THE Queen proved a good fit for a striking 80th anniversary commemoration of VE Day by donning a pair of striking poppy-themes gloves.
Camilla placed the final flower at a new display of nearly 30,000 ceramic poppies at Tower of London.
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The installation, called The Tower Remembers, represents a “wound” across the inner walls of the fortress, symbolising the enduring sacrifices made during the conflict to mark 80 years since the end of the conflict.
Wearing black leather gloves embellished with poppies she said: “It was so cold this morning I thought it would be the perfect time to wear them.”
Poet Laureate Simon Armitage read out a specially commissioned VE 80 poem called ‘In Retrospect’.
She was taken on a tour by Yeoman Warder Tracey Machin, along with her son Harrison, five, and D-Day veterans Henry Rice, 99, a former Royal Navy signalman and Richard Aldred, a tank driver in the Inniskilling Dragoon Guards.
Richard handed the Queen a ceramic poppy, while Henry presented one to Harrison and they paused while before planting each of the flowers into the ground to complete the installation.
Speaking afterwards Henry Rice said: “Last year I went to Normandy and had the pride and pleasure of meeting His majesty and Her Majesty. I said to her quietly, ‘We met last year’, she said, ‘Yes, I know’ and that that is fabulous.
“I mean, why should she remember me?”
He said of the installation: “Each one of those poppies represents a man that gave his life to allow me, my family, this country, in fact, to live in peace and comfort.”
The new display, which is open to the public from today until 11 November, uses poppies created for the 2014 installation Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red, which saw the Tower encircled by a sea of more than 880,000 ceramic flowers.
