The order of service for Stephen Hawking's funeral has now been released.

Around 500-specially invited guests will pack out Great St Mary's church for the service, including the late physicist's family, university colleagues, and several celebrity friends.

Hawking's son Robert, actor Eddie Redmayne, and Astronomer Royal Martin Rees will all speak at the service, while the choir of Gonville and Caius College will also perform a piece specially-written for Prof Hawking.

Service of Thanksgiving for the Life of Stephen William Hawking 8 January 1942 – 14 March 2018

University Church of St Mary the Great, Cambridge 2pm, 31 March 2018

Arrival

The funeral cortège will approach the church along King's Parade.

Six porters of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge will act as pallbearers.

Professor Hawking was a Fellow of Caius for over 52 years, from 1965.

Crowds start to gather in King's Parade, Cambridge ahead of Stephen Hawking's funeral

Head Porter Russell Holmes will walk ahead of the coffin. He will wear formal uniform of top hat and tails and carry a silver-topped ebony Cane of Office.

Two more Caius porters will be in attendance beside the church.

Professor Hawking’s close family, including his three children Lucy, Robert and Tim, will follow the hearse in cars.

The floral arrangement on Professor Hawking’s coffin will be made up of white lilies ('Universe") and white roses ("Polar Star"). It is from his three children, Lucy, Robert and Tim.

Other wreaths and flowers from family members will be laid under the coffin during the service. The coffin is made of solid oak.

The bell of the Great St Mary’s will toll 76 times (once for each year of his life) when Prof Hawking’s coffin arrives.

On leaving, the bells will toll with a half-muffled peal.

Great St Mary's Church

The flags of University College, Oxford, Trinity Hall, Cambridge and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge will fly at half-mast on the day of the funeral.

Stephen Hawking studied at University College as an undergraduate, at Trinity Hall as a postgraduate, and was a Fellow at Gonville and Caius College from 1965 until his death.

The college is situated at the end of Kings Parade, very close to Great St Mary’s.

The Service

The Revd Dr Cally Hammond, Dean of Gonville and Caius College, will officiate.

Dr Cally Hammond will lead the service

Eulogies

The first Eulogy will be given by Robert Hawking, the eldest child of Stephen Hawking.

The second Eulogy will be given by Professor Fay Dowker, a former student of Stephen Hawking.

Theoretical physicist Prof Fay Dowker, a former student of Stephen Hawking's
Theoretical physicist Prof Fay Dowker, a former student of Stephen Hawking's

Readings

Edward Redmayne, OBE, the actor who played Stephen Hawking in the 2014 film The Theory of Everything, will read the following text:

Actor Eddie Redmayne pictured arriving at the funeral service for Professor Stephen Hawking today
Actor Eddie Redmayne pictured arriving at the funeral service for Professor Stephen Hawking today

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die;

A time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;

A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

A time to weep, and a time to laugh;

A time to mourn, and a time to dance;

A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;

A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

A time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

A time to love, and a time to hate;

A time for war, and a time for peace. What gain has the worker from his toil?

I have seen the business that God has given to the sons of men to be busy with.

He has made everything beautiful in its time; also he has put eternity into man's mind.

Ecclesiastes 3.1-11

Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal, will read the following text:

Martin Rees

Let us reflect in another way, and we shall see that there is great reason to hope that death is a good; for one of two things — either death is a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness, or, as men say, there is a change and migration of the soul from this world to another.

Now if you suppose that there is no consciousness, but a sleep like the sleep of him who is undisturbed even by dreams, death will be an unspeakable gain.

For if a person were to select the night in which his sleep was undisturbed even by dreams, and were to compare with this the other days and nights of his life, and then were to tell us how many days and nights he had passed in the course of his life better and more pleasantly than this one, I think that any man, I will not say a private man, but even the great king will not find many such days or nights, when compared with the others.

Now if death be of such a nature, I say that to die is gain; for eternity is then only a single night.

But if death is the journey to another place, and there, as men say, all the dead abide, what good, O my friends and judges, can be greater than this?...

What would not a man give if he might converse with Orpheus and Musaeus and Hesiod and Homer?

Nay, if this be true, let me die again and again...

Above all, I shall then be able to continue my search into true and false knowledge; as in this world, so also in the next.

The death of Socrates: from Plato Apology 40, translated by Richard Jebb

Music

Music at the service will be performed by the Choir of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge –one of the UK’s leading mixed collegiate choirs.

The chapel at Gonville and Caius
The chapel at Gonville and Caius

The choir is directed by the Praecentor, Dr Geoffrey Webber, who is also the Director of Studies in Music at Caius.

Organists – Jonathan Hellyer Jones, Geoffrey Webber, Michael How and Luke Fitzgerald.

Beyond the Night Sky

The choir will perform Beyond the Night Sky, an ethereal choral work by the Caian composer Cheryl Frances-Hoad.

The music was commissioned by Gonville and Caius as a gift for Professor Hawking for his 75th birthday in 2017.

The space-themed composition, which takes the acrostic poem Universe by the American poet Steven Schnur as its lyrical inspiration together with quotes from A Brief History of Time, also includes whistling and 'shh' sounds based on NASA recordings of space.

In the last section of the piece the composer hid two (only slightly altered) quotes from Happy Birthday as a nod to Professor Hawking's famous sense of humour.

At the college premiere of the music, performed by the choir during a dinner for students and academics, Professor Hawking said the music captured the vastness of space, and a sense of wonder at the universe and the earth.

It takes us all on a mental journey around the universe. he said, adding, I probably won’t need to take up my promised place on Richard Branson’s spaceship now.

The physicist concluded: “It puts into lyrical form one of my quotes: Try to make sense of what you see, and wonder about what makes the universe exist͛.

“Perhaps I can be forgiven for saying that tonight I am wondering no longer.”

Lord’s Prayer

The choir will sing the Lord’s Prayer (sung in Old Church Slavonic). Music: Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971).

Hymns

He who would valiant be

Words adapted from John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress (1684), 1906 The English Hymnal Version

Jerusalem

Music Sir Hubert Parry 1916

Text William Blake 1808

Choral Anthems

‘The Cloud-Capp’d Towers’

Music Vaughan Williams Text William Shakespeare

‘Sleep, Fleshly Birth’

Music Robert Ramsey (c.1600-1650) Text Anonymous

‘Beyond the Night Sky’

Music Cheryl Frances-Hoad, G&CC (b. 1980)

Text Steven Schnur and Stephen Hawking