BRITAIN:Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, have celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary with a service of thanksgiving at Westminster Abbey.
The queen is the first British monarch to reach a diamond wedding anniversary, and she and her husband shared their special milestone yesterday with 10 invited couples from across the UK who also married on Thursday, November 20th, 1947.
Along with 30 members of the royal family, the service was attended by the prime minister, Gordon Brown, his predecessors Baroness Thatcher and John Major, and Northern Ireland and Scottish first ministers the Rev Ian Paisley and Alex Salmond.
The royal wedding cast a glittering light on post-war Britain, and yesterday the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, praised a faithful and creative partnership lived in the full light of publicity.
Dr Williams said: "Every marriage is a public event, but some couples have to live more than others in the full light of publicity. We are probably more aware than ever these days of the pressures this brings.
"But it also means that we can give special thanks for the very public character of the witness and the sign offered to us by this marriage, and what it has meant to the nation and Commonwealth over the decades."
The Archbishop went on: "Part of what it has meant has had to do precisely with the sense of unqualified commitment that has been so characteristic of every aspect of this reign: the faithful and creative partnership at the centre of everything else has been a sign of creative faithfulness to a task, a vocation, the creative faithfulness that secures the trust, love and prayerful support of millions."
Dr Williams told the congregation: "Today we celebrate not only a marriage but the relationship between monarch and people of which also that marriage is a symbol: a relationship in which we see what levels of commitment are possible for someone upheld by a clear sense of God's calling and enabling, and the corresponding vision of the worthwhileness of this national and international family that is the Commonwealth, which has been the recipient of such unswerving service.
"So before we complain too loudly about a world of disposable relationships and short-term policies, a world of fracturing and insecure international bonds and the decline of trust, we should remember that we have cause for thanksgiving - thanksgiving that God has made human beings capable, against all odds, of reflecting his own completely and self-giving commitment to his world; that the gift of marriage makes this capacity visible in our world; and that, in the lives of the couple with whom we join in celebration, that bracing, renewing and hopeful vision of faithful generosity has been for 60 years set so clearly before our eyes. May it be so for many more years."