We salute you, Ma’am
Gun tributes for Platinum Jubilee
THE Queen went back to work with a bang yesterday.
Several formal gun salutes marked Accession Day – and fired the starting pistol for her Platinum Jubilee.
The 95-year-old monarch returned from Sandringham toWindsor Castle and to public service. Royal insiders said she will resume her normal duties of audiences, receiving ambassadors and attending Privy Council meetings, both in person and online.
The Queen is also due at several major events, including a diplomatic reception at Windsor Castle on March 2, the Commonwealth Service at Westminster Abbey on March 14 plus a service of thanksgiving there for her adored husband Prince Philip on March 29.
The King’s Troop Royal Horse Artillery fired a 41-gun salute for Accession Day in London’s Green Park at noon yesterday, The Honourable Artillery Company paid a 62-gun tribute at the Tower of London and there was also a 21-gun salute at Edinburgh
Castle. The Queen took the throne on February 6, 1952, but Accession Day fell on a Sunday this year.
The monarch spent the weekend on her Norfolk estate, recalling her father George VI whose death marked the start of her reign.
Consort
She yesterday took a helicopter back toWindsor, keeping warm in a green coat and wearing sunglasses.
This Jubilee is her first without the Duke of Edinburgh, who died aged 99 last April.
The Queen used Accession
Day to express a wish for her daughter-in-law Camilla to become Queen Consort.
In an intervention that will shape the future of the monarchy significantly, she made it clear she wants Prince Charles’s wife to take that title when he is King and asked people to support them. Charles, in a written message marking his mother’s anniversary, said the couple were “deeply conscious” of the honour:
“The year of this unprecedented Platinum Jubilee brings an opportunity for us all to come together in celebrating the service of the Queen, by whose example we will continue to be led in the years to come.”
Footage of the monarch on duty, working through official papers in her iconic red boxes, was released for her Jubilee milestone. The smiling Queen was pictured sat at a table in Sandringham, with a poignant image of her father holding a corgi nearby.
National Jubilee celebrations will be staged during a four-day bank holiday weekend from June 2 to 5.