Funeral to be held on April 17

The funeral of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher will take place on April 17, current Prime Minister David Cameron's Downing Street office said on Tuesday.

"It was agreed this morning at the government coordination meeting with the Thatcher family and Buckingham Palace that the funeral service of Lady Thatcher will take place on Wednesday, 17 April, at St Paul's Cathedral," Downing Street said.

Queen Elizabeth II and her husband Prince Philip will attend, Buckingham Palace said. The queen does not usually attend funerals or memorial services of non-royals.

Ceremonial funerals have in the past been given to the Queen Mother - the mother of current monarch Queen Elizabeth II who died in 2002, and to Princess Diana, who died in a car crash in Paris in 1997.

The only other prime minister whose funeral the monarch has attended was that of Britain's World War II leader, Winston Churchill, in 1965.

Churchill was the last British leader to receive a state funeral, also at St. Paul's. Thatcher's service, a ceremonial funeral with full military honors, is not officially a state funeral, which requires a vote in Parliament.

Thatcher's coffin will lie overnight at the Houses of Parliament ahead of the funeral, before being taken by hearse to the church of St. Clement Danes and then, on a horse-drawn gun carriage, to the 17th-century cathedral along a route lined by military personnel.

The televised funeral will be followed by a private cremation.

Early on Tuesday, undertakers removed Thatcher's body from London's Ritz Hotel where she died on Monday at the age of 87. A van carrying Thatcher's casket left the hotel for an undisclosed location, where it will remain during preparations for the funeral.

AP - AFP

(China Daily 04/10/2013 page11)