The Queen’s coffin arrived in London in darkness after being flown from Edinburgh in an RAF C-17 Globemaster
She landed at RAF Northolt shortly before 7pm under a heavy sky. The light was fading fast.
Seven decades ago, stepping out on to the tarmac of another west London airport just a few miles further south, it had been as a “young gleaming champion”, ushering in what Winston Churchill predicted would be a glorious second Elizabethan age.
