Charles III to be Proclaimed King after Vowing ‘Lifelong Service’

While the government has said there is no obligation on organizations to suspend business during its 10-day mourning period, many are doing so out of respect.

England’s Premier League postponed all matches this weekend, while railway and postal workers halted upcoming strikes over pay amid soaring inflation and spiraling energy prices gripping Britain.

The queen’s death comes as the government strives to rush through emergency legislation to tackle the kind of war-fueled economic privation that marked the start of her reign in 1952.

Elizabeth’s public appearances had become rarer in the months since she spent an unscheduled night in a hospital in October 2021.

Although smiling, she was visibly thinner and stooped in her last official photographs from Tuesday when she appointed Truss.

The new leader was the 15th prime minister of her reign, which started with Winston Churchill in 1952.

Consistently popular

Elizabeth’s body is expected to remain at Balmoral before being taken to the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh on Sunday, Sept. 11.

From the Scottish capital, her coffin is due to travel to London on Tuesday, Sept. 13, to lie in state for several days.

Also read: Indonesia Calls for More G20 Action on Climate Change

Officials expect more than one million people to file past the catafalque in Westminster Hall, the oldest part of the UK parliament complex, before the televised funeral service at Westminster Abbey opposite.

The funeral will be a public holiday in the form of a Day of National Mourning.

Charles’s coronation, an elaborate ritual steeped in tradition and history, will take place in the same historic surroundings, as it has for centuries, on a date to be fixed.

Queen Elizabeth II came to the throne aged just 25 in a blighted post-war world dominated by political figures from Churchill to Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin.

In the ensuing decades, the last vestiges of Britain’s vast empire crumbled, while at home Brexit shook the foundations of her kingdom.

Her family endured a series of scandals and the death of Diana in a car crash in Paris in 1997, to which she was initially seen as responding poorly.

But throughout, she remained consistently popular and was head of state not just of the United Kingdom but 14 former British colonies, including Australia and Canada.

Source: Agence France-Presse