Happy Birthday your Majesty

We look at the way the Queen celebrated her historic 90th birthday on April 21st,and how we can all get involved in helping her enjoy an amazing official 90th on June 11th too!

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Most of us only get one chance every year to celebrate our birthday, but Her Majesty the Queen gets two. Her actual birthday is April 21st and she has another “official” birthday in June.

It is a tradition that was started by George II in 1748 and is owes its origins to the ageless problem of the British weather. King George was born in November, and felt the weather would be too cold at that time of year for his annual birthday parade.

So instead, he combined his birthday celebration with an annual spring military parade known as Trooping the Colour, in which regiments displayed their flags or “colours” so soldiers would be familiar with them.

During the early part of her reign the Queen’s official birthday was on a Thursday in June, but it later changed to a Saturday in June so that more members of the public could enjoy it.

2016 is of course the year of Her Majesty’s 90th birthday, so there are going to be plenty of celebrations worldwide.

On Easter Sunday the ITV television channel screened a real treat for royal fans in Our Queen At Ninety, a historic two-hour documentary which, like the record-breaking monarch it celebrated, was a programme with a record of its own since it included contributions from more members of the Royal Family than any royal documentary ever made.

For much of the last year, during which the Queen became the longest-reigning monarch in British history, a small television documentary team was granted privileged access to the Queen and to those who knew her best.