Final Build-Up Nation Waits Expectantly As World Leaders Arrive To Pay Their Respects

It was the beginning of the end. Out went the official notice on the closely followed queue tracker: "To avoid disappointment please do not set off to the joint the queue." Mathematics dictated that, with the lying in state due to end today at 6.30am, and a 13-hour wait forecast, the queue was half a day from closing.

- Dan Sabbagh

The waits had felt necessary for some, making friends and telling stories as they went. But it was not so easy for others: more than 1,000 people have had to receive medical care since the lying in state began on Thursday, the London Ambulance service said. A total of 136 had even ended up in hospital.

Others, though, were only just arriving. Joe Biden, the US president, had landed on Saturday night to pay his respects at the funeral, taking his Beast armoured limousine from Stansted airport.

Many, like the South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, signed a condolence book at Lancaster House. Plenty also made a shortcutted journey to Westminster Hall to see the Queen's coffin.

One of those was Jair Bolsonaro, the rightwing president of Brazil, on his first official trip to London.

He arrived on the elevated viewing gallery for foreign dignitaries with his wife, Michelle. It is two weeks from a presidential election, yet the incumbent, behind in the polls, felt it appropriate to travel to Britain, arriving at the embassy in the capital to a crowd of a couple of hundred supporters.

It is not supposed to be a political trip for any of the world leaders coming to London. But that did not stop the Brazilian leader, who, a few minutes later, addressed the crowd in the street from the balcony, wielding a microphone and delivering a none-too subtle campaign speech. "We are a country that does not want to discuss the legalisation of drugs, that does not want to discuss the legalisation of abortion and a country that does not accept gender ideology," Bolsonaro said.