Birthdays, jubilees or official visits — the queen is constantly showered with presents. Elizabeth II has been on the throne so long, by now, her collection of gifts contains some oddities indeed.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/J. Brady
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5 things you probably never would have guessed were presents to Queen Elizabeth II
Birthdays, jubilees or official visits - the queen is constantly showered with presents. Elizabeth II has been on the throne so long, her collection of gifts contains some oddities indeed.
Image: Imago/Steffen Schellhorn
Travel option
In 2013, the London Underground celebrated its 150th anniversary. Of course, the queen came to congratulate, too — and received a little something as a gift, just for Her Majesty: a commemorative Oyster Card, the electronic ticket used for public transport in London. The queen said thank you, but hasn't been spotted riding the tube since.
Image: Getty Images/P. Macdiarmid
Yee-Haw!
Ever since she was a girl, Queen Elizabeth has been very fond of horses. She's also a gifted rider, so her shoe collection is sure to include riding boots. This gift by a Texas governor, however, is unlikely to have brought a sparkle to her eye: During a US visit 1991, she and her grandchildren received hand-tooled cowboy boots. No one ever saw her wear the boots.
Image: Imago/All Canada Photos
Fruit shortage
Looking at this gift today, you might think Queensland authorities were making a bad joke when the Australian state sent Elizabeth and her husband Philipp 500 crates of canned pineapple as a wedding gift in 1947. In fact, the food situation was still dire after the war, so the canned fruit ended up being a much-welcome donation for schools and hospitals.
Image: Getty Images/Keystone
The queen and the king
The painting the queen received in Berlin in 2015 is entitled "Horse in Royal Blue." It's by a German painter, and portrays the monarch as a young girl on a pony with her father, King George VI. The German and the British press mocked the artwork. A pro after 63 years on the throne, the queen kept her opinion to herself.
Image: picture-alliance/Bundespresseamt/J. Denzel
Idle tree-dwellers
Similarities with living persons are purely coincidental, one would hope, in view of this gift by the Brazilian government in 1968: a cute but quite inert pair of sloths. Off they went to London Zoo, home to a few other "live" gifts: a jaguar, an elephant and two beavers from Canada.
Image: Imago/Steffen Schellhorn
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What do you give to someone who already has everything?
People rack their brains to find the perfect gift for Queen Elizabeth. When Prince William's wife Kate spent her first Christmas with the Windsors, she chose to bring along a jar of her grandmother's homemade chutney. Apparently she chose wisely, because the condiment was dished up the very next day.
Not everyone comes up with the right gift for the British monarch, however. Some presents are decidedly odd, including live animals and — well meant but strange — a portrait presented last year in Berlin of Her Majesty as a young girl.
Animals and paintings
The latter was painted by the German artist Nicole Leidenfrost, an interpretation of an old photograph that shows Elizabeth on a blue pony with her father. The queen was lukewarm. "That's a funny color for a horse," she said. "Is that supposed to be my father?" Embarrassed, German President Joachim Gauck pointed out another gift: a box of Lübeck Marzipan candies. You can't go wrong with that.
The British press agreed that the painting was awful, as if scrawled by a five-year-old, in short: an insult to the queen. Take a look for yourself at the German painting and a few other odd gifts presented to the queen over the course of her 90 years.
