Queen Elizabeth II memorial unveiled on what would have been her 100th birthday

The national memorial to Queen Elizabeth II will feature a statue of the monarch as a young woman in the early years of her reign.

Unveiled to coincide with what would have been Her late Majesty’s 100th birthday today, it depicts the Queen in her 20s and dressed in her Garter robes.

A ‘few paces behind’ the Queen, as was his usual position, will be a smaller statue of Prince Philip, the late Duke of Edinburgh, in his Naval uniform, looking up at his wife of more than 70 years.

The bronze statue of the Queen, which will overlook The Mall, is designed by sculptor Martin Jennings and inspired by the celebrated 1955 portrait of Elizabeth II by Italian artist Pietro Annigoni.

The Queen sat for Annigoni at Buckingham Palace in late 1954 when she was just 28 and the Renaissance-style painting was completed the following year.

It captures the young monarch, just a few years into her reign, minus a tiara but draped in her weighty Garter robes, composed and gazing into the distance, with Annigoni having taken influence from a remark the Queen made to him during a sitting about how, as a child, she enjoyed watching people and cars from her window in the Palace.

Charles and Camilla arrived at the British Museum on Tuesday to view final models of the national memorial to the late Queen.

They were joined at the event on the centenary of Elizabeth II’s birth by the under-fire Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, who greeted the King with a broad smile and a handshake and then also was seen to pat Camilla on the top of her arm.

The royal family is later set to gather at a special reception at Buckingham Palace in honour of the nation’s longest reigning monarch, who died aged 96 in 2022.

The statue will stand 7.3 metres high – with the Queen three metres tall on a 4.3-metre plinth – in a new civic space called Queen Elizabeth II Place at Marlborough Gate on the edge of the park.

The smaller companion statue – 3.8 metres in height with a 2.3-metre figure and a 1.5-metre plinth of the duke will be located 20 metres behind in the park.

Philip will be represented at a similar age, wearing his Admiral-of-the-Fleet uniform.

The Queen’s former private secretary Lord Janvrin, chairman of the Queen Elizabeth Memorial Committee said: ‘We thought it was very important that the statue of the Queen, our head of state, was on the ceremonial route in her own right.

‘She will be depicted standing, on her own.

‘But Prince Philip was such an important part – they worked as a team – of the realm that we’ve decided that he should be a few paces behind the Queen – a position he was accustomed to.’

He added: ‘Prince Philip will be looking up because she is on a slightly higher pedestal.’

Lord Janvrin said the Annigoni portrait was a ‘lovely, iconic image of the young Queen’.

He added: ‘We think probably most people would like to be remembered when they were young.

‘But at the Birdcage Walk end, we will have a bust of the Queen in what I call her later years, not very old, but probably when she was in her fifties, sixties.’

The bust of the more mature Queen will be crafted by artist Karen Newman for the other side of the park.

The King, Queen Camilla and other members of the royal family will view maquettes of the planned statues and a scale model of the wider memorial when they visit the British Museum on Tuesday, as part of events commemorating what would have been the Queen’s centenary.

The figure they will see of Philip, in his uniform, shows the duke standing as he often did with both arms behind his back.

The appearance of both statues will be further refined during the sculpting process.

It is one of three projects under way in honour of the Queen, with a new charity, The Queen Elizabeth Trust, and a Digital Memorial also launched on Tuesday.

The Digital Memorial aims to create a ‘living archive’ made of the public’s personal memories of the Queen.

It will digitise the Court Circular – the daily record of official royal engagements – and bring it to life, mapping key events from the Queen’s reign.

The public will be asked to contribute their recollections via the website Queenelizabeth.com – which was previously owned by the luxury cruise line Cunard for the Queen Elizabeth ship, but was donated by the company after a request from the digital memorial.

Joe Garner, the Queen Elizabeth Memorial Committee member who specialised on the digital memorial, said: ‘We could create the most phenomenal archive.’

He suggested it could develop into adding cinefilm and photos from the public, and would be expanded to map memories from around the globe.

Recorded footage of memories from celebrities including Olympian Tom Daley and artist Dame Tracey Emin already feature on the new site.

Daley recalls how he was told off for sitting on the Queen’s throne, saying: ‘I remember when the Queen came into the room, she always had this incredible presence.

‘I did go and sit on her throne, and I did get told off for that, because at 14 years old, I didn’t realise that you’re not meant to sit on the reigning monarch’s throne.’

The memorial is expected to be completed in 2028.

Luis Matania, senior partner at Foster + Partners who has led on the built memorial, said the steel and glass ‘tiara’ bridge used the latest technologies.

‘This is an opportunity to actually… use the latest technologies we have and do something structurally that still retains the principle of something very delicate, almost a boardwalk that crosses the water, that does not interrupt that beautiful view,’ he said.

The Queen Elizabeth Trust is an independent grant-making charity which will work with communities across the UK to transform community spaces to bring local people together across generations.

The idea was inspired by the late Queen’s Christmas broadcasts in which she often spoke of the importance of neighbours and local communities, Lord Janvrin said.

Sir Damon Buffini, chairman of the new trust, said he hoped millions of people would benefit from its future work on the regeneration and support of spaces currently not fit for purpose.

The trust hopes to work on its first project by the end of this year.

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