If you’ve been to the site and have been browsing the photo section, you’ll notice there is a link to an “Events and Duties” page. Events and Duties was put in a while ago, and shows the Queen at various functions and duties around the world. I’ve been notified that the link was broken, however, and no one could get to the page. Well, that’s fixed! Now you can enjoy photos of historic moments once again.

I changed the name of the page, but then I forgot to change the name in the pages where I wrote code for the link. Call me genius!

Prince Charles has firmly rejected recent criticisms suggesting he is an elitist. The Prince of Wales was lambasted by the media and a government minister last week, over a memo in which he said people should not harbour unrealistic ambitions. The note, which was written in response to an employee’s enquiry about promotion prospects, provoked outrage in the British press.

“What is wrong with everyone nowadays?”, wrote the future king. “What is it that makes everyone seem to think that they are qualified to do things far beyond their technical capabilities? People think they can all be pop stars, high court judges, brilliant TV personalities or infinitely more competent heads of state without ever putting in the necessary work or having natural ability.”

I say, Amen to that. [Find out more...]

Her Majesty has bid a sad farewell to her aunt Princess Alice, who died last week at the age of 102. She was joined by her husband and children for the private funeral ceremony in Windsor Castle’s St George Chapel.

The Queen, dressed in black, stood alongside Prince Philip, Prince Charles, and the Earl and Countess Wessex at the service. The Princess Royal and Princess Alexandra were also there to offer their support to Alice’s son Richard, the Duke of Gloucester. His mother’s coffin, draped in a royal standard and white roses, was borne from the chapel by members of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers, the regiment of which Alice was Colonel-in-Chief.

The Prince of Wales left a floral tribute with a note reading: “Dearest Aunt Alice, with fondest and affectionate memories, Charles, William, and Harry.” A wreath of roses and freesias laid by the Queen, meanwhile, carried the message: “In loving memory – Lilibet and Philip”.

Alice was the oldest member of the Royal Family in history, but she had not been seen in public for several years. Her life had been marked by tragedy, as she lost her eldest son, William, in a plane crash in 1972. Two years later her husband also passed away, after suffering a series of strokes. The Princess, who had a passion for travel and spent time in India, Kenya and Afghanistan, died in her sleep on October 29.

BERLIN (AFP) – Queen Elizabeth II arrives in Germany on her first state visit since 1992 amid press speculation about whether she will apologise for the devastating World War II bombing of Dresden.

The queen, accompanied by the Duke of Edinburgh, was welcomed with military honours in Berlin by President Horst Koehler. She will hold talks shortly after with Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder in the company of British Foreign Minister Jack Straw.

Her three-day visit will include a benefit concert in Berlin on Wednesday for Dresden`s Frauenkirche church, which was destroyed in Allied raids three months before the end of the war and is being restored to its former glory.

This has sparked media speculation that the queen will apologise for the mass bombing of the eastern city which killed 35,000 people and has become a symbol of the suffering of German civilians during the war.

The German press has laid blame for the rumours at the feet of the British media, with Die Welt newspaper saying this “anti-German trick is a way of selling more newspapers.”

“An apology by the queen would be a disservice to British-German relations, it would release animosities that have been kept in check by the very fact that each side has learnt to deal with the past in its own way,” the daily said.

Buckingham Palace said last week that Germany had not asked for an apology, but stopped short of divulging what the monarch might say during her visit.

An indication was given by the British ambassador to Germany, Peter Torry, on the 60th anniversary of the bombing of Braunschweig last month in which he said “it is right to remember the suffering and terror of the past”.

During her last state visit, the queen was greeted in Dresden by protesters demanding an apology for the loss of civilian life and condemning Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur “Bomber” Harris, who ordered the devastation.

Speculation about an apology first surfaced last week in the British tabloid the Daily Express, which was followed by a comment piece in the rival Daily Mail written by right-wing columnist Simon Heffer which has been given widespread coverage in Germany.

Entitled “Sorry, the Germans must never be allowed to forget their evil past,” Heffer, who was born many years after the war, rejected the idea of an apology and accused the Germans of trying to “rewrite history”.

On a recent visit to London, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer complained that British people have a deeply outdated view of Germany and still view it as the land of the “Prussian goosestep”.

Later on Tuesday, the queen will attend a state banquet in Berlin hosted by the president. She will open a climate conference here on Wednesday and travel to the state of North Rhine-Westphalia on Thursday.

Queen honours war dead in Germany

The Queen laid the wreath at the Neue Wache in BerlinThe Queen has laid a wreath at a memorial to the victims of war and tyranny, at the start of a state visit to Germany promoting reconciliation.

Accompanied by Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, she laid the multi-coloured flowers at the Neue Wache in Berlin.

The remains of an unknown soldier and a concentration camp victim lie buried at the memorial in earth from World War II battlefields and Nazi death camps.

The Queen will later attend a benefit concert to restore Dresden Cathedral. But it is thought unlikely she will apologise for the Allied assault on Dresden which killed 50,000 people, as well as devastating the cathedral, in 1945.

“The Queen, having lived through World War II, is better aware than those who did not of the suffering caused to people on both sides,” a Palace spokeswoman said . “She will be acknowledging and commemorating the suffering.”

The Queen requested that proceeds from Wednesday night’s gala concert at the Berlin Philharmonic Hall be donated to the restoration of Dresden’s Frauenkirche, which was destroyed in the wartime bombing. Some years ago, she made a personal donation to the cathedral’s rebuilding fund.

The concert by the Gateshead-based Northern Symphonia orchestra will be attended by 2,000 people and is one of the biggest events hosted by the Queen abroad.

After landing at Berlin’s Tegel military airport earlier on Tuesday, the Queen began her fourth state visit to Germany by being driven, with the Duke of Edinburgh, to the Schloss Charlotten presidential palace in a dual-fuel royal Bentley – a German-owned company.

Welcomed by about 1,000 well-wishers, a military band and tri-service guard of honour, the Queen was given a porcelain model of the Brandenburg Gate and the duke a wristwatch by President Kohler and his wife, Eva Luise.

The Queen gave the president two silver-framed photographs of herself and the duke, and a leather-bound book of the George III and Queen Charlotte exhibition at the Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace.

She gave Mrs Kohler a jewellery box made by her nephew David Viscount Linley.

The Queen and the duke later met Germany’s chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, at the ultra-modern Chancellery, and 24 British and German students, aged 16 to 19, working together to study the effects of climate change.

Princess Alice, aunt of Queen Elizabeth II and the oldest member of the British royal family, died peacefully in her sleep on Friday, Buckingham Palace said Saturday. She was 102.

A spokesman said the queen was greatly saddened by the death of her aunt. He said the queen “remembers with gratitude Princess Alice’s service to the monarchy and to the country.”

Born Lady Alice Christabel Montagu Douglas Scott on Christmas Day, 1901, the princess married Henry, duke of Gloucester – the third son of King George V and brother of the queen’s father, King George VI – in 1935. After helping to lift morale on the home front during World War II, Princess Alice moved with her husband to Australia, where the duke was governor general from 1945 to 1947.

Back in Britain, she kept a busy schedule of charitable work and official duties until she was in her 90′s. She was the second member of the royal family to reach her centenary, after the Queen Mother Elizabeth, who died in March 2002 at the age of 101.

Princess Alice and her husband had two sons – William, who died in a flying accident in 1972, and Richard, the current duke of Gloucester.

The princess’s husband died in 1974. She is survived by her son and three grandchildren – Lady Davina, Lady Rose, and Alexander, Earl of Ulster.