Brits’ love for Her Majesty The Queen goes hand-in-hand with their affection for the humble greeting card – and plenty have landed in Buckingham Palace to celebrate our longest-serving monarch’s 70th jubilee.
In an official photograph released to mark the Platinum Jubilee, Queen Elizabeth II is pictured with just a few of the greeting cards received from the United Kingdom and across the world for Accession Day yesterday (Sunday 6 February), the anniversary of her accession to the throne following the death of her beloved father King George VI.
In the accompanying official statement, signed Your Servant Elizabeth R, The Queen said: “It is a day that, even after 70 years, I still remember as much for the death of my father, King George VI, as for the start of my reign.
“As we mark this anniversary, it gives me pleasure to renew to you the pledge I gave in 1947 that my life will always be devoted to your service.
“As I look ahead with a sense of hope and optimism to the year of my Platinum Jubilee, I am reminded of how much we can be thankful for.
“This anniversary also affords me a time to reflect on the goodwill shown to me by people of all nationalities, faiths and ages in this country and around the world over these years. I would like to express my thanks to you all for your support.
“I remain eternally grateful for, and humbled by, the loyalty and affection that you continue to give me.”
And cards have played an important part in recent celebrations with the GCA responsible for delivering a bumper postbag of 90th birthday greetings to Her Majesty in 2016 following the special display feature at PG Live.
PG’s editor Jakki Brown and then-GCA chief executive Sharon Little were invited behind the scenes at Buckingham Palace to find out what was involved in the Correspondence Unit receiving the 40,000-plus cards sent for the Queen’s big day, and how the Anniversaries Team annually send out over 46,000 goodwill messages in cards to centenaries and couples reaching their diamond wedding anniversaries and above.
As Jakki reported at the time, if ever proof was needed that a greeting card is still very much the chosen medium of the British public to convey a personal tangible message, it’s to be found in the surrounding rooms and hallway of the Correspondence Unit’s offices in Buckingham Palace.
Box upon box, tray upon tray, postbag upon postbag, each contains the public’s outpourings of respect and good wishes for our beloved monarch on her special birthday, virtually all of them written inside a greeting card.
“What you see here is just this week’s deliveries they have counted but not yet opened,” revealed Celia Guy, who was then correspondence coordinator and is now the Queen’s correspondence manager, gesturing towards the organised piles in just one of the rooms set aside. “Roughly 70% of the cards that have been sent are shop bought with the remaining 30% being handmade. I have come to recognise the most popular card designs.”
Every day, The Queen sees a selection of the correspondence received in the Private Secretary’s office. “These are selected to reflect the diversity of design styles as well as messages written,” explained Christopher Sandamas, who was then chief clerk in the Private Secretary’s Office.
And it was just a few years previously when the greeting card industry had helped mark The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, with more than 100,000 received for the 2012 celebrations, including a giant one signed by many visitors to the Cardgains stand at that year’s Spring Fair as well as numerous individual ones that were a result of the Cards For The Queen initiative instigated by PG, the GCA and PG Live. This saw many publishers create some amazing cards which they signed with wishes from their companies and also donated blank versions which visitors to that year’s PG Live could select and write their own messages.
As the UK builds up to the official Platinum Jubilee celebrations, which take place across a four-day bank holiday weekend running Thursday to Sunday, 2-5 June, there’s another big date on the horizon – in two years 110 days’ time, Queen Elizabeth II will overtake current title holder Louis XIV of France, who served from 14 May, 1643, to 1 September, 1715, to officially become the longest-reigning monarch yet, when some very special greeting cards will most definitely be required.
