'After Lady Thatcher's funeral, I toasted her at home with a single malt’

Down a quiet north London mews, behind an old spiked metal gate, is a garage where one of the most famous vehicles in England is parked. On Wednesday, millions watched as the sleek Daimler hearse with the number plate T6 LEV crept from Westminster on its journey to St Clement Danes in the Strand. Today, its immaculate silver and walnut bier is empty.

Alongside the hearse is the silver van that had transported Baroness Thatcher’s body from the Ritz Hotel on April 9 to the mortuary in this Chalk Farm mews. Nearby is the workshop where her solid oak coffin was fitted: others in varying shapes and sizes are piled high in racks.

In the offices of Leverton & Sons funeral directors, there is still a pile of folded Union flags. Company director Clive Leverton, the seventh generation in an eight generation family firm, tells me the spares were in case protesters ''spoiled’’ the one draped over Lady Thatcher’s coffin. Spare bouquets and a backup hearse were also on hand. As we know now, everything went to plan. For the firm that handled the funerals of Diana, Princess of Wales, the Queen Mother, Princess Margaret and numerous other famous and infamous names, it always does.

Levertons was established in St Pancras in 1763 by Devonshire carpenter John Leverton. In 1888, the business moved to Eversholt Street in Camden where its headquarters remain. Portraits of Levertons through the ages adorn the office, and there are shelves of cracked red leather ledgers containing the names of those they have buried since 1896.

The firm arranged the funerals of Sir Henry Royce, who co-founded the Rolls-Royce company, in 1933; George Orwell in 1950 and former Labour leader Michael Foot in 2010. They have had to perform grisly body recoveries, as was the case with the murder (by her husband, Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen) of Cora Crippen in 1910. And Clive Leverton’s father, Ivor, attended the Islington bedsit where playwright Joe Orton was bludgeoned to death by his lover in 1967.

Today, they handle more than 1,000 funerals a year; as we speak, the phone and front door bell ring constantly.

Clive, now 70, started at the company in 1959 and works alongside his daughters, Pippa and Hannah, and his nephew, Andrew. Dressed in a smart blue pinstripe suit, he is far removed from the gloomy undertaker of popular imagination. But, like dozens of Levertons before him, he has the steel required for the job.

He remained unfazed by the crowds as he, Andrew, four bearers and the driver of the hearse transported Lady Thatcher’s coffin from the Chapel of St Mary Undercroft in the Palace of Westminster to St Clement Danes, where it was transferred onto the gun carriage for the journey to St Paul’s. After the service, they bore it to a chapel at the Royal Hospital Chelsea, and finally to Mortlake Crematorium in Richmond.

“I saw my first dead body in 1959,” Clive says. “It was rather a shock, but you get used to it. When it’s somebody famous, you think: 'I knew that lady when she was alive. But now I have to get on with what needs to be done.’ You see someone who has been forever in the newspapers, and then you see their dead body in front of you. But we are not there to stand around and weep.

“It was the same with Diana, although, that was quite traumatic because of the circumstances. I had to go over to Paris and collect the body, and this was a vibrant young lady, a mother with a young family who had been in a terrible car accident. We had to act under instruction very speedily.”

In contrast, the plans for Lady Thatcher had been in place for years – but the firm had four other funerals booked in for Wednesday, too.

“We couldn’t rearrange those,” Clive says. “Our philosophy is to look after every family equally. I’ve averaged about four hours sleep for the last week. I don’t know how Lady Thatcher used to manage on that.”

The firm was first contacted by the Lord Chamberlain’s office in 1991 to see if it was suitable for taking on state and royal duties.

“What was very nice and thoughtful,” he continues, “was that they asked: 'If you took on the responsibilities of looking after the royal household, would you be able to cope with existing families?

“Keith [his brother, who retired in 2005] and I looked at each other for about two seconds and said 'Yes’. The proof was when Diana was killed. The support we were offered by fellow funeral directors [to help us out] was phenomenal.”

The evening following Lady Thatcher’s funeral, Clive got home around 10pm. As he and his wife sat talking, he treated himself to a single malt whisky. He is surprised when I tell him that it was Lady Thatcher’s favourite tipple.

“I had no idea,” he smiles. “But I suppose it was an involuntary toast. If I became overwhelmed about the status of people we look after, I might not perform my duties to the best of my ability. But I am conscious of the magnitude of it. And I do sometimes think afterwards, 'Gosh, that was some task we performed.’”