From flights of fancy to visions of Victoria, 2019 will be a bumper year for significant anniversaries in Britain, with all manner of commemorative events and celebrations planned. Here’s a peek:
2019 marks 200 years since the birth of Queen Victoria at Kensington Palace, where she also spent her childhood. A permanent representation of her rooms, telling the story of her fascinating life at the palace will open and a programme of performance, special events, tours and talks will also run throughout the year.
The 75th anniversary of the D-Day Landings and the Battle of Normandy in World War II will be commemorated in and around June 6 at various sites and attractions, such as Britain’s Imperial War Museum, around the UK.
Britain’s National Parks are celebrating their 70th anniversary this year. A photo competition winds up on Feb. 7, but events will take place at individual parks all year. National Parks Week – now expanded and called Discover National Parks Fortnight (April 6 to 21) – in particular will be a time to celebrate the countless opportunities to get outside and discover the length and breadth of the UK’s 15 National Parks.
The 50th anniversary of Concorde’s first flight will be celebrated this year by Club Concorde, which hopes to buy the Concorde currently on display at Le Bourget airport in Paris. If it is successful, the plane will be restored before resuming operation as a private heritage aircraft that will be flown at air displays as well as being available for charter.
While they have no plans to revive Monty Python for this year’s 50th anniversary of the show – describing the group’s reunion in 2014 as their “goodbye”, there’s bound to be a lot of replays of Monty Python shows, skits and films. Keep up with it all on the countdown.
The British Motor Museum’s National Metro & Mini Show plans to celebrate the iconic Mini’s 60th Anniversary on 4 August, the weekend before the International Mini Meet. International visitors and Mini enthusiasts are expected to enjoy a week of Mini 60th celebrations.
As part of its 100-year birthday, British Airways has announced it will be painting four of its aircraft in much-loved retro designs from across its past, with the first confirmed as a Boeing 747 in a British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) design. The BOAC livery will remain on the Boeing 747 until it retires in 2023. By that time, British Airways will have retired the majority of its 747 fleet, replacing them with new state-of-the-art long-haul aircraft.
2019 marks the tercentenary of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719), a novel that achieved instant popularity in Britain and has since been translated into over a hundred languages. Even those who have never actually read the book are familiar with the story of a man shipwrecked on an island and managing to survive by himself and later with his companion Friday. Three hundred years after it was published the book has been joined by numerous film and television adaptions show that the story of the shipwrecked Crusoe is still alive and engaging.