Queen Elizabeth celebrates muted 94th birthday

Britain marked Queen Elizabeth II's 94th birthday with silence on Tuesday, as the UK continues its lockdown measures to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus.

The Queen decided it would be inappropriate for the usual gun salutes and bell ringing practices to occur, as the UK mourns the deaths of more than 16,000 people from COVID-19.

The gun salutes and the ringing of the bells at Westminster Abbey, where the queen got married and was coronated, are an annual feature of the queen's already more muted celebrations of her actual birthday in April.

Her official birthday in the height of summer, not on the day she was born, is typically the larger public event, involving the "Trooping of the Colour" military parade. 

The royal family took to social media to share footage of Elizabeth throughout the years.

The queen will spend the day with her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, 98, at Windsor Castle in Berkshire, west of London.

Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson plans to hold his weekly audience with the Queen by telephone later this week. It will be the first such conversation since Johnson spent a week in a London hospital earlier this month, including three nights in intensive care, after being diagnosed with the novel coronavirus. He was released on April 12, saying "it could have gone either way," before saying that he "owed" the staff at St. Thomas' Hospital his life.

The queen has also issued an impromptu public address amid the coronavirus lockdown, a highly unusual step for her except at typically scheduled appointments like Christmas.

Read more:  Opinion: Angela Merkel, Queen Elizabeth II show how to communicate

jsi/msh (Reuters, AFP, AP)

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