London said farewell to the Olympic Games on Sunday with a high-octane romp through British pop music, bringing the curtain down on more than two weeks of action at the end of which the United States topped the sporting world with 46 gold medals.
There was another sell-out crowd at the 80,000-capacity athletics stadium in East London for the final act of the Games, and another 300 million people were expected to tune in on television sets around the world.
The concert opened with a countdown followed by the chimes of Big Ben marking 9 pm (2000 GMT). The set included the London landmark, as well as replicas of the London Eye, Tower Bridge and St. Paul's Cathedral.
Actor Timothy Spall read from Shakespeare's "The Tempest" dressed as war-time Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and after a London "rush hour" featuring real cars and trucks wrapped in newspaper, Prince Harry entered to represent his grandmother Queen Elizabeth.
Later in the concert, athletes enter and the winner of the men's marathon is awarded his medal. The host nation won 29 golds to take third place in the rankings, its best result for 104 years which helped lift the nation out of the gloom of an economic recession temporarily buried in the inside pages of the newspapers. British Prime Minister David Cameron agreed, writing in a succinct message on Twitter: "Britain delivered. We showed the world what we're made of."
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