This gallery contains 12 photos.
Photographs of the tributes left by the British people and visitors at Green Park.
Blog Archives
Superbloom at the Tower of London | Moat is transformed into a floral tribute to the Queen
Jul 16
This gallery contains 7 photos.
The historic royal palace and prison’s moat has been filled with 29 flower species to mark the Platinum Jubilee.
Toast the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee with royal inspired cocktails at St James Bar
A Jubilee Gimlet at the St James Bar
This year, the UK celebrates the Platinum Jubilee of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II. And when it comes to celebrations, there are many of us that like to do so with a toast or two. Located just a stone’s throw from St James’s Palace is the St James Bar, which is marking 70 years of the monarch’s reign with a royal inspired cocktail menu.
The luxurious and intimate cocktail bar is located in the Sofitel London St James, with cosy banquettes and bar stools to perch on while you sip your way through the special menu from the team’s mixologists. In the run-up and immediate aftermath of the Jubilee celebrations, the St James Bar will offer a special menu of three drinks inspired by the Queen, ranging in price from £17-£18.
– Lilibet Fizz: Named after her family nickname, this fruity drink combines two of the Queen’s best-loved drinks, Bollinger Champagne and Pimm’s Cup No.1
– The Coronation: A seriously bling creation inspired by the coronation, features subtle notes of bergamot and wood and pays homage to Her Majesty’s favoured teas, Earl Grey and Assam.
– Jubilee Gimlet: A variation of the Queen’s favourite Martini and inspired by the classic Gimlet, this concoction features gin and Champagne with a mix of sweet florals and acidity.
- The Jubilee-inspired cocktails are on sale from 16 May – 12 June 2022. At St James Bar, Sofitel London St James, 6 Waterloo Place, St. James’s, SW1Y 4AN. Nearest station: Piccadilly Circus or Charing Cross. Bar opening times: Thu-Sat 5pm-12am, Mon and Sun 12pm-12am, Tues-Wed closed. For more information, visit the Sofitel St James website.
Celebrate the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee at Wembley Park at the Jubilee Dance Party
One day festival will see five stages across the north-west London neighbourhood on 4 June 2022.
Celebrate the Queen’s Jubilee at a dance party
© Chris Winter / Wembley Park
Grab your dancing shoes this summer as Wembley Park celebrates the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee with a dance party. The north-west London neighbourhood will be hosting five stages of live acts, DJs and dance leaders on Saturday 4 June 2022. Whether you want to see the professionals in action, or shake your tail feather instead, there’s something for everyone.
Along with dancing galore, there will be street food stalls, DJs, live music and family zones as Londoners come together to mark Queen Elizabeth II‘s 70 years on the throne. Across the stages across Olympic Way, there will be dance classes for all ages and abilities, showcasing different genres throughout the day.
One stage will feature live entertainment, including family shows and live bands. Families will have plenty to keep them occupied, including face painters, bubbleologists, circus acts, stilt walkers, street dancers and pavement artists. Aside from the entertainment, there will also be interactive areas, including photo booths, selfie stations and a giant photo wall of a digitally-generated portrait of Her Majesty, made of photos taken on the day.
- Jubilee Dance Party takes place on 4 June 2022, from 12pm-7pm. At Wembley Park, Wembley, HA9 0FD. Nearest stations: Wembley Park or Wembley Stadium. Free entry. For more information, visit the Wembley Park website.
Celebrate the Queen’s 90th with an alfresco feast at Her Majesty’s Brunch
Enjoy brunch alfresco at Her Majesty’s Brunch at Spa Fields in Clerkenwell this weekend
With the Queen Elizabeth’s official 90th birthday coming up this weekend, what better way to celebrate than with the best of British?
A stylish and fun outdoor brunch will be taking place on Saturday at the idyllic Spa Fields in Clerkenwell. Hosted by London party experts Bourne & Hollingsworth, you can expect plenty of the great food, entertainment and cocktails they are famous for. Essentially a mini festival to mark Her Majesty’s big day, guests will be able to drink and eat aplenty, while being entertained by live music and performances.
The menu has been designed by executive chef Adam Grey, from the nearby Bourne & Hollingsworth Buildings, featuring tasty, locally sourced produce. There will be several sittings during the day so you can relax in the sunshine and feast on some of your favourite brunch offerings.
Meanwhile, the B&H mixologists will be at the open-air bar, creating morning cocktails to ease you into the day, such as Bloody Marys and Bellinis. After your meal, you’ll be able to burn off some calories taking part in the traditional British games.
- Her Majesty’s Brunch takes place on Saturday 11 June 2016. At Spa Fields Park, Northampton Road, Clerkenwell, EC1R 1AA. Nearest station: Farringdon or Angel. From 10am-8pm, with brunch sittings taking place from 12:30pm. £35 for entry and brunch. For booking, visit the Bourne & Hollingsworth website.
For a review of brunch at the Bourne & Hollingsworth Buildings, click here.
London Calling | BT Artbox celebrates 25 years of Childline
‘Welcome to London’ by London & Partners by Tower Bridge
The red telephone box is one of Britain’s biggest icons – it’s up there with red London bus, Big Ben, Beefeaters, the Union Jack and Queen Elizabeth II herself. But for tourists arriving in London ahead of the Olympics, may find themselves slightly confused by the bizarre-looking phoneboxes dotted around the capital.
However, these multi-coloured and embellished street furniture haven’t been vandalised, they are simply part of the BT ArtBox project to mark the 25th anniversary of children’s charity Childline. It has invited artists and companies to customise their own replica box, which have been displayed around the city. But don’t get too carried away, these boxes don’t include a working phone should you need one, they’re simply for your viewing pleasure.
Lauren O’Farrell’s woolly ‘Dial M For Monster’ (LEFT) and Mandii Pope’s ‘Big Ben’… with the real Big Ben and Elizabeth Tower in the background
‘Shocking Conversation (front) and London Calling (back) outside City Hall
With the use of telephone boxes on the rapid decline since the popularity of mobile phones, I think the ArtBox project is an ingenious way to celebrate this iconic structure that draws so many tourists to pose inside them, as well as raise awareness and money for Childline. Following their display around the streets of London, they are to be auctioned off.
Before we find out about some of the Artboxes I have come across, a quick history about the real things. The first public telephone box was designed in 1920 for the Post Office and named K1 (Kiosk No.1), based on the same idea as the Police Telephone Boxes and Posts. However, the London Metropolitan Boroughs weren’t too impressed with the design and so the Fine Arts Commission judged a competition to find a more attractive and practical design. The winner was a London-born architect named Giles Gilbert Scott (who later designed Battersea Power Station) who came up with a classical style with a dome on top – inspired by Sir John Soane’s mausoleums at St Pancras Old Churchyard and Dulwich Picture Gallery.
So with the K2 design chosen, the Post Office chose to make it red so it easily to stand out to the public searching the streets for a payphone. Various different models followed, the K3, K4 and K5, but it is the K6 one which is most famous today.
Sir Giles designed the K6 model in 1935 to commemorate the Silver Jubilee of King George V. The model was rolled out across the country with the amount of public phone boxes in Britain rising from 8,000 in 1930 to 19,000 in Silver Jubilee year, rising even further to 35,000 by the time World War II broke out.
Fred Butler’s ‘Mobile Phone’ on The Strand outside Charing Cross Station (left) and London & Partner’s ‘Welcome To London’ by Tower Bridge (right)
Today, with a majority of the boxes owned by BT and a lot less attractive, modern phone boxes instead and the widespread use of mobile phones, you will find the red telephone boxes aren’t in such demand as they used to be. The days of queuing for a phone box and huffing and puffing when you’re stuck in a line behind a right chatterbox appear to be long gone.
With the BT ArtBox auction having gone live on eBay on Monday 16th July (ending Sunday 22nd July), there isn’t much time left to check out the boxes on show.
Many tourists are likely to come across the two on a traffic island in Trafalgar Square – Mandii Pope’s ‘Big Ben’ and Lauren O’Farrell’s ‘Dial M For Monster’. A short hop away outside Charing Cross Station on The Strand is Fred Butler’s Mobile Phone, designed to look like a vintage mobile. With actual buttons, it creates nostalgia for a design already outdated by Smartphones.
Another popular tourist spot where the public will come across the ArtBoxes is in Potter’s Field Park – the green expanse outside City Hall on the south bank of the River Thames. Right beside the base of Tower Bridge is London & Partner’s ‘Welcome To London’ box, a white box covered in speech bubbles with different languages to represent the multi-cultural melting pot that is London.
‘London is drowning and I live by the River’: Peter Anderson’s ‘London Calling’ (left) and Aboud & Aboud’s ‘Shocking Conversation’ (right)
Inspiration: Giles Gilbert Scott looked to Sir John Soane’s design of the mausoleum at Dulwich Picture Gallery for his K2 design
Less than a minute’s walk to the East of City Hall are two ArtBoxes – Aboud & Aboud’s ‘Shocking Conversation’, which looks like an unfinished box which has been partially dunked in red paint. It has been described as the colour is ‘draining out’ of the box.
Next to it stands Peter Anderson’s ‘London Calling’, which features iconic images of Joe Strummer and The Clash from the 1980s.
While most of the ArtBoxes are in and around the City and West End, some are dotted a bit further out, including Westfield Stratford, Canary Wharf and Ravenscourt Park. Just outside the West End are two located in and outside the Royal Albert Hall.
The ArtBox outside, entitled ‘Ring-A-Royal Phonebox’ created by children’s TV presenter Timmy Mallett, has a royal theme, which is very apt considering the origins of the concert venue and the fact the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge live a short walk away in Kensington Palace. Each side of the box contains some of the most popular members of the Royal Family – the Queen herself, the Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry. Kate Middleton is recognisable with her glossy brown hair and blue dress and is pushing a pram – significant to the pressure she is under to produce a royal heir. The Queen is accompanied by one of her beloved Corgis, while Prince Harry is pulling Usain Bolt’s classic pointing pose – so the ArtBox is both celebrating the Royal Jubilee, while making a nod to the Olympics.
- The BT Artbox exhibition is on around London from 18 June until 16 July 2012.
Timmy Mallett’s ‘Ring-A-Royal-Phonebox’ outside the Royal Albert Hall starring the Duchess of Cambridge, the Queen and Prince Harry
Rain never stopped play | Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Pageant Flotilla
My experience of watching the Queen’s Flotilla on a wet day in June 2012.
Grab any spot you can! People clambering for a view from outside Unilever House
Ahead of the Queen Elizabeth II‘s Jubilee Weekend, I wrote a last-minute blog with ideas of where to celebrate it. But when it came for me to make a decision, I was torn for choice. As I was flying out to Italy on the Bank Holiday Monday morning for a last-minute holiday, I decided to hit the Thames to watch the Queen’s Jubilee Pageant.
As a South Londoner and having spent a lot of my childhood playing on the South Bank, I was drawn to trying to find a spot to watch the flotilla from that side of the river. We arrived at London Bridge station armed with umbrellas, camera, Union Jacks and some cans of Pimm’s Cups. The forecast was dim, but, like all Londoners, we are used to rain and pressed ahead with our plans to watch it al fresco.
Rather ignorantly, we were hoping the rain may have put off some people and arrived about 90 minutes ahead of the flotilla starting. As we walked past viewpoint after viewpoint – which were closed off by police due to crowd control – it soon started to look hopeless that we were going to see the flotilla at all. We got as far as Southwark Bridge (not very far at all, but took ages due to the sheer volume of people) and after being told that most bridges were being closed off (although my official flotilla map said otherwise…), I had the brainwave to walk to Borough tube and get the Underground ‘over’ the river since going by foot looked increasingly difficult.
After riding to Bank, we then headed down to Mansion House and kept looking for viewing areas along Lower Thames Street Embankment – still to no avail. Some people had stood on flights of stairs to get literally a 10ft by 10ft view through a small gap in the buildings. I was determined I wouldn’t be that desperate to put up with a view that poor.
Hundreds stand on Blackfriars Bridge to watch the flotilla onscreen
Finally we reached Blackfriars Bridge about 90 minutes after setting off from London Bridge. Our timing was perfect because there just happened to be a few ‘viewing spots’ left on one of the flower beds on a traffic island in front of Unilever House. Now I’m not a vandle and like to respect my city, but needs must, so myself and my group climbed onto the bed – making sure we didn’t crush the plants in the process before anyone accuses me of vandalising them! Finally we could see the Thames – albeit over a sea of heads and flags – but we had a decent wide view on the river bend and Waterloo Bridge. There was also a large TV screen erected on the actual bridge so we could see the action on the Queen’s Barge too.
Closed roads meant everyone was free to walk wherever
Kids get into the spirit for their first Jubilee
A Diamond (Jubilee) Geezer
It might have been raining and it was a lot of standing around waiting, but the atmosphere was amazing. It was London in all its glory – looking around I could see a true representation of London (and the other Brits visiting from out of town). There were people from different classes, races and religion all coming together to celebrate the country and our Queen. I was feeling very patriotic and wore my Union Jack flag as a cape, a style choice many had made that day. One man had gone to extra patriotic lengths and painted the Union Jack on his face – a true ‘Diamond (Jubilee) Geezer’.
Finally when the Spirit Of Chartwell reached the bridge, there was a massive audio Mexican wave of cheers and whoops. The Queen’s barge was sailing particularly close to the north bank of the river, so I ended up climbing onto a pedestrian crossing light and balancing on the button box to get a better view! The barge’s passing under Blackfriars happened to coincide with the heaviest rain since we’d been outside, but the atmosphere was so jubilant, I was past caring.
The lady of the hour
The flotilla finally reaches Blackfriars – canoes first
After finally seeing the Queen – albeit from a distance – and experiencing the Jubilee atmosphere, we were ready to hit home to watch the highlights from the comfort of the sofa – with a detour to a hot drinks establishment first.
Later reports estimated 1.2million had been by the river to watch the flotilla, which I could easily believe. Walking on some of the City Of London’s busiest roads, where there is usually vehicles, was a surreal experience. As dismal as the weather was, the sea of people wearing red, white and blue raised your spirits.
Spirit of Chartwell approaches Blackfriars Bridge
Spot the royals – Kate and Wills standing at the front
With the Queen being 86, its unlikely we will see her Platinum (70th) Jubilee, so I felt it was important to be a part of it and was proud to see London on the world stage – for the first of two times this year with the Olympics coming up. I was at the Thames for her Golden Jubilee, but don’t remember it being as big a spectacle as the Diamond. I’ve always associated myself more as a Londoner than a Brit or Englishwoman, but felt very proud to be British on that day.
Someone’s not feeling the Jubilee spirit… although his owner apparently is with their champers!
The rain was really bad at this point as the end of the flotilla headed down towards Tower Bridge
Gallery: Floral tributes to Queen Elizabeth II in Green Park
Photographs of the tributes left by the British people and visitors at Green Park.
One is wondering what to do | Last-minute guide to Diamond Jubilee Weekend
Buckingham Palace will be heavily featured in the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations
So yes… the weather isn’t going to be as good as we hoped this Jubilee Bank Holiday Weekend. But London is a city of all weathers and we’ll be on the world’s stage again this weekend when we celebrate Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee.
Even if you’re not much of a royalist, the opportunity for the country to come together and party in the streets doesn’t happen very often (lets face it, we’re not likely to win the Euro or World Cup anytime soon… #spokenlikeatruepessimist)…
As we’re back in a recession… again… what better way to forget Europe’s economic doom and groom and celebrate what’s good about Britain – and goodness knows, spending a few quid on some bunting or a bottle of Pimms will help the economy.
I’ve never had a strong opinion for or against the Royal Family, but I appreciate their value to our tourism industry. I remember how their image plummeted following the death of Princess Diana in 1997 and now 15 years later, they seem to be riding a new wave of popularity, helped in spades by Prince William and his glossy-haired bride Catherine.
So with the weekend officially starting already, here’s some ideas of what’s going on in town if you’re still stuck about what to do (and that haven’t sold out)
- Thames Jubilee Pageant – Sunday 3rd June
Over 1,000 boats will sail down the Thames, starting from Battersea Bridge around 2pm and ending at Tower Bridge at 6pm. The Queen herself be on the royal barge, the Spirit of Chartwell, embarking near Albert Bridge.
The flotilla will cover seven miles of river, with large viewing screens dispersed along the river banks so everyone can see. Police are recommending spectators arrive no later than 2pm. For more information and maps to print off visit the official Thames Jubilee Pageant website.
Head to the Thames to watch the Flotilla
- Jubilee Family Festival – Saturday 2nd and Sunday 3rd June
For those with young children, somewhere not involving packed crowds standing in close proximity fighting for a glimpse of the royals is probably a good idea. Sainsbury’s has organised a two-day festival in Hyde Park, including live music and entertainment from Britain and across the Commonwealth. Celebrities including Myleene Klass, Jon Culshaw, Kara Tointon and Strictly dancers will be taking part. Although many tickets have already been sold, there will be limited tickets on the gate, which opens at 10:30am and closes at 7pm. Visit the Jubilee Family Festival website for more information.
- Bellenden Big Lunch (Peckham) – Sunday 3rd June
Free street party on Bellenden Street in Peckham where the road’s boutiques, art galleries, shops, cafes and pubs will be opening their doors with lots of events. The road is closed off to cars with tables in the middle for eating and drinking. Visit the Facebook page for more information.
- Piccadilly Big Jubilee Lunch – Sunday 3rd June
Piccadilly will be closed off to vehicle traffic for the first time its history with some of the road’s most famous establishments hosting various events. BAFTA will be giving people the chance to walk the red carpet, The Cavendish London will be making a hog roast, The Ritz’s resident band will be playing, and loads more food and entertainment. Visit the Big Jubilee Lunch website for more information.
- Street Party @ Water Poet (Spitalfields) – Monday 4th June
There’s nothing like an East End knees-up. The Water Poet near Liverpool Street is hosting a street party with food, drinks and dancing. In the evening there will be a live screening of the Jubilee concert at Buckingham Palace. Visit the Water Poet’s website for more information.
- Queen’s Jubilee Carriage Procession – Tuesday 5th June
At around 2:20pm, the Queen and the royal family will ride in a formal carriage procession from the Palace Of Westminster to Buckingham Palace following a service of thanksgiving at St Paul’s Cathedral and lunch earlier. They will travel along Whitehall and The Mall, before gathering on the balcony of Buckingham Palace at around 3:30pm. The Royal Family’s appearance on the balcony will culminate with a RAF flypast and a gun salute.
- Jubilee Garden Party @ Dulwich Picture Gallery – Tuesday 5th June
A party in the grounds of the 19th century gallery with canapes and sparkling wine. There will be short tours by the curator and a performance of Fifties songs by soprano Alexandra Carter. Tickets £18. Visit the Dulwich Picture Gallery’s website for more information.
- World Street Food Festival – Sat 2nd – Tues 5th June
It may be the Queen’s weekend, but one of the best things about London is our multi-cultural residents and cuisines from around the world. Market stalls with different world cuisines will be set up in Southbank Centre Square on London’s Southbank. Visit the World Street Food Festival’s website.
Whatever you do, enjoy the weekend and don’t forget to check the TFL website. There’s going to be some road and tube station closure so be prepared. Happy Jubilee Weekend!
Memoirs Of A Metro Girl 