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Britain says last farewell to Queen Elizabeth II and ‘end of an era’

The hourlong event inside Westminster Abbey, attended by 2,000 people, followed 11 days of national mourning and highly choreographed public ceremonies. Afterward, the queen's coffin, topped by symbols of state, made its slow procession through the streets of London on its way to Windsor for smaller ceremonies and interment later Monday.

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Such concerns were set aside inside the abbey, where Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, gave a homily that ended with the words "We will meet again" — an echo of a message delivered by the queen during the COVID-19 pandemic to comfort those who had lost loved ones. Her use of the phrase was itself drawn from the song "We'll Meet Again" by Vera Lynn, an iconic piece in Britain from World War II. Soon after, a military bugler played the Last Post, similar to Taps in the U.S., signaling the service's conclusion and the start of two minutes of silence in remembrance of the queen. It was a quiet that hung heavy outside the abbey's walls: Takeoffs and landings at London's Heathrow Airport, one of the world's busiest, were suspended for half an hour so as not to disrupt the silence. In Hyde Park, many stood ramrod straight, with heads bowed in a moment of uniform solemnity remarkable for a crowd that size.