24 January this year marks 60 years since the death of former British prime minister Sir Winston Churchill in 1965.
Churchill, who famously led the British fight against Nazi Germany during the Second World War, died at his home at 28 Hyde Park Gate London aged 90 after suffering a stroke.
On 30 January 1965, his funeral was carried out at St Paul’s Cathedral. It was the last state funeral in the UK until Queen Elizabeth II’s in 2022, and was attended by 6000 people from 120 countries and watched by over 350 million worldwide. Speaking at the funeral, former US president Dwight D. Eisenhower said of Churchill: “Among all the things so written or spoken, there will ring out through the entire century one incontestable refrain: Here was a champion of freedom.”
This moving historic footage shows Churchill’s coffin being carried down the steps of St Paul’s by soldiers of the Grenadier Guards after the funeral service. The collar, star and garter of a Knight of the Garter are seen on top of the coffin.
Among the people seen in the footage are the then prime minister Harold MacMillan, waiting at the foot of the steps; Churchill’s widow Lady Clementine Churchill, following behind the coffin wearing a black veil; and Queen Elizabeth II with Prince Philip. It was a break with tradition for the monarch to attend a funeral outside the royal family, and the queen forewent traditional royal privileges for the funeral, including being the last to arrive and the first to depart.
The coffin was then conveyed to the Tower of London and along the River Thames on the MV Havengore, before being transported by the locomotive Winston Churchill to Bladon in Oxfordshire, where Churchill was buried at St Martin’s Churchyard with members of his family.
