Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh attend a Diamond Jubilee event at Stormont in Belfast, Northern Ireland, June 27, 2012.
All in all, 2012 was a pretty darn good year for London. The city pulled off a warm and memorable Olympics with no major snafus — something all the more remarkable, as Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron pointed out, because they hosted the Games in one of the busiest cities in the world. But the fun (and media excitement) didn’t start with the Olympics; 2012 also brought us a Royal event that, for its sheer pomp and interminable duration, put the Royal Wedding to shame. The celebration of Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee (the 60thAnniversary of her coronation) took place throughout the year in various Commonwealth countries, ensuring plenty of Royal news for months. But the crowning event was the Diamond Jubilee Pageant in London, during which the Queen and the Royal family led a flotilla of more than 1,000 boats down the Thames. And much like last year’s Royal Wedding, news outlets made sure we didn’t miss anything. While the Guardian reported that most of the estimated £10.5 million ($16.8 million) it cost to put on the pageant came from a privately-funded trust, London’s Metropolitan Police had a reported 6,000 officers working a long weekend. Add to that the estimated lost revenue of nearly $2 billion due to the extra public holiday, and the Jubilee was an expensive occasion. Still, it was a memorable one that certainly boosted tourist revenue for the UK.