25th July 2020
Image ©Aliona Adrianova During my first meeting with Foreign Office Permanent Under-Secretary Sir Simon McDonald in March 2019, when we discussed ideas for the portrait of The Queen that he wanted to commission, I was delighted to hear that he wanted it to feel intimate. He wanted to express Her Majesty’s humanity, rather than creating […]
12th July 2016 Colombo, Sri Lanka
It was a career first for me on Sunday, when I found myself selecting knickers for Her Majesty The Queen. No lèse-majesté this, rather part of the celebrations of the 210th anniversary of the building of the Governor’s Palace at Mount Lavinia. This included a literary festival, featuring British authors who have written about or been […]
8th June 2016
Like other embassies and high commissions around the world, the British Embassy to the Holy See took the opportunity this week to celebrate Her Majesty The Queen’s 90th birthday. In traditional British fashion, our garden party was accompanied by a downpour of rain, but it didn’t appear to dampen the spirits of the many guests […]
9th September 2015
This blog needs no other title. We all know who we mean when we speak of The Queen. And there is plenty of information around the web at the moment (the BBC, for example, has many fascinating details about Her Majesty’s reign on its website). At 63 years seven months and counting, The Queen this […]
2nd June 2014 Paris, France
We’re three days away from the State Visit of Her Majesty The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh. Excitement is rising in the Embassy as we approach it. Why is this visit going to be so special? First of all, because the Queen stands for so much in the relationship between Britain and France.
28th May 2014 Paris, France
Next week, we will be commemorating the 70th anniversary of the D-Day Landings in Normandy, and, for the UK, we have the honour of Her Majesty The Queen, HRH The Duke of Edinburgh in Normandy for 6 June, joined by HRH The Prince of Wales, the Duchess of Cornwall, and briefly His Royal Highness The […]
Read more on Commemorating D-Day: the past and the future | Reply