This year's Diamond Jubilee is a remarkable historical occasion. Queen Elizabeth II is only the second British monarch to reach 60 years on the throne. Britain is marking the Diamond Jubilee with a year of celebrations, starting in February which is the 60th anniversary of when the Queen ascended the throne (ie when her father King George VI passed away).

This year's Diamond Jubilee is a remarkable historical occasion. Queen Elizabeth II is only the second British monarch to reach 60 years on the throne.

Britain is marking the Diamond Jubilee with a year of celebrations, starting in February which is the 60th anniversary of when the Queen ascended the throne (ie when her father King George VI passed away).

Millions of people around the world are expected to watch or take part in the celebrations, which fall into three main categories:

• Official celebrations: the main focus for the official celebrations will be the first weekend in June which is the anniversary of the Queen's coronation in 1953. Events will include a pageant of 1000 boats up the River Thames, the lighting of thousands of beacons across the UK and around the world, and a concert in front of Buckingham Palace. There will also be a three-night 'Royal Pageant' of over 500 horses and 800 performers at Windsor Castle in the middle of May, just a few weeks before the central weekend, while the Queen and/or other members of the Royal Family will be travelling extensively throughout England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and a number of other countries this year to mark Her Majesty's Diamond Jubilee .
  
• Related exhibitions and projects: special exhibitions are being staged in all the Queen's palaces and in many other castles and museums that have a connection with royals through the ages. A new charitable trust has been set up and 60 new 'Diamond Woods' of at least 60 acres are being created across Britain. The London Borough of Greenwich is being awarded the status of Royal Borough in recognition of its historically close links with the monarchy and a number of towns around Britain are expected to be given city status, giving them greater prominence on Britain's tourism map.
  
• Community celebrations: hundreds of towns and villages around the UK are planning their own parties and celebrations to mark their Queen's Diamond Jubilee, just as they did during the Silver and Golden Jubilees in 1977 and 2002 (over 10 million people took part in community celebrations during the Queen's Silver Jubilee Many of these will coincide with the official events in early June as part of the 'Big Jubilee Lunch' initiative. There will also be celebrations throughout the British Commonwealth and in many other countries which have strong connections with Britain.

International interest in Britain's Royal Family and royal heritage is already very high, as demonstrated by the global fascination in last year's Royal Wedding. Many visitor attractions connected to the monarchy reported increased visitor numbers last year. Britain's culture and heritage currently attracts an estimated overseas visitor spend of £4.5bn annually, out of a total overseas visitor spend of £17bn. Approximately £0.5bn of this is spent directly on attractions and events which have a connection to Britain's monarchs past and present, ie royal heritage.

VisitBritain Chief Executive Sandie Dawe:

"The Diamond Jubilee will be a very special occasion which looks set to capture people's imagination across the globe. Together with the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games it will help to put Britain on the front page of every newspaper in the world and we hope encourage people to come here. Heritage is one of the core factors that draws people to Britain and the Diamond Jubilee provides a fantastic opportunity to showcase our heritage to future visitors."

Diamond Jubilee

• A Diamond Jubilee is a celebration held to mark a 60th anniversary in the case of a person.
• Queen Elizabeth is only the second British monarch to reach a Diamond Jubilee. The other was Queen Victoria who celebrated her Diamond Jubilee in 1897 and reigned for another four years afterwards.

Queen Elizabeth II

• Born on 21 April 1926 in London (she is currently 85 years' old)
• Ascended to the British throne on 6 February 1952, following the death of her father King George VI, and crowned 16 months later in Westminster Abbey on 2 June 1953.
• Mother to four children: Charles, Anne, Andrew and Edward. Prince Charles is the first in line to the throne followed by his eldest son Prince William.

Royal Tourism

• VisitBritain estimates that visitors drawn here by the appeal of our culture and heritage spend some £4.5 billion annually (out of a total overseas visitor spend of £17bn). Around £500 million of that figure can be attributed to attractions and events with a connection to Britain's monarchs past and present ie royal heritage.
• The concept of royal heritage embraces places such as the Tower of London, Kensington Palace, Windsor Castle, Balmoral, the Palace of Holyroodhouse, Trooping the Colour, the Royal Yacht Britannia and Buckingham Palace, which attracted 600,000 visitors in 2011, up almost 50 per cent on the previous record year of 1994, due to the interest in seeing the wedding dress of the Duchess of Cambridge (Kate Middleton).

Other

• Buckingham Palace has 78 bathrooms
• Windsor Castle is spread over the equivalent of 269 tennis courts
• The Crown Jewels consist of 23,578 gems
• Hampton Court Palace boasts 200,000 bulbs in the gardens
• The Queen currently has six corgis, according to Buckingham Palace
• The Royal Yacht Britannia, now moored in Leith, Edinburgh, travelled 1,087,623 nautical miles, calling at over 600 ports in 135 countries during its working life.

Use of the Diamond Jubilee emblem and wording

• A blanket approval is in place for the use of "Diamond Jubilee" and "Jubilee" for non-commercial purposes
• the official Diamond Jubilee emblem is available to use for activities (including commercial ventures) associated with the Diamond Jubilee celebrations.

See more on http://www.royal.gov.uk/HMTheQueen/TheQueenandspecialanniversaries/TheQueensDiamondJubilee2012/DiamondJubileeNamesandTitles.aspx

OFFICIAL CELEBRATIONS

Thursday 10, Friday 11 and Sunday 13 May

Over 500 horses and 800 international performers will come together in the grounds of Windsor Castle to pay tribute to 60 years of her reign http://www.diamond-jubilee-pageant.com/

Saturday 2 June

The Queen will attend the Epsom Derby http://www.epsomderby.co.uk/

Sunday 3 June

The Big Jubilee Lunch: building on the already popular Big Lunch initiative, people will be encouraged to share lunch with neighbours and friends as part of the Diamond Jubilee celebrations. This may take the form of a traditional street party or a picnic lunch in small or larger groups. In 2011 two million people took part, in the UK and abroad: they are hoping to double that number in 2012 http://www.thebiglunch.com .

The Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant: this event will take place on the Thames and consist of up to 1,000 boats assembled from across the UK, the Commonwealth and around the world. The Queen will travel in the Royal Barge which will lead the flotilla. http://www.thamesdiamondjubileepageant.org Battersea Park will host a major free festival offering "music, dancing, design and dressing up through all the sixty years of the Queen's reign" from midday till 7pm. See more details below , in the section "River Thames".

Monday 4 June

BBC Concert at Buckingham Palace : there will be a televised Diamond Jubilee Concert at Buckingham Palace with tickets being available to UK residents by public ballot. The musical programme is still being planned and is expected to feature British and Commonwealth musicians.

The Queen's Diamond Jubilee Beacons : a network of 2,012 Beacons will be lit by communities and individuals throughout the United Kingdom, as well as the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man and the Commonwealth. As in 2002, the Queen will light the National Beacon.

Tuesday 5 June

Service of Thanksgiving and Carriage Procession: there will be a service of Thanksgiving at St Paul's Cathedral and a formal carriage Procession by the Queen.

OTHER EVENTS AND PROJECTS

Alongside the official weekend, there will be events and exhibitions taking place all round the country and covering many different themes.

There will be portraits of the Queen by press photographers, and by society photographer Cecil Beaton; while Kensington Palace will reopen after a major refurbishment programme, with an exhibition about the other Queen to reach a Diamond Jubilee, Victoria - and how her Jubilee was celebrated.

At Sandringham there will be an exhibition about the Queen's love of dogs; at Balmoral a special photographic exhibition depicting her love of all things equine over the last 60 years.

Many of the events will have an element of fun - and dressing up! From making your own memorabilia, to dressing up as they did in the 1950s, or for the Silver Jubilee in 1977. And alongside the Queen, there will be exhibitions about other royal personages, including the "Forgotten Princess" Charlotte, and Henry VIII's surviving wife, Katharine Parr. For full details, see below.

Charities and community events will include 60 grants of up to £60,000 being rolled out to projects which improve local communities ( www.jubileepeoplesmillions.org.uk ). A new London walking route, the Jubilee Greenway , will extend 60 kilometres from Buckingham Palace to Kensington Gardens, up through Paddington to Little Venice, along the Regent's Canal to Victoria Park, through the Olympic site at Stratford, down to the Thames through Beckton District Park then over the river to Woolwich and back along the Thames Path to The Tower of London, the Queen's Walk and eventually back to the palace - a lasting memorial to the jubilee in the same way that the Jubilee walkway was created at the time of the Silver Jubilee in 1977. http://www.walklondon.org.uk/route.asp?R=7

The Queen Elizabeth II Fields Challenge , of which the Duke of Cambridge is patron, aims to protect hundreds of playing fields throughout the country http://www.qe2fields.com/ ; the Jubilee Woods Project aims to plant six million trees across the UK http://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/en/jubilee-woods/Pages/home.aspx ; and Face Britain, the UK's largest ever art project, gives UK children up to the age of 16 the chance to create self-portraits which will be combined to create a montage portrait of the Queen to be projected on to the front of Buckingham Palace http://www.facebritain.org.uk/ . People are being invited to contribute items for a Jubilee Time Capsule http://www.jubileetimecapsule.org/ ; while a Choirbook for the Queen has been published - a collection of contemporary choral anthems including 11 specially commissioned for the book http://www.choirbookforthequeen.org.uk/book/