Queen Elizabeth memorial design to be unveiled in London park

Queen Elizabeth II will be cast in bronze as a young woman and placed on the ceremonial route between St James’s Park and Buckingham Palace, in a memorial that turns her legacy into a statement about continuity, national identity and the monarchy’s place in modern Britain.

The recommendations for the tribute are due to be unveiled on the centenary of Elizabeth’s birth, with King Charles III, Queen Camilla, other members of the Royal Family and Prime Minister Keir Starmer due to view maquettes and a scale model at the British Museum. The centrepiece will be a standing statue of Elizabeth in her 20s, sculpted by Martin Jennings, wearing the robes of the Order of the Garter and drawn from Pietro Annigoni’s 1955 portrait. It will stand at Marlborough Gate, overlooking The Mall from a new civic space called Queen Elizabeth II Place.

The composition is designed to make the late queen visible not as a distant icon, but as the sovereign who defined the postwar constitutional settlement for 70 years. Lord Robin Janvrin, chair of the Queen Elizabeth Memorial Committee and her former private secretary, said the committee thought it was important that the queen, as head of state, should stand on the ceremonial route in her own right. That choice places her not at the edge of the capital’s royal geography, but at its centre, in sight of the road used for national pageantry and state occasions.

Prince Philip will also be represented nearby, in Admiralty of the Fleet naval uniform and at a similar age to the queen, reflecting the role he played during their 70-year marriage. The wider memorial, designed by Foster + Partners with Michel Desvigne Paysagiste, will extend beyond the statues into a family of gardens with meandering paths, a translucent glass bridge inspired by Queen Mary’s Fringe Tiara, a later-life bust of the queen by Karen Newman and The Commonwealth Wind Sculpture by Yinka Shonibare. The committee has also paired the physical site with a new charitable trust to regenerate community assets across the United Kingdom and an online Digital Memorial where the public can submit memories.

The design says as much about the monarchy’s future as it does about Elizabeth’s past. By combining a formal statue, public landscaping, contemporary art and digital participation, Charles is overseeing a memorial that seeks to preserve the emotional reach of the Elizabethan age while updating royal commemoration for a less deferential era. In a country still working out what the crown means after its longest-serving monarch, the message is clear: Elizabeth’s memory will be curated not as nostalgia, but as a bridge between inherited authority and a more fragile sense of national cohesion.