On May 23, 2012,
artists of all kinds came together at the Royal Academy
for a party with Queen Elizabeth II
to celebrate her Diamond Jubilee.
The gathering of artists was assembled to mark the contribution
of the creative arts in Britain in the last 60 years.
The pictures presented here,
taken from the UK's MailOnline,
span the 65 years of the Queen's marriage
to Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh.
At the event Dame Judi remarked
to the BBC Radio 4 Today programme's presenter, James Naughtie,
that she liked to read a Shakespeare sonnet every day,
so he asked her to recite just one.
She obliged with Shakespeare's sonnet 116
which she recited from memory.
Press play. Listen.
And scroll again through the images
while you hear Shakespeare's words of faithful love
and see it photographed
across 65 years of one of the most well-known
marriages in the world.
Sonnet 116
by William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no! it is an ever-fixèd mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out ev'n to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
