On 28 January, the coffin was carried in procession to Paddington Station and then on to Windsor Castle where a relatively simple funeral service was held, broadcast live on radio.

[2] By the end of that year, his personal physician, Lord Dawson of Penn, told the prime minister, Stanley Baldwin, that the king was "packing up his luggage and getting ready to depart".

[3] In the new year of 1936, King George took to his bed at Sandringham House in Norfolk; family members were summoned on 16 and 17 January by an anxious Queen Mary.

[4] At 21:25 on Tuesday 20 January, Lord Dawson wrote a press bulletin on the back of a menu card; "the King’s life is moving peacefully to its close".

It was revealed decades later from Dawson's account in his personal diary, that he had hastened the process by injecting an overdose of morphine and cocaine into the king's jugular vein, with the intention of having the announcement in the morning broadsheet newspapers, rather than "the less appropriate evening journals".

[5] On the afternoon of 22 January (the day of the 35th anniversary of the death of Queen Victoria), the king's coffin was taken from Sandringham House to the parish church of St Mary Magdalene, where it lay in state overnight with an honour guard of estate workers.

On the following morning, 23 January, the coffin was taken in a 2½ mile (4 kilometre) procession from the church to Wolferton railway station, with King Edward VIII and his brothers walking behind and the rest of the royal family in carriages.

[8] As the coffin was carried into the hall by guardsmen, the Maltese cross which surmounted the Imperial State Crown, fell off and landed in the street; Edward was heard to exclaim "Christ!

[11] Following the departure of the royal family, Members of Parliament, led by the Lord Chancellor and the Speaker of the House of Commons, were the first to file past the catafalque to pay their respects.

They were followed by ordinary members of the public, who formed a queue fifteen deep through the streets of Westminster; during the four days of the lying in state, 809,182 people were recorded to have passed through the hall.

[12] The route from Westminster Hall passed down Whitehall to Trafalgar Square, under Admiralty Arch into The Mall, turning into St James's Street and then along Piccadilly to Hyde Park Corner.