Platinum Jubilee: MPs and peers search for gift fit for the Queen
- Published
What do you get a ninety-something monarch who has already received pretty much everything, from a gold-plated horse comb to carvings of pygmy hippos?
A committee of MPs and peers has been set up to choose a gift "fit" for the Queen to mark the 70th anniversary of her accession, in 2022.
Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden said it would be a "token of our respect".
For her Diamond Jubilee in 2012, the Queen had a stained-glass window created for her in Westminster Hall.
The Golden Jubilee of 2002 saw a sundial installed in Westminster's Old Palace Yard, while the 1977 Silver Jubilee resulted in a fountain being built in nearby New Palace Yard.
The cross-party Project Committee - whose members include Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle and Lords Speaker Lord Fowler - is expected to follow this understated tradition.
But the Queen is used to receiving more exotic gifts from the UK, Commonwealth and beyond.
These have included a wine cooler in the shape of a grasshopper, a marzipan statue and, more appetisingly perhaps, a tin of pineapple.
Well-wishers have also given Her Majesty animals such as cows, jaguars, kangaroos and a sloth - which have remained in their own habitats, for fear of ecological disruption and damaging the lawns of Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle.
In 2013, BBC chairman Lord Patten presented the Queen with a framed selection of Radio Times covers on which she had appeared
A governor-general of the Bahamas once presented the Queen with a painting of a swimming pig, while the Liberian ambassador proffered three mantelpiece-friendly wood carvings of pygmy hippos.
During the 2009 G20 summit in London, US President Barack Obama added a personal touch with his present - an iPod featuring coverage of her American tour two years earlier.
And a state visit by the Queen to the US in 1991 resulted in the gift of six pairs of cowboy boots - fine for a sun-drenched Texas ranch, but of more questionable use for long January walks around Sandringham.
The Project Committee is unlikely to opt for a second royal sloth
The 70th anniversary of the accession - the Queen's Platinum Jubilee - occurs on 6 February 2022.
However, the main celebrations, including a four-day bank holiday weekend, will take place in June, the month in which the Coronation took place in 1953.
Sir Lindsay, who like the Queen is known for his love of animals, said: "To celebrate a Platinum Jubilee is a unique and historic first, so it is only right that we Parliamentarians mark this significant occasion with a token of our respect, affection, appreciation and thanks."
Lord Fowler said that, despite the UK's current travails, "we still have much to look forward to, including celebrating 70 years of Her Majesty's reign in June 2022".
Solicitor-General Michael Ellis, who organised the Queen's Diamond Jubilee gift, will lead the search for its successor, funded by donations from members of both Houses.
In a debate marking the Queen's 90th birthday in 2016, Mr Ellis told the House of Commons of his horror at discovering, shortly before the stained glass was placed in situ in Westminster Hall in 2010, "that the chain on the unicorn was the wrong way round".
This was rectified in time for installation.