Prince George, Princess Charlotte and all the Queen’s youngest children and great-grandchildren posed for a new portrait released Wednesday in honor of Queen Elizabeth‘s 90th birthday on Thursday.
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Also appearing in the touching image is two-year-old Prince George, as well as Zara Phillips’ two-year-old daughter Mia Tindall, who is proudly holding the Queen’s famous black handbag, and Peter Phillips’s daughters Savannah, 5, and Isla, 3.
The queen is pictured with four of her beloved dogs outside the mediaeval castle in one photograph, and with her only daughter Princess Anne in another.
Buckingham Palace released three new official pictures of the queen taken by U.S. celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz.
The third and final photo taken by Leibovitz shows the queen in Windsor Castle’s White Dining Room with her daughter, the Princess Royal.
Elizabeth Alexandra Mary became Queen in 1952 following the death of her father from lung cancer, she was 25 years old.
Traditional gun salutes will thunder across London when 41 volleys are fired by the King’s Troop Royal Horse Artillery in Hyde Park, and 62 rounds by the Honourable Artillery Company close to the Tower of London – the extra 21 volleys for the citizens of the City of London to show their loyalty to the monarch.
The 1oz silver coin features the Queen at her christening.
“I think she is very fond of Charlotte, always watching what she’s up to”, the Duchess of Cambridge said in the ITV television special The Queen at Ninety.
Mr. Cameron led the tributes by referring to the Queen as a “Rock of strength” while Prince Charles, the Queen’s heir, recorded a special birthday message for his mother in which he reads an edited passage from William Shakespeare’s Henry VIII for radio broadcast during the day.
Her government and subjects held gun salutes, fireworks and speeches in Parliament in the queen’s honor, and televised retrospectives offered scenes from a royal life that has stretched from the Roaring ’20s to the Internet age.
I wish Her Majesty a wonderful birthday, hopefully spent with family and friends.
He said Britain was “uniquely blessed” to have her and praised the queen’s “unshakeable sense of duty” while noting she was now “starting to take things a little easier”.
Thursday’s celebrations will be low-key, with the main public events, including a military parade and lunch for 10,000 guests on The Mall outside Buckingham Palace, taking place as part of her official birthday celebrations in June.
“When the queen’s reign comes to its natural end, there is likely to be an urgent debate about the role of the royal family in modern Britain – a debate whose outcome is uncertain”, royal author Anna Whitelock wrote in the Daily Mail newspaper.
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“Inevitably, a long life can pass by many milestones”.
