It seemed that everyone in the world was here

At the Abbey and all around Parliament Square were stands resembling the high, scalloped galleries of a medieval tilting yard, painted clear blue and yellow, and decorated with shields and little pennants flying aloft. These stands were full of visitors from the Commonwealth nations, which had sent by air magnificent floral decorations for them. The Canadian and Ceylon sections were banked with masses of strange flame-yellow and parakeet-green blossoms, and from one corner jutted a fabulous floral umbrella (mournfully appropriate to the day) composed of massed lotus buds and orchids, which had been flown in as a present to the Queen from India. In the icy morning air, these lovely things looked as nipped as some of the fine dark faces in the Ceylon stand…...

Sir Winston Churchill, beaming like a moon from out of the midnight blue of his Garter finery, also got a big, affectionate hand when he arrived in the carriage procession of the Commonwealth Prime Ministers. Each Prime Minister had his own mounted escort— Pakistan lancers in gauzy black-and-silver turbans for Mr. Mohammed Ali, scarlet-uniformed Royal Canadian Mounties for Mr. St. Laurent, slender, elegant Singhalese in white tunics with white pennants fluttering from their lances for Mr. Dudley Senanayake, of Ceylon, and so on.