott, author of the forthcoming The Queen: Elizabeth II And The Monarchy.

He says: "The armed forces are symbols of the nation. That has particular significance for the Queen Mother because she was Colonel, Honorary Colonel or Colonel-in-Chief of more than a dozen regiments and units. But on any great state occasion there is some sort of presence."

The Queen Mother's funeral is a ceremonial and not a state funeral, which are generally limited to sovereigns. Ceremonial royal funerals are for those members of the Royal Family who hold high military rank, for the consort of the sovereign and for the heir to the throne. Private funerals, recently seen for Princess Margaret, are for all other members of the Royal Family, their children and their spouses.

The Queen Mother's coffin will be placed next to that of George VI, underneath a black marble stone in the chapel she created after her husband's death. Surrounded by the remains of monarchs including Edward IV, Henry VI, Henry VIII, Charles I and George V, the private chapel is filled with personal touches, including six stained glass windows designed by John Piper, one of the Queen Mother's favourite artists, and a modern Celtic cross, commissioned by Princess Margaret.

And as the Queen Mother's coffin rests in the chapel vault, it will be joined by the ashes of her daughter Margaret, which have been stored since her funeral in February, reuniting them for eternity.