Sussexes to attend St Paul’s celebration

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex will join the biggest Royal family gathering since their wedding next week as the Queen’s relatives celebrate her reign at St Paul’s Cathedral. All of the Queen’s cousins, children and grandchildren are expected to attend. Some of the older great-grandchildren such as Prince George, eight, Princess Charlotte, seven, may also attend, but the Sussexes’ son Archie, three, and daughter Lilibet, who turns one next Saturday, are unlikely to be present.

A LIFE-SIZE sculpture of the Queen riding her favourite horse, Burmese, is to be unveiled at Sandhurst to commemorate the Platinum Jubilee.

The bronze, by Caroline Wallace, was designed to celebrate the links between Her Majesty and the Army and has been almost two years in the making.

It will be the first sculpture of the Queen at the Royal Military Academy.

The monarch was given Burmese by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in 1969 and rode the mare at Trooping the Colour for 18 consecutive years.

The sculpture depicts her in the uniform of the Grenadier Guards at Trooping in 1984.

“It’s the most interesting, and most challenging, commission I’ve had,” Wallace said.

Given the brief, she added: “It had to be military. The Grenadier Guards was the first regiment her father gave her and the most important of the foot regiments. If the Queen was in uniform, she had to be on Burmese and so in my mind, we couldn’t do anything else.”

The sculpture will be unveiled at Sandhurst tomorrow, just days before a historic Trooping the Colour marks the start of a four-day jubilee weekend.

The Queen was kept updated with photographs throughout the creative process, although her personal views, as ever, remain unknown.

“I try not to think about it,” Wallace laughed.

The artist won the commission in November 2020, after applicants were whittled down to just six.

“I was hopeful but had no idea what anyone else had submitted,” she said.

The Covid lockdowns allowed her to plough on alone with the project in a rented barn near her home in the Cotswolds.

Not a detail was left to chance, as Wallace carefully researched every aspect of the Army uniform and Burmese’s tack and saddlecloths.

She visited the Royal Mews to see similar horses supplied by the Mounties while the Guards Museum at Wellington Barracks was opened especially for her.

Wallace consulted the royal stud groom Terry Pendry, side saddle experts, a show hunter judge and an equine vet to ensure every element of the uniform was correct.

“It’s not so much the time, it’s the observation,” she said. “It is a process of constant appraisal. I have been refining and redoing little things the whole time. I’ve had lots of wonderful commissions, but this is different, in terms of detail and because it’s the first time I’ve done a life-size bronze with the subject mounted on the horse.”

The sculpture is the second to depict the Queen riding Burmese: a bronze of the monarch on her horse was unveiled in 2005 in front of the Saskatchewan Legislative Building in Regina, Canada, the province in which it was born.

Wallace is married to William Nunneley, former head of stewarding at the British Horseracing Authority, and has worked with horses for decades, grooming for the Princess Royal at international competitions.

She began sculpting when she broke her leg while pregnant with her daughter, and was unable to ride or drive.

Her commissions can be found all over the world, including Ascot, Sandown and Doncaster Racecourses, and include three Grand National winners.

The Queen is said to have several of her sculptures in her private collection, including the original “artist’s proof ” of a bronze of the Duke of Cambridge on horseback as Colonel of the Irish Guards at Trooping the Colour.

“All aspects of my life have led to this very special commission to sculpt the Queen for Sandhurst,” Wallace said. “It is a privilege.”