As soon as the extent of coronavirus was understood in the U.K., Queen Elizabeth began self-isolating at Windsor Castle, and the royal family moved their operations online, and that included ending visitors’ access to the palaces of the Royal Collection Trust. More than three months after a strict lockdown went into place in late March, the country began to reopen on July 4, and now even royal weddings are back on the docket. On Thursday, the public portion of Windsor Castle reopened for visitors, and to mark the occasion they brought back a rare delight from one of the last times the family helped steer the country through a crisis.
When visitors return to the castle’s Waterloo Chamber, they’ll see paintings that date back to the beginning of World War II and haven’t been seen since the period after the 1992 Windsor Castle Fire. In a statement announcing the decision, the Royal Collection Trust said they used the castle’s coronavirus closure as an opportunity to do a restoration of the paintings that usually hang on the walls. In their place are fairytale murals that the queen and her sister, Princess Margaret, used to stage fundraising plays through the war.
“At the beginning of the war, the series of portraits by Sir Thomas Lawrence that usually line the walls of the Waterloo Chamber were removed from their frames for safe keeping,” the trust said. “To make the space more festive, 16 ‘pantomime pictures’ were commissioned to cover the bare walls. Teenage evacuee and part-time art student Claude Whatham was asked to recreate fairy-tale characters on rolls of wallpaper.” (Whatham later went on to become a well-known director of BBC dramas.)
The paintings also have a sentimental significance to the queen. When she and Margaret performed a rendition of the fairytale Aladdin in December 1943, Prince Philip, on leave from the navy, was in the audience. In 2011, Vanity Fair reported that the moment was the first time their friends and family detected a spark of romance between the future spouses, four years before their wedding.
When the pandemic began in March, Philip traveled by helicopter from Sandringham, where he normally lives, so he could pass the time with his wife. On Wednesday, he made a rare public appearance at the castle when he passed his role as the Colonel-in-Chief of the Rifles to Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, who had her own welcoming ceremony at Highgate House, 85 miles away. The palace also announced that the queen and Philip will soon head to Scotland, following all social distancing requirements, for their usual summer vacation at the Balmoral Estate.
In order to protect visitors from coronavirus, the trust has instituted new rules across all eight of their attractions, including reduced visitor capacity, timed tickets, and interfacing with the NHS Test and Trace program. While masks won’t be mandatory in the collections, they will be required in every gift shop.
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