Queen Elizabeth marks 60 years of marriage
Foreign Desk Report

LONDON—Queen Elizabeth, the first reigning British monarch to celebrate a diamond wedding anniversary, marked the milestone on Monday with a service of thanksgiving alongside her husband Prince Philip.
The royal octogenarians, whose family have been buffeted by a string of scandals, divorces and tragedy, retraced their steps up the aisle of Westminster Abbey to hail 60 years of marriage. The family’s German relations were not invited to their 1947 wedding because of strong anti-German feeling in Britain after World War Two. This time they were on the guest list.
The 2,000-strong congregation included playwright Tom Stoppard and opera singer Joan Sutherland, as well as four other British couples also celebrating diamond wedding anniversaries.
The service was staged the day before the actual anniversary — November 20. On Tuesday, the royal couple will mark the day by flying to the Mediterranean island of Malta where Prince Philip was serving as a naval officer at the time of their marriage.
The wedding of Elizabeth, who had been in love with Philip since she was a child, offered a rare burst of colour and pageantry in an austere post-war world of rationing and shortages in Britain. On her wedding day, the 21-year-old princess wore an ivory silk Norman Hartnell gown decorated with 10,000 seed pearls.
In sharp contrast to their own marriage, three of the royal couple’s four children have divorced. Prince Andrew, the queen’s second son, said in an interview last week that his own divorce from Sarah Ferguson had disappointed his parents who firmly believe in the “old-fashioned idea” that marriage is a partnership for life.
The 81-year-old monarch and her 86-year-old husband were greeted at the doors of Westminster Abbey by a fanfare of trumpets. Five choristers who sang at their wedding as schoolboys carried candles in the anniversary procession.
Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, spiritual head of the world’s 77 million Anglicans, praised the royal marriage as a faithful and creative partnership lived “in the full light of publicity.” “We are probably more aware than ever these days of the pressures this brings and the costs it involves,” he said.
“Before we complain too loudly about a world of disposable relationships and short-term policies, a world of fracturing and insecure international bonds and the decline of trust, we should remember today that we have cause for thanksgiving.” Among those who gave readings was Oscar-winning actress Judi Dench, who recited a poem by Poet Laureate Andrew Motion, and Prince William, the queen’s grandson. Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh celebrated their diamond wedding anniversary Monday with a moving thanksgiving service in Westminster Abbey, the church where they married 60 years ago.
The pomp and splendour of the traditional ceremony came a day before the anniversary itself, which the couple are to mark Tuesday with a trip to Malta to relive their newly-wed days on the Mediterranean island. The queen, the first monarch to celebrate six decades of marriage on the throne, wore a white suit alongside her black-clad consort for the hour-long service, attended by a 2,000-strong congregation.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown was among the ranks of great and good invited, while the Archbishop of Canterbury gave a sermon praising the royal couple’s resilience in the public gaze of the modern age. While the ceremony was broadcast live on the BBC, coverage was relatively low-key and the anniversary had little of the sense of state occasion, in line with recent years when the role of the royal family has been increasingly questioned.