Still arm in arm but 60 years older, the Queen and Prince Philip pose for their official diamond anniversary photographs in the grounds of the country house where they spent their wedding night.

In November 1947, after their wedding at Westminster Abbey, the young couple were photographed as they walked through the parklands of Broadlands, then the family home of Earl Mountbatten of Burma, the groom’s uncle. Prince Philip could be seen gesticulating animatedly with his right hand as he spoke fondly to his new bride.

In the new photographs, the couple are more serene, but no less affectionate, as the Queen, 81, looks up and smiles warmly at her 86-year-old husband. Broadlands, the magnificent Georgian mansion house near Romsey in Hampshire, can be seen behind them.

The Queen and Prince Philip will celebrate their diamond wedding anniversary on Tuesday when they fly to Malta for a short holiday. It is the island where the newly married couple spent some of their happiest days when Prince Philip served there as a Royal Navy officer.

The Prince of Wales will give a dinner for his parents and 20 members of the Royal Family at Clarence House, his London home.

There will also be a special service of thanksgiving tomorrow at Westminster Abbey. Some 2,000 people, including more than 30 members of the Royal Family – among them the Prince of Wales, the Duchess of Cornwall and Princes William and Harry – will gather for the event. Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, and his predecessors Lady Thatcher and Sir John Major, are among those invited.

About 500 members of Royal Household staff – past and present – will attend. There will be around 20 members of the public present, who all married on the same day as the Queen and the Duke.

Prince William, 25, will give a reading, while the Archbishop of Canterbury will bless the Royal couple and deliver the address. Dame Judi Dench will read a specially commissioned poem by Andrew Motion, the Poet Laureate. (via The Telegraph)