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How the UK looked when a King last oversaw Trooping the Colour

02:06

How the UK looked when a King last oversaw Trooping the Colour in 1950

Trooping the Colour takes place on Saturday 17 June and for the first time in 73 years, it will be a King who takes the salute.

Held to celebrate the monarch’s birthday each year, the ceremony is an impressive display of pageantry involving the sovereign’s personal troops, the Household Division.

For over seven decades, the parade celebrated Queen Elizabeth II, who actually took the salute as a princess for the first time back in 1951 as her father, King George VI, was ill.

That means the last time a King took the salute at Trooping the Colour was in 1950 and here, The Independent looks back at what the world was like all those years ago.

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