There are so many things to love about this photograph but what particularly strikes me, I suppose, is the way that its fairytale whimsicality stands as such a stark contrast to the gathering clouds of war that were besetting Britain at the time that it was taken. It was quite difficult to pick just one Beaton photograph as portrait of the week but in the end I went with this wonderfully frothy and romantic picture of Queen Elizabeth, dolled up in all her finery in Buckingham Palace in 1939. Today marks the birthday of Sir Cecil Beaton, whose wonderfully glamorous photographs always evoke for me the heady, brittle glamour of mid twentieth century high society – from film stars to writers to shy debutantes to their sophisticated mothers, he captured them all for posterity. Photo: Royal Collection © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Queen Elizabeth, Buckingham Palace, Sir Cecil Beaton, 1939.
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