Military Honours For Thatcher Funeral 09.04.13
8*Archive footage courtesy BBC*
Baroness Thatcher has been granted a ceremonial funeral with full military honours.
The Queen and Duke of Edinburgh are to attend the ceremony which will take place next Wednesday.
It is expected to be attended by dignitaries from around the world and will be held at St Paul's cathedral.
A Downing Street spokesman said the date had been agreed at a Government "co-ordination meeting" with the Thatcher family and Buckingham Palace this morning.
The streets will be cleared for a procession taking her body from parliament to St Paul's. She will be cremated at a private service afterwards.
There have been calls for Lady Thatcher to be given a state funeral, as wartime leader Winston Churchill was.
However, friends have indicated that she did not want such treatment, and specified that she did not want to lie in state.
State funerals are generally limited to sovereigns but by order of the Queen and by a vote in Parliament can be extended to exceptionally distinguished people.
National figures like Lord Nelson, the Duke of Wellington and former wartime prime minister Sir Winston Churchill received the honour.
But the event for Baroness Thatcher will be very similar to a state funeral in terms of its pageantry.
It will also mirror the arrangements for the funerals of Diana, Princess of Wales, and the Queen Mother.
Lady Thatcher's funeral will feature the public element of the coffin being carried through the streets of London on a gun carriage.
The same honour was bestowed on Diana, the Queen Mother and Churchill and allows ordinary people to pay their respects as the funeral cortege passes by.
The day before next Wednesday's funeral Thatcher's coffin will be transferred to the Chapel of St Mary Undercroft in the Palace of Westminster.
On the day of the service the casket will be taken by hearse to the Church of St Clement Danes, the RAF Chapel on the Strand, before being transferred to the gun carriage drawn by the King's Troop, Royal Artillery.
Thatcher's funeral cortege will travel from the Strand to St Paul's and it's route will be lined by tri-service military personnel.
At London's famous cathedral a guard of honour will be waiting mounted by members of the Armed Services and Chelsea pensioners from the Royal Hospital Chelsea.