The choice of Sir Christopher Wren's masterpiece on Ludgate Hill, where the nation's historic heroes have all had their funerals, was nothing if not a statement that the Iron Lady was forged in the heat of battle.

While, officially, this was not a state funeral, all the pomp and ceremony meant it certainly felt like one.

Seated in the gallery of the south transept it was possible, before the service proper began, to engage in the journalist's favourite pastime – people watching.