Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II officially celebrated her 86th birthday on Saturday, with her husband Prince Philip back at her side after he was hospitalised during her diamond jubilee festivities.
Philip wore the scarlet tunic and heavy bearskin hat befitting his honorary rank of colonel in the Grenadier Guards as they reviewed the troops at the Trooping the Colour military parade in central London.
The couple also watched a flypast by Royal Air Force planes and helicopters before the Red Arrows aerobatics team left trails of red, white and blue smoke overhead.
The Olympic beach volleyball competition will be held on the historic Horseguards Parade ground during the 2012 Games that start next month.
Philip, who himself turned 91 on Sunday, was released from hospital one week ago after he was taken ill with a urinary tract infection. He had to miss the last two days of celebrations marking the queen’s 60th year on the throne.
For the Trooping the Colour, he and the queen arrived in a glass coach. They were due to travel in an open carriage but changed due to the “unpredictable nature of the weather”, a Buckingham Palace spokesman said.
As regimental colonels, their eldest children, heir to the throne Prince Charles and Princess Anne, rode on horseback alongside Charles’s eldest son, Prince William, all wearing ceremonial uniforms.
Charles’ wife Camilla and William’s wife Catherine were both dressed in blue and rode in a carriage with Charles’s younger son Prince Harry.
The queen appointed Charles to top rank in all three British military services — Field Marshal, Admiral of the Fleet and Marshal of the Royal Air Force — earlier on Saturday.
Charles, 63, the Prince of Wales, served in the Royal Navy and the RAF throughout the 1970s.
His sons are both military helicopter pilots — Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge, in a search and rescue role with the RAF and Prince Harry on attack choppers with the Army Air Corps.
Trooping the Colour — a hangover from preparations for battle when colours or flags were “trooped” down the rank so soldiers could recognise them — marks the queen’s official birthday.
Her actual birthday is on April 21 but traditionally the monarch has another in the summer months, because the weather is supposed to be better for open-air celebrations.
