The BBC has rejected suggestions that it
snubbed the Queen Mother by opting not to
show live coverage of a pageant marking her
100th birthday.
The Shadow Culture, Media and Sport
Secretary, Peter Ainsworth, has condemned
the broadcast corporation for choosing instead
to show Australian soap opera Neighbours.
However the BBC says there will be "significant
coverage" of events surrounding the centenary
celebrations.
Camels and corgis will
take part in the
spectacular 19 July
pageant on London's
Horseguards Parade,
alongside military
bands, a choir, an
orchestra and
thousands of people.
A BBC spokesman said: "No one looking at the
entirety of the coverage we are presenting to
celebrate the Queen Mum's birthday could
agree that we are snubbing her.
"The BBC is spending over £1m alone on BBC
One programming to commemorate this great
occasion."
However the Daily Mail has launched a
campaign to secure live television coverage of
that event.
And Mr Ainsworth regards the BBC's decision as
"nothing short of insulting". He said its decision
not to alter programming schedules was
"incredulous and pathetic".
"We regularly see
sporting events overrun
and take precedence
over news programmes.
"It speaks volumes
about the culture within
the BBC that
Neighbours takes
priority over the Queen
Mother's birthday."
The first event marking
the Queen Mother's
birthday will be a
Service of Thanksgiving
at St Paul's Cathedral
on 11 July, which will be attended by all the
members of the Royal Family.
On 19 July, Horseguards Parade will be the
focus of attention.
On her 100th birthday, on 4 August, the Queen
Mother is expected to make her traditional
appearance outside her London home, Clarence
House.
She will be taken by carriage up The Mall to
Buckingham Palace where the Queen Mother is
expected to make an appearance on the
Palace balcony with her daughters, the Queen
and Princess Margaret.
This year's Horseguards
pageant includes
military representatives
and massed military
bands from the UK and
around the
Commonwealth.
Representatives from
the 320 charities and
organisations the
Queen Mother is
connected with will add
to the celebrations.
Birthday cake
The day will peak with a performance by a
cast of 1,000 children, followed by what the
organisers promise will be "the largest birthday
cake ever".
Most of the tickets to the Horseguards
pageant will be distributed to the participating
charities and there will be room for only 2,000
other spectators.
BBC News will cover the event in full - and BBC
News Online will have a special in-depth
section on the Queen Mother's remarkable 100
years.
~*~
Cathedral will be built to mark site of
Tsar's murder(Electronic Telegraph)
By Ben Aris in Moscow
WORK has started on a cathedral to mark the site where Russia's last Tsar
was murdered.
The five-domed building will include a replica of the basement room where
Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra, their five children and servants were shot by
Bolsheviks on July 17, 1918.
Vladimir Grachev, the chief engineer, said work on the main building would
begin within a month at the site in Yekaterinburg, in the Urals, on the
eastern-most edge of Europe. The cathedral will replace the lone iron
Orthodox cross that stands surrounded by cows in a field.
The former communist rulers were afraid that the Ipatiev house, where the
shootings happened, would become an unofficial shrine and tore it down in
1977. Despite the best efforts of the party to smother Russia's imperial past,
many people continued secretly to revere the royal family.
The Romanov family remains were discovered in a shallow forest grave and
exhumed in 1991, as the Soviet Union was falling apart. The bodies of two of
the children - the Tsar's heir, Alexei, and Grand Duchess Mariya, the
youngest of four daughters - are still missing.
Since the collapse of the former Soviet Union and the popular rejection of all
that happened under 70 years of communist rule, Russians have been
rediscovering their imperial past.
Russian nostalgia for the Tsar was finally given free rein when the family was
reburied in the Peter and Paul Fortress in St Petersburg, the former imperial
capital, with great pomp and ceremony in July 1998. Surviving Romanovs
travelled from all over the world to attend the ceremony.
But the Orthodox Church's hierarchy refused to accept evidence that the
remains were genuine, despite DNA tests conducted abroad, and boycotted
the burial.
~*~
False start for race to honour
Princess(UK Times)
BY ELIZABETH JUDGE
A CHARITY road race to commemorate the life of
Diana, Princess of Wales, has been postponed for a year
because of a lack of funding.
The inaugural ten-kilometre event, which had been
endorsed by Tony Blair and William Hague, was
supposed to take place in July. The route through the
centre of London incorporated landmarks in the Princess's
life, including her home and marriage venue. The
organiser, Mike O'Reilly, a veteran runner, denied reports
that there had been a poor response from runners. He
said that more than 4,500 people had signed up to take
part, including Liz McColgan, the former British record-
holder for 10,000 metres.
"We need £450,000 for the race to go ahead on July 30
and if a white knight sponsor comes forward in the next
week we can still go ahead," Mr O'Reilly said.The
proceeds will be shared by the Diana, Princess of Wales
Memorial Fund and the Red Cross.
~*~
BBC accepts all change at Althorp(UK Times)
BY ANDREW NORFOLK
THE BBC has approved a decision reluctantly taken by
Earl Spencer to change the official pronunciation of his
family home, the final resting place of Diana, Princess of
Wales.
The Spencers' ancestral house and estate at Althorp,
Northamptonshire, is henceforth to be pronounced as its
spelling suggests, "All-thorp", replacing the family's
traditional use of "Awltrup". The earl says he has decided
to "give up the battle" and end the confusion over the
correct pronunciation by choosing a version "that
everyone can pronounce and understand".
His move was greeted with relief in the neighbouring
village of Great Brington, where residents say they have
been using the "new" pronunciation for as long as any of
them can remember and certainly since the early 20th
century. The BBC's pronunciation department said
yesterday: "With private houses and estates, we always
take the preference of the name's owner. The earl has
changed his mind, so we've changed our
recommendation."
The policy is illustrated by the BBC's ruling that the Earl of
Harewood's house and grounds near Leeds should be
pronounced "Harwood", because that is the earl's wish,
even though the neighbouring village of the same name is
pronounced "Harewood".
The house now known as Althorp has had at least three
spellings since it was named as Olletorp in the Domesday
Book of 1087. In the 13th and 15th centuries, it was
recorded respectively as Holtropp and Aldrop. The house
bought by John Spencer in 1508 was called Oldthorpe.