Post date: Apr 10, 2013 3:26:15 PM
Mark Thatcher says his mother was blessed with a long and full life and would have been honoured to know the Queen will attend her funeral.
LONDON, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM (APRIL 10, 2013)(ITN) - Mark Thatcher made his first public statement on Wednesday (April 10) since the death of his mother and said she had been blessed with a full and long life.
Speaking to reporters outside the family's home in south-west London, Mark Thatcher said the death of the former British prime minister last Monday (April 8) was a very sad moment for all the family."By any measure, my mother was blessed with a long life and a very full one. However, the inevitability, or the inevitable conclusion, may appear of the recent illness that she suffered, it is no easier for us to bear in what is, without doubt, a very sad moment," the 59-year-old said.
Mark Thatcher added that his mother, Britain's longest serving prime minister in over a century, would have been honoured and humbled to know the Queen will attend her funeral.
"I would like to say how enormously proud and equally grateful we are that Her Majesty has agreed to attend the service next week in St Paul's, and I know my mother would be greatly honoured, as well as humbled by her presence," he said.
"We have quite simply been overwhelmed by messages of support and condolence of every type, from far and wide, and I know that my mother would be pleased they have come from people from all walks of life," he added.
The funeral service will take place at the St Paul's Cathedral in London on Wednesday (April 17).
The Queen will attend the funeral with her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, which is likely to be the grandest funeral for a British politician since Churchill's state funeral in 1965.
Though accorded full military honours, Thatcher did not want a state funeral. She will be cremated.