Queen’s Platinum Jubilee pageant will be ‘largest’ in British history

A four-day public holiday has been announced for June 2022

Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee pageant will be “the largest” royal event that has ever been put on, organisers have said.

In 2022, the Queen will celebrate her 70^th year as monarch – the longest reign in British history.

To mark the occasion, a four-day public holiday has been announced. This includes a “Platinum Pageant” on the final day of the celebrations which will tell the story of the Queen’s reign through the streets of London.

Nicholas Coleridge, a co-chair of the pageant and chairman of the Victoria & Albert Museum, said that 6,500 performers are set to take part in the street parade.

Speaking at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester this weekend, he said the event will be larger than the celebrations during Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897.

“It’s going to be the largest that’s ever put on, larger we think even than that that was put on for Queen Victoria,” he said, as reported by the Mail Online.

While the pageant will take place in London through Westminster – under Admiralty Arch, down the Mall, past Buckingham Palace and up past Constitution Hill – people from across the country wil be taking part.

“It’s not going to be London-centric. We even have a giant map, making sure that we have people from every part of our country and indeed every part of the Commonwealth,” Coleridge said.

“We’re going to have people from all 54 Commonwealth countries who are going to be taking part in this astounding parade,” he added.

He also revealed that 17 theatre groups will perform, as well as a “mysterious celebrity singer”.

“We’re having enormous sculptures the size of four-storey houses being dragged down the Mall, we’re having a mysterious celebrity singer that if I said it, the entire ‘Team Jubilee’ would be so angry with me that I’d probably never be able to go back into the office.

“We’ve got royals, we’ve got golden coaches and at the heart of it, of course, we’ve got the Queen,” he said.

He did not disclose which members of the royal family will be taking part.

Coleridge said the BBC has predicted that the pageant will be watched by almost one billion people worldwide.

“I suspect they may be slightly exaggerating but it’s going to be huge because it’s going everywhere.

“By the end of it, I hope we’re going to feel re-energised, highly patriotic and very much one nation as we all celebrate the Platinum Jubilee.”

The Queen’s Jubilee weekend will include her birthday parade, Trooping the Colour, which is expected to take place at Buckingham Palace after being relegated to Windsor Castle for the last two years because of Covid-19 restrictions.

The royal family will also attend the Derby at Epsom Downs and host a Platinum Party at Buckingham Palace, which members of the public will have the chance to attend.