With support from the University of Richmond

History News Network

History News Network puts current events into historical perspective. Subscribe to our newsletter for new perspectives on the ways history continues to resonate in the present. Explore our archive of thousands of original op-eds and curated stories from around the web. Join us to learn more about the past, now.

Queen to give President Jacob Zuma 'history lesson' tour of private exhibition

President Jacob Zuma is to be given a fascinating "history lesson" this week when the Queen shows him a special, private exhibition of memorabilia revealing Britain's ties to South Africa.

Scores of gifts, photographs, letters, speeches and other artefacts – previewed exclusively by The Sunday Telegraph – will be on eight tables in the first-floor Picture Gallery at Buckingham Palace, where the President of South Africa and one of his three wives are staying as guests of the Queen and Prince Philip.

The first table will have memorabilia, including personal photograph albums, from the first visit by the Queen – then Princess Elizabeth – to South Africa with her parents, George VI and Queen Elizabeth, and her younger sister, Princess Margaret, in 1947.

The President, who starts a two-day Stave Visit to Britain on Wednesday, will be shown a sprig of artificial flowers – kept and labelled by her grandmother, Queen Mary – from Princess Elizabeth's 21st birthday cake in 1947.

The Queen will also show her guest a draft of a handwritten, thank-you letter written by her late father to Jan Smuts, the-then Prime Minister of South Africa, as George VI was sailing home on HMS Vanguard from the 1947 visit.

Read entire article at Telegraph (UK)