The British Royal Family on Victory Day in 1945 and in 2025

The series of celebrations marking the 80th anniversary of victory over Nazi Germany has begun not only in Russia and the post-Soviet countries. Britain has been celebrating since yesterday. Yesterday senior members of the royal family joined thousands of people in London to watch a military parade and a Royal Air Force flypast, which opened a series of commemorative events marking the end of the Second World War in Europe.

King Charles and Queen Camilla were joined in the royal box by the Prince and Princess of Wales and their children, Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis, by the King's younger sister Princess Anne with her husband, the retired naval officer Sir Timothy Laurence, and by the youngest of Elizabeth II's children, Prince Edward, now Duke of Edinburgh, with his wife Sophie Rhys-Jones. Eighty years earlier, the people on the balcony of Buckingham Palace were greeted by the present King's grandfather George VI, the Queen Mother Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, the future Queen Elizabeth and her younger sister Princess Margaret.

After the parade the King and Queen gave a tea party at the palace for 30 veterans and participants of the Second World War aged between 98 and 104, as well as some 20 evacuees and other wartime survivors.