Three strings of pearls for Queen Elizabeth II. She also opts for earrings, always made of pearls: she also wore this type of jewel on her wedding day. And, recently, she has never taken off her necklace made up of three strings of pearls (obviously not cultured). The Queen in the image on this page smiles as she walks by the Queen’s Body Guard of the Yeomen, the personal guard of the sovereign of the United Kingdom and still the oldest British military force today. Elizabeth attended the traditional holy service on Thursday 28 March in Christ Church Cathedral in Oxford. During this ceremony the queen also distributed money (the ritual is repeated every year) to 87 women and 87 men, one for each year of the queen’s life. Each recipient receives two bags, one red and one white. The red bag in this case contained a 5 pound 50 pence coin to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Queen’s Coronation. The white bag is the so-called maundy money, that is, a special British coinage that is donated to the poor and needy during the religious ceremony. These are silver coins of one, two, three and four pence, the sum of which is equal to the number of years of the monarch’s age. This year, in fact, the bag contained 87 cents.
