The Queen was greeted with pomp and ceremony yesterday as she arrived for a service celebrating the 60th anniversary of her coronation.
She returned to Westminster Abbey – where the coronation service took place – to mark the historic event.
The Duke of Edinburgh was by her side, despite missing a Buckingham Palace engagement on Monday due to ill health.
During the service, the Archbishop of Canterbury paid tribute to the Queen's devotion to duty and self-sacrifice.
The Most Rev Justin Welby told the congregation, which included leading figures from national life, they were celebrating 60 years of commitment.
The archbishop began by setting the scene 60 years ago, telling the congregation: "A nation watched.
"It was the first time the whole nation had watched anything as it happened. But this they saw.
"Pomp and ceremony on a rainy June day, all so very British, wrapped in time and custom."
The nation watched spellbound on June 2 1953 as the Queen, just 27 years old, was the central figure in the centuries-old ceremony.
More than 8200 guests witnessed the historic events and an estimated 27 million people in Britain watched on television, a relatively new medium at the time.
Among the 2000 people in the congregation were the Prince of Wales, Prime Minister David Cameron, who gave a Bible reading, the Duke of Edinburgh, senior individuals from the military and those who took part in the 1953 coronation.
The archbishop said that during the coronation the Queen had knelt at the abbey's altar and prayed.
"We do not know what was prayed. Her Majesty knelt at the beginning of a path of demanding devotion and utter self-sacrifice, a path she did not choose, yet to which she was called by God. Today we celebrate 60 years since that moment, 60 years of commitment," said the Archbishop.
l Glasgow-born Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy has taken the crown and the symbolism surrounding this emblem of a monarch as the theme for her poem written for the anniversary service.
The writer has named her verse The Throne, but it appears to focus on St Edward's Crown –used to crown kings and queens.
It begins with the lines: "The crown translates a woman to a Queen – endless gold, circling itself, an O like a well, fathomless, for the years to drown in – history's bride, anointed, blessed, for a crowning."
The poem concentrates on the burden and gift that the crown represents for a sovereign – "one head alone can know its weight".
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