Imperial diamond
This week’s diamond jubilee celebrations will be hard-pressed to outdo those of Queen Victoria’s in 1897.
— A diamond jubilee was supposed to be a 75th anniversary, but it was brought forward by the government as an excuse for a mass celebration aimed at promoting British trade.
— On 22 June, the Queen was conveyed in a carriage along a six-mile route ending at St Paul’s, where an open air service was held so she did not have to disembark.
— Six million were estimated to have watched the procession. For 400,000 of them, however, it was not necessarily just patriotism that spurred them to attend: they were plied with free ale and pipe tobacco supplied by grocer Sir Thomas Lipton.
Royally satisfied
An Ipsos-Mori opinion poll suggested that 80 per cent of Britons want to keep the monarchy. How does that compare with other constitutional monarchies?
| Denmark (Jylands Posten 2010) | 82% |
| Netherlands (Maurice de Hond 2008) | 70% |
| Norway (Dagbladet 2010) | 67% |
| Spain (Instituto Opina/Cadena Ser) | 65% |
| Sweden (FSI 2010; question was whether monarchy was ‘good’) | 46% |
Opening gambit
Some things opened by the Queen which have struggled to survive her reign:
| 1955 | The Queen’s Building, Heathrow. It became Terminal 2, but closed in 2009 for redevelopment |
| 1956 | Calder Hall nuclear power station. Renamed Windscale and then Sellafield. Original power station closed 2003 |
1969 |
QE2, the cruise liner. Withdrawn from service in 2008 |
| 1972 | Runcorn City Shopping Centre.Went into receivership in 2009. Now in the process of redevelopment and known as Halton Lea Shopping Centre |
1974 |
Queen Elizabeth II Park Recreation Centre, Christchurch, New Zealand. Closed after earthquake damage, 2011 |
Silver memories
The Silver Jubilee, 1977, in numbers:
| TV viewers (worldwide) who watched the procession down the Mall | 500 million |
| Miles travelled by the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh on their jubilee tours | 56,000 |
| Street parties in London | 4,000 |
Congratulation cards received by the Queen |
100,000 |
Sales of the Sex Pistols’ ‘God Save the Queen’ in the week of the Jubilee celebrations |
200,000 |
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