Jimmy Carter honoured at Washington funeral before Georgia hometown burial

The flag-draped casket of former president Jimmy Carter (Jose Luis Magana/AP)

Jimmy Carter, who considered himself an outsider even as he sat in the Oval Office as the 39th US president, is being honoured with the pageantry of a funeral at Washington National Cathedral before a second service and burial in his tiny Georgia hometown.

The proceedings began in the morning as military service members carried Mr Carter’s flag-draped casket down the east steps of the US Capitol, where the former president had laid in state, to be transported to the cathedral.