Queen marks 92nd birthday with concert
Horse-drawn guns fire 62 times at Tower of London while band plays ‘Happy Birthday’
LONDON: Queen Elizabeth II marked her 92 nd birthday on saturday with traditional gun salutes and a Commonwealth-themed charity concert featuring Tom Jones, Kylie and Shaggy.
Horse-drawn guns ired 41 times in Hyde Park and 62 times at the Tower of London, while at Windsor Castle, the band played “Happy Birthday” during the changing of the guard.
In the evening, the monarch and her family were due to attend a concert with performers from around the Commonwealth, the 53-nation grouping which held its summit in London this week.
Australia’s Kylie, Canadian pop chart-topper Shawn Mendes, South African all-male choir Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Us-jamaican reggae star Shaggy were to join British stars including Jones, Craig David and Sting.
The queen usually celebrates her birthday in private, saving the pomp for her oficial birthday in June.
The concert at the Royal Albert Hall will raise money for a new youth charity, The Queen’s Commonwealth Trust.
The monarch’s grandson Prince Harry, who will marry US actor Meghan Markle at Windsor on May 19, is the trust’s new president and was due to give a speech at the concert.
The queen has been the symbolic head of the Commonwealth since her father king George VI’S death in 1952, but its leaders agreed on Friday that her son and heir Prince Charles should succeed her.
The summit was overshadowed by a row over Britain’s treatment of Caribbean immigrants, while Charles himself also came under scrutiny.
Elizabeth was born on April 21, 1926, in Bruton Street, central London and became queen in 1952 at the age of 25, meaning she has now reigned for more than 66 years.
Despite her age, the queen still regularly carries out oficial engagements although her husband Prince Philip, who spent 10 days in hospital this month for a hip replacement, retired from public life last year. As is customary with monarch’s birthdays, soldiers from the King’s Troop Royal Horse Artillery and the Honourable Artillery Company will ire gun salutes from London’s Hyde Park and the Tower of London.
Elizabeth has an oficial birthday in June which is publicly marked with a large parade of soldiers through central London, known as Trooping the Colour.
It seems to be a case of like father like son: Prince Charles has been engulfed in a race row after telling a woman whose mother was born in Guyana that she did not look like she was from Manchester.