Photographs of the Queen from her earliest days on the throne to her appearance at this year’s Order of the Garter ceremony at Windsor are to form an exhibition to mark her becoming the UK’s longest-serving monarch.
On 9 September the 89-year-old sovereign is set to pass the record of 63 years, seven months and two days set by her great-great-grandmother Victoria.
The formal photographs taken over the decades include a black and white portrait by Dorothy Wilding in February 1952, and Julian Calder’s striking image of her on Scottish moorland as Queen of Scots, Sovereign of the Most Ancient and Most Noble Order of the Thistle and Chief of the Chiefs, in 2010.
Other formal portraits include Cecil Beaton’s 1953 official coronation day photo, an informal picture of her with two of her highland ponies taken in 2006, and an image of the Queen at her desk in Balmoral, taken in 2012. She was also captured in a tiara and furs and the state opening of parliament in May this year.
It will be business as usual for the Queen on the day she officially overtakes Victoria as Britain’s longest-serving monarch, with the opening of the newly reinstalled Borders railway project in Scotland, when she will be accompanied by the first minister, Nicola Sturgeon. The line, between Edinburgh and Tweedbank, is the longest domestic railway to be built in the UK in more than a century.
No official celebrations have been planned to mark the anniversary, and the monarch will be in Scotland because she traditionally visits Balmoral during August and September.
Victoria came to the throne aged 18 on 20 June 1837; she died on 22 January 1901. Buckingham Palace has calculated that Victoria reigned for 23,226 days, 16 hours and 23 minutes, taking into account 15 leap years, additional months and days.
Princess Elizabeth became queen at 25 after the death of her father George VI, who died on 6 February 6 1952 while she was on an official visit to Kenya. The Wilding portrait was taken just 20 days later.
The Queen became the longest living British monarch in December 2007, overtaking Victoria, who was 81 when she died. She is the second-longest serving current head of state in the world, after King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand, 87, who took to the throne in 1946but is now rarely seen in public.
The Long to Reign Over Us exhibition, from 9 September, will be held in the inner quadrangle at Buckingham Palace as part of its summer opening until 27 September, at the Palace of Holyroodhouse, Edinburgh, until 5 January, and Windsor Castle until 28 January.
The accompanying official souvenir album, illustrated with more than 250 colour photographs, is to be published by the Royal Collection Trust. An official range of china, inspired by the design of the coronation programme, has been produced exclusively for the trust in Stoke-on-Trent.
