Diamond Jubilee: Pop royalty to play for Queen

Monday's A-list BBC concert starts at 19:30 BST

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The Diamond Jubilee

• Pomp and celebrations defy rain
• Guide to central weekend events
• Thousands cheer Queen in pageant
• Royal couple join street party

The Queen's Diamond Jubilee will be marked with a star-studded BBC concert in front of Buckingham Palace later.

Sir Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder and Sir Elton John are among the artists, and Madness will perform on the roof.

The audience will comprise of people who got tickets in a public ballot and those from charities with royal links.

At the end of the show, the Queen will light one of the last of around 4,500 beacons across the globe - in celebration of her 60-year reign.

On Monday afternoon, prior to the Jubilee concert, 10,000 ballot winners and VIPs will have a picnic in the gardens of Buckingham Palace.

The concert follows Sunday's spectacular River Thames pageant which attracted more than tens of thousands of rain-soaked people to watch the flotilla of 1,000 boats.

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Analysis Peter Hunt News correspondent

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After a pageant on the Thames - where the elements weren't kind but the enthusiasm of the spectators was undimmed - a change of scene and tempo.
At the end of the Golden Jubilee concert, Sir Paul McCartney asked the Queen, "Are we doing this next year?" "Not in my garden" came the regal reply.
Ten years on, she's had her way. The BBC concert will be staged outside the palace gates. The official guests will reflect the changes in a decade. Camilla Parker Bowles is now the Duchess of Cornwall and a future queen. Rupert Murdoch was invited last time. Will any newspaper proprietors be invited this time?
At the end of the concert, the Queen - who at 86, probably won't sit through all of the performances and who may well come armed with ear plugs as she did in 2002 - will light one of the last of more than 4,000 beacons around the world.

• Read more from Peter

The Queen travelled in a barge alongside senior members of the Royal Family as street parties were held around the country.

Buckingham Palace has told the BBC the Royal Family were "touched" at the turnout, despite the weather.

Monday's A-list concert, which starts at 19:30 BST (18:30 GMT), will also star Robbie Williams, Ed Sheeran, JLS, Kylie Minogue, Sir Tom Jones, Jessie J, Dame Shirley Bassey and Annie Lennox.

And it will feature a special song - sung by 200 people from around the Commonwealth - co-written for the occasion by Gary Barlow and Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Motown legend Wonder has said: "It's an honour to celebrate The Queen. It's an honour to celebrate Great Britain. The time is overdue that I meet Her Majesty."

The Duke of Edinburgh, Prince of Wales, Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry will join the Queen at the concert.

An artist's impression of the stage, designed by architect Mark Fisher

Pop veterans Madness will play their hit Our House on the roof of Buckingham Palace - echoing Queen guitarist Brian May's performance of the National Anthem in 2002 for the Golden Jubilee.

After the musical tribute, the Queen will greet the crowds and set the national beacon ablaze.

At 22:30 BST (21:00 GMT), she is scheduled to place a crystal glass diamond into a special pod, triggering the lighting of the last beacon in The Mall.

Beacons will be lit throughout the evening in the UK, Channel Islands, Isle of Man, the Commonwealth and other overseas territories.

Bruno Peek, pageantmaster of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee beacons, said: "We set out to have 2,012 beacons, which would have been the most ever for this type of occasion.

"To have reached double that figure reflects the national and worldwide respect and affection for the Queen and the desire to celebrate her 60-year reign."

The network of beacons across the UK will be placed on historic landmarks, hill-top vantage points and famous mountains.

Continue reading the main story Diamond Jubilee beacons

• About 4,500 beacons will be lit in the UK, Commonwealth and overseas territories
• Beacons in the UK and British dependencies will be lit in stages between 22:00 and 22:30
• The Queen will light the National Beacon near Buckingham Palace at 22:30
• Overseas beacons will be lit at 22:00 local time in countries including Canada, Australia and Kenya
• Two types of Beacons are used: Bonfires and the church tower beacon fuelled by bottled gas
• Beacons were lit on Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in and for 1977's Silver Jubilee

• Diamond Jubilee beacons interactive Map

Beacons will also be placed on the battlements of the Tower of London, and at St James's Palace, Lambeth Palace, Windsor Castle, Sandringham, Balmoral and Holyroodhouse.

Sixty will be lit in sequence on Hadrian's Wall - one for each year of the Monarch's reign.

And the highest peaks of the UK's four nations will be lit up by teams from four charities.

Help for Heroes will conquer Ben Nevis in Scotland, Walking With The Wounded will climb Snowdon in Wales, Cancer Research UK will scale England's Scafell Pike and in Northern Ireland, Field of Life will go up Slieve Donard in County Down.

The hotel in Kenya where the Queen was told in 1952 of her father George VI's death - which meant she would become the monarch - will also light a beacon.

Much like the conclusion of the Thames pageant, the evening will end with a firework display.

• The Diamond Jubilee Concert will be shown on BBC big screens in 22 towns and cities throughout the UK. Find your nearest screening here..

Queens and Lords on Jubilee

LONDON — Long known as the sport of kings, today horse racing is the Sport of the Queen, as the Diamond Jubilee got underway with a familiar annual ritual, the running of the Epsom Derby.

Horse-loving Queen Elizabeth II did not have a horse in the "dah-bee," as it's known here; instead it was the appropriately named Camelot, the favorite, that won the feature race today, in front of a crowd of 150,000 racing fans, with the No. 1 fan watching in the royal enclosure.

Along with her were members of her family, including her husband, Prince Philip; her two younger sons, Prince Andrew, Duke of York, and Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex; and two of her grandchildren, Andrew's daughters, Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie.

The day was overcast, windy and cool but it was an especially colorful and cheerful derby, decorated with flags, flowers and jubilee bunting. It opened with military parachutists, bearing Union Jacks, floating down in their scarlet red jumpsuits, one of the reasons they're known as the Red Devils.

The crowds cheered and waved little flags (35,000 were handed out beforehand) as the queen and her husband arrived in a Rolls motorcade down the track. Smiling broadly, she exited the car and the Royal Marine Band struck up the familiar notes of the national anthem. Katherine Jenkins, the Welsh classical vocalist who finished second in Dancing With the Stars last month, sang God Save the Queen with gusto, although she looked slightly chilled in the cold while dressed in a creamy, strapless mermaid-tail gown, standing just a few feet away from the queen.

"This is definitely a day that I will never forget," she told the BBC later.

Unlike so many others, Jenkins was not wearing a hat for her performance but she didn't have to. By contrast, there's a strict dress code for those in the royal enclosure: Hats for women; top hats for men; and smart outfits for all. Elsewhere in the stands, fans are allowed to wear what they want and many of them apparently believe the wackier the better.

As per usual, the queen went down from the royal box to the paddock where she inspected some of the horses that competed in one of the races, the Coronation Cup, renamed the Diamond Jubilee Coronation Cup. She awarded the cup to the owner, trainer and jockey of winner St. Nicholas Abbey.

The big winner, Camelot, was trained and ridden by a father-son team, the first in derby history, adding to the historic character of this year's event.

Epsom is not just any horse-racing venue; the derby is way older than the Windsor dynasty, with the first was one in 1779. It's also one of the richest, at about $2 million. And it's free for fans.

The race also is the United Kingdom's only major one that the horsewoman-in-chief has not won. An expert in breeding, raising, training and racing horses, she has gone to the derby every year except one in her 60 years on the throne. She even attended just a few days after she was crowned in 1953, when her horse, Aureole, finished second, nearly giving the new queen a coronation victory.

Last year, her horse Carlton House, was the favorite but finished third, although it did win at another racetrack on Thursday.

Racing is one of the queen's real passions, so it's no coincidence that the derby opens the jubilee weekend. Brits are used to seeing her at the races, a standout in the royal box in her colorful hats and outfits, peering through binoculars, surrounded by family and friends. She typically visits the paddock and the winner's circle, loves talking to the trainers and jockeys, closely reads the daily racing press.

British commentators have repeatedly pointed out that no other event during jubilee weekend will be as much fun for the 86-year-old queen as the derby. Typically, she shows an enigmatic or neutral expression on her face during engagements, although lately she's been seen beaming for jubilee events. But it's at the races where she shows her excitement. One piece of video often shown features the queen at a race, grabbing her binoculars and rushing out of the royal box as one of her horses moved to the front of the pack.

Following the horses is the queen's hobby, one that provides a "relief from her daily duties," said her top-hatted (and rarely interviewed) racing manager, John Warren, interviewed by Sky News.

When the queen goes to the USA on rare private visits, she typically heads for Kentucky bluegrass country. There she visits Lane's End Farm, a top breeder owned by her friend William Farish, the former American ambassador to Britain.

And when she made her historic visit to Ireland last year, the first by a British monarch to its former colony, she made a point of spending hours at the Irish National Stud, talking horse bloodlines with people whose love of horses is as high as her own.