Death and funeral of Margaret Thatcher

The Minor Canons of St Paul's Cathedral, London, whose origins predate the Norman conquest of England, unusually were independent of the senior canons and, as priests, of higher status than the lay vicars choral. Medieval Hereford furnishes the only other example of such a structure. There were three full-time clergy at St Paul's who were part of its ministry and mission team but not members of the cathedral chapter. Notwithstanding the abolition of the college, there remain two minor canons (succentor and sacrist) who take part in and organise services in the cathedral, with particular areas of specialist responsibility including ceremony, music, liturgy and daily services. The chaplain is responsible for the pastoral care of the cathedral. The role of chaplain is not that of a minor canon but is in the newly established category of "priest vicar". As of January 2020, the minor canons and priest vicar are: Succentor (minor canon) — Rosemary Morton (since November 2014) Sacrist (minor canon) — Robert Coupland (from 6 October 2019) Chaplain (priest vicar) — Paula Hollingsworth (from 14 February 2020)

Old St Paul's Cathedral was the cathedral of the City of London that, until the Great Fire of 1666, stood on the site of the present St Paul's Cathedral. Built from 1087 to 1314 and dedicated to Saint Paul, the cathedral was perhaps the fourth church at Ludgate Hill.Work on the cathedral began after a fire in 1087. Work took over 200 years, and was delayed by another fire in 1135. The church was consecrated in 1240, enlarged in 1256 and again in the early 1300s. At its completion in the mid-1300s, the cathedral was one of the longest churches in the world, had one of the tallest spires and some of the finest stained glass. The presence of the shrine of Saint Erkenwald made the cathedral a site of pilgrimage. In addition to serving as the seat of the Diocese of London, the building developed a reputation as a social hub, with the nave aisle, "Paul's walk", known as a business centre and a place to hear the gossip on the London grapevine. After the Reformation, the open-air pulpit in the churchyard, St Paul's Cross, became the place for radical evangelical preaching and Protestant bookselling. The cathedral was already in severe structural decline by the early 1600s. Restoration work begun by Inigo Jones in the 1620s was temporarily halted during the English Civil War (1642–1651). In 1666, further restoration was in progress under Sir Christopher Wren when the cathedral was devastated in the Great Fire of London. At that point, it was demolished, and the present cathedral was built on the site.

St Paul's Cathedral is an Anglican cathedral in London that is the seat of the Bishop of London. The cathedral serves as the mother church of the Diocese of London. It is on Ludgate Hill at the highest point of the City of London and is a Grade I listed building. Its dedication to Paul the Apostle dates back to the original church on this site, founded in AD 604. The present structure, dating from the late 17th century, was designed in the English Baroque style by Sir Christopher Wren. Its construction, completed in Wren's lifetime, was part of a major rebuilding programme in the city after the Great Fire of London. The earlier Gothic cathedral (Old St Paul's Cathedral), largely destroyed in the Great Fire, was a central focus for medieval and early modern London, including Paul's walk and St Paul's Churchyard, being the site of St Paul's Cross. The cathedral is one of the most famous and most recognisable sights of London. Its dome, framed by the spires of Wren's City churches, has dominated the skyline for over 300 years. At 365 feet (111 m) high, it was the tallest building in London from 1710 to 1963. The dome remains among the highest in the world. St Paul's is the second-largest church building in area in the United Kingdom after Liverpool Cathedral. Services held at St Paul's have included the funerals of Admiral Lord Nelson, the Duke of Wellington, Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher; jubilee celebrations for Queen Victoria; an inauguration service for the Metropolitan Hospital Sunday Fund; peace services marking the end of the First and Second World Wars; the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer; the launch of the Festival of Britain; and the thanksgiving services for the Silver, Golden and Diamond Jubilees and the 80th and 90th birthdays of Queen Elizabeth II. St Paul's Cathedral is the central subject of much promotional material, as well as of images of the dome surrounded by the smoke and fire of the Blitz. The cathedral is a working church with hourly prayer and daily services. The tourist entry fee at the door is £20 for adults (August 2020, cheaper if booked online), but no charge is made to worshippers attending advertised services.The nearest underground station is St Paul's, which is 130 yards (120 m) away from St Paul's Cathedral.

The Diocese of London forms part of the Church of England's Province of Canterbury in England. It lies directly north of the Thames. For centuries the diocese covered a vast tract and bordered the dioceses of Norwich and Lincoln to the north and west. The present diocese covers 177 square miles (460 km2) and 17 London boroughs, covering most of Greater London north of the River Thames and west of the River Lea. This area covers nearly all of the historic county of Middlesex. It includes the City of London in which lies its cathedral, St Paul's, and also encompasses Spelthorne which is in modern-day Surrey. The Report of the Commissioners appointed by his Majesty to inquire into the Ecclesiastical Revenues of England and Wales (1835), noted the annual net income for the London see was £13,929. This made it the third wealthiest diocese in England after Canterbury and Durham. The historic county of Essex formed part of the diocese until 1846 when it became part of the Diocese of Rochester, after which St Albans and since 1914 forms the Diocese of Chelmsford.

Paul's walk in Elizabethan and early Stuart London was the name given to the central nave of Old St Paul's Cathedral, where people walked up and down in search of the latest news. At the time, St. Paul's was the centre of the London grapevine. "News-mongers", as they were called, gathered there to pass on the latest news and gossip, at a time before the first newspapers. Those who visited the cathedral to keep up with the news were known as "Paul's-walkers". According to Francis Osborne (1593–1659): It was the fashion of those times, and did so continue till these . . . for the principal gentry, lords, courtiers, and men of all professions not merely mechanic, to meet in Paul's Church by eleven and walk in the middle aisle till twelve, and after dinner from three to six, during which times some discoursed on business, others of news. Now in regard of the universal there happened little that did not first or last arrive here...And those news-mongers, as they called them, did not only take the boldness to weigh the public but most intrinsic actions of the state, which some courtier or other did betray to this society. Amongst whom divers being very rich had great sums owing them by such as stood next the throne, who by this means were rendered in a manner their pensioners. So as I have found little reason to question the truth of which I heard then, but much to confirm me in it. Standing on Ludgate Hill in the heart of the City of London, St Paul's Cathedral was well placed to be a hub of news. The cathedral had once been among the greatest in Europe, but a decline set in after the Reformation and by the end of the sixteenth-century, it had lost its steeple and was falling into disrepair. The cathedral and its surrounding St. Paul's Churchyard was a centre of the booksellers' trade, a venue for sellers of pamphlets, proclamations, and books. St Paul's was the place to go to hear the latest news of current affairs, war, religion, parliament and the court. In his play Englishmen for my Money, William Haughton (d. 1605) described Paul's walk as a kind of "open house" filled with a "great store of company that do nothing but go up and down, and go up and down, and make a grumbling together". Infested with beggars and thieves, Paul's walk was also a place to pick up gossip, topical jokes, and even prostitutes. John Earle (1601–1665), in his Microcosmographie (1628), called Paul's walk "the land's epitome . . . the lesser isle of Great Britain . . . the whole world's map . . . nothing liker Babel".Official attempts to stem the use of St. Paul's for non-religious purposes repeatedly failed. Both Mary I and Elizabeth I issued proclamations against "any of her Majesty's subjects who shall walk up and down, or spend the time in the same, in making any bargain or other profane cause, and make any kind of disturbance . . . during divine service . . . [on] pain of imprisonment and fine". Scholar Helen Ostovich has called St. Paul's at this time "more like a shopping mall than a cathedral". The letter writer John Chamberlain (1553–1626) walked to St. Paul's each day to gather news on behalf of his correspondents. His main purpose in his letters was to relate news of events in the capital to his friends, especially those posted on the continent, such as Ralph Winwood and Dudley Carleton, who both spent much of their political careers at the Hague. Chamberlain proved the perfect source for Carleton and others because of his willingness to "walk Paul's" for the news. He was made a member of a commission to refurbish St. Paul's but was cynical about its chances. He wrote that the king was "very earnest to set it forward, and they begin hotly enough" but feared it would prove "as they say, Paul's work".King James was aware of Paul's walk and referred to it in his poem about a comet, seen in 1618, which was talked of as signalling doom for the monarchy: "And that he may have nothing elce to feare/Let him walke Pauls, and meet the Devills there". Chamberlain reported that the comet "is now the only subject almost of our discourse, and not so much as little children but as they go to school talk in the streets that it foreshows the death of a king or queen or some great war towards".Ben Jonson (1572–1637) set a pivotal scene of his play Every Man Out of His Humour (1599) in Paul's walk. As Cavalier Shift enters and begins posting up advertisements, Cordatus introduces the scene with the words: "O, marry, this is one for whose better illustration we must desire you to presuppose the stage the middle aisle in Paul's, and that [pointing to the door on which Shift is posting his bills] the west end of it". The west end of the aisle was where advertisements, known as siquisses, were posted; those interested wrote a suggested meeting time and place at the bottom.According to Ostovich, Jonson conceived the Paul's-walking scene of the play as a "satirical nutshell" of London itself, presenting the walking up and down as "an obsessively competitive dance". This view of Paul's walk as a microcosm had already seen print in the cony-catching pamphlets of Robert Greene (1558–1592), who had depicted city rogues and tricksters preying on those who walked the aisles to gossip, smoke, and see the fashions. The playwright Thomas Dekker (1572–1632), in his "Paul's Steeple's Complaint" in The Dead Term (1608) and his Gull's Horn-book (1609), was another who wrote about Paul's walk. He recorded its use as a venue for fashion, saying of a gallant: "He that would therefore strive to fashion his legs to his silk stockings, and his proud gait to his broad garters, let him whiff down these observations; for, if he once get to walk by the book . . . Paul's may be proud of him".

The statue of John Wesley, St Paul's Churchyard is an outdoor bronze sculpture depicting the theologian, cleric and co-founder of the religious movement known as Methodism, John Wesley. The statue is located northwest corner of St Paul's Churchyard, London, England, and was erected in 1988. It was cast from a sculpture created by Samuel Manning and his son between 1825 and 1849.From 24 to 26 May 1738, Wesley worshipped in the nearby Chancel of the Cathedral. The statue is 5 foot 1 inches high, Wesley's height in life, and depicts him wearing a cassock and holding a bible in his left hand. An inscription on the front of the plinth reads: By Grace ye are saved through Faith John Wesley, Father of Methodism, 1703–1791, priest, poet, teacher of the Faith. On the rear of the plinth is a plaque reading 'Property of Aldersgate Trustees of the Methodist Church – 17 September 1988'.Samuel Manning's original sculpture was in plaster and was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1825. After Manning the Elder's death, his son recreated the sculpture in marble, and it is now situated in the Methodist Central Hall, Westminster.

The National Firefighters Memorial is a memorial composed of three bronze statues depicting firefighters in action at the height of the Blitz. It is located on the Jubilee Walkway to the south of St Paul's Cathedral in the City of London, and it is approachable from the south bank of the River Thames via the Millennium Footbridge. The monument, originally the concept of Cyril Demarne, was commissioned by the Firefighters Memorial Charitable Trust set up in 1990. It was sculpted by John W. Mills. Initially, the structure was intended as a tribute to those men and women who fought so gallantly against fire on the streets of London during the Blitz of World War II, when the city was struck by bombs on 57 consecutive nights in a sustained campaign of bombing. It also served as a monument to commemorate the service of firefighters throughout the war. Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother unveiled the memorial on 4 May 1991. It was decided in 1998 to make the memorial a national monument that would commemorate not just the firefighters who died in World War II, but the lives of all firefighters throughout the United Kingdom who were killed in the line of duty. The National Firefighters Memorial was moved from its original site in Old Change Court, the plinth was elevated by a little over 1 m, and the names of all those killed in peacetime were added. The Princess Royal, patron of the Firefighters' Memorial Charitable Trust, attended a service and ceremony of re-dedication on 16 September 2003. A total of 1,192 names were inscribed in bronze onto the memorial. A service of remembrance is held at the memorial annually on the Sunday closest to 7 September, the anniversary of the start of the Blitz.

The statue of Thomas Becket (1970) by Edward Bainbridge Copnall is installed in St Paul's Churchyard in London, United Kingdom.It was designated a Grade II Listed building in January 2016.

St Paul's Cross (alternative spellings – "Powles Crosse") was a preaching cross and open-air pulpit in the grounds of Old St Paul's Cathedral, City of London. It was the most important public pulpit in Tudor and early Stuart England, and many of the most important statements on the political and religious changes brought by the Reformation were made public from here. The pulpit stood in 'the Cross yard', the open space on the north-east side of St. Paul's Churchyard, adjacent to the row of buildings that would become the home of London's publishing and book-selling trade.A monumental column with a golden statue of St Paul stands in this area of the Cathedral precinct since the early 20th century, but it is not on the exact spot where Paul's Cross stood. A stone carved with the words 'Here stood Paul's Cross' marks the actual location of the pulpit as it stood from 1449 until 1635, when it was taken down during Inigo Jones' renovation work.

The John Donne Memorial is a bronze bust of John Donne by Nigel Boonham, installed in the garden to the south of St Paul's Cathedral in London, United Kingdom. Donne faces east towards his birthplace on Bread Street. Below the bust is an inscription with the text It was commissioned by the City of London, led by Alderman Hall, and marks the first public memorial to Donne.

Paternoster Row was a street in the City of London that was a centre of the London publishing trade, with booksellers operating from the street. Paternoster Row was described as "almost synonymous" with the book trade. It was part of an area called St Paul's Churchyard. The street was devastated by aerial bombardment during the World War II. In 2003 the street was replaced with Paternoster Square, the modern home of the London Stock Exchange, although a City of London Corporation road sign remains in the square near where Paternoster Row once stood.As far back as the 12th century, the road was known as Paternoster Row, as it was the main place in London where Paternoster beads were made by skilled craftsmen. The beads were popular with illiterate monks and friars at the time, who prayed 30 Paternoster prayers (Latin for "Our Father") three times a day as a substitute for the 150 psalms recited a day by literate monks.

John Leland or Leyland (13 September, c. 1503 – 18 April 1552) was an English poet and antiquary.Leland has been described as "the father of English local history and bibliography". His Itinerary provided a unique source of observations and raw materials for many subsequent antiquaries, and introduced the county as the basic unit for studying the local history of England, an idea that has been influential ever since.